Mixerman and the Ultimate Guide to Producing Records - Music Production Podcast #407

podcast

Aug 8

Mixerman (Eric Sarafin) is a gold and platinum-selling producer, mixer, engineer, and author whose credits include The Pharcyde, Ben Harper, Spearhead, Lifehouse, Barenaked Ladies, and Foreigner. Known for his no-nonsense approach and razor-sharp insights, Mixerman has spent decades working at the highest levels of the industry—both in iconic L.A. studios and now from his mountain home studio in Asheville, NC.

In this episode, Mixerman and I dive deep into the role of the producer—what it really means, how it differs from mixing and engineering, and why musical vision always trumps technical perfection. We talk about his new book, Mixerman’s Ultimate GUIDE to PRODUCING Records, Music & Songs, and explore everything from the psychology of studio performance to the pitfalls of overthinking and the dangers of letting the gear drive the session. Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been producing for years, this conversation is packed with practical wisdom, sharp humor, and hard-won truths.

Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube

Takeaways:

Producing ≠ Mixing ≠ Engineering – Mixerman breaks down the distinct roles and responsibilities of a producer, mixer, and engineer, and why blurring the lines can derail a project if you’re not careful.
The Producer Is the Artist’s Advocate – A great producer champions the artist’s vision, not their own. It’s not about control—it’s about making the best possible record with the artist.
Don’t Be a Gear-Driven Producer – Focusing on tools over results leads to decision paralysis. Gear doesn’t make records—people do.
Performance Over Perfection – A technically flawless take is worthless if it lacks feel. Great records are built on compelling performances, not clean edits.
Producing Is Emotional Management – Producers aren’t just sonic decision-makers—they’re emotional barometers. Reading the room and managing personalities is part of the gig.
Capture the Spark, Then Get Out of the Way – Sometimes the best thing a producer can do is not intervene. Let the magic happen, then shape it later.
The Role of Arrangement – Great production often comes down to arrangement: understanding how to leave space, when to add tension, and how to support the song’s emotional arc.
Don’t Chase a Sound—Chase the Song – Trying to copy other artists’ sounds can lead you away from authenticity. The song should dictate the production—not trends or references.
Learn to Say “That’s the Take” – Knowing when a performance is done (even if it’s not “perfect”) is part of a producer’s superpower.
Everything You Need Is Already in the Room – Fancy studios and high-end gear are nice, but great records have been made with far less. What matters is the intention behind the tools.

Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:02.039)

Welcome to the show about all things making music from the creative process and workflow to gear and recording techniques. I'm your host, Brian Funk, musician, producer, Ableton certified trainer and author of the five minute music producer. Let's learn to become better music makers. Welcome to the music production podcast.

Brian Funk (00:22.86)

Today I'm speaking with mixer and producer Mixer Man. Mixer Man has worked on gold and platinum albums and artists such as the Far Side, Ben Harper, Lifehouse, Amy Grant, and many more. He's the author of The Daily Adventures of Mixer Man, Zen and the Art of Mixing, and his new book is Mixer Man's Ultimate Guide to Producing Records, Music, and Songs. We had a great conversation about his decades of experience, his new book, and how technology has changed and will continue to change how we produce music.

Please welcome Nixerman to the music production podcast. Hey, if you're enjoying this show, then you'll probably like Producer Head. It's a podcast that explores creativity and music making hosted by Toru. Toru is a music producer who loves exploring the creative process and the mindset behind successful artists. I've had Toru on this show and he's had me on the Producer Head podcast. Producer Head features raw unfiltered conversations about the creative process, struggles and breakthroughs with a wide range of artists and music makers.

I like the show a lot and as a listener of this show, think you might like it too. Check out Producer Head wherever you get your podcasts. All right then. So we're on the air. Welcome to the show Mixer Man. How are you, Eric? Good to see you. It's been fun to get to know your work. Thanks for sending over Mixer Man's Ultimate Guide to Producing Records, Music and Songs, your new book.

Hey, Brian.

Mixerman (01:46.488)

Yeah.

Very cool stuff. I mean, you cover a lot in there. There's, you know, just everything from getting started in like a home recording studio situation to compression microphones, dealing with dynamics between band members. There's, I mean, probably fair to say ultimate guide. You really try to hit on just about everything I could think of to put into a book like this.

Yeah, that was the that was kind of the goal after Hurricane Helene hit. You know, in 2012, I wrote just to go back a little bit, I wrote Zen in the Art of Producing. And I always wanted to revise it. But every time I went to revise it during the pandemic, I went to revise it. I was like, I don't know, people just don't work like this anymore. I mean, some people do. But like, it's just so niche. And I wanted to really expand it.

And, you know, these days, everybody is a producer, musicians are producing themselves or producing other acts and songwriters are producers and artists are producers and like, it's very difficult to produce yourself. So I wanted to really break down everything throughout the process from the technical to the thinking behind it.

and really like go through, continue as I did in Zen and the Art of Producing to explain, you know, how a producer thinks and how a producer works so that you understand what aspects you're missing when you're doing it yourself.

Brian Funk (03:29.966)

Hmm. Well, I think maybe there's a good distinction to draw here because I mean, even the name of the show is called Music Production Podcast. And I think I'm using it, the word production more in terms of creation, as opposed to the more traditional role of the producer back in the day when you would actually book studio time and go in there. Do you mind just kind of differentiating those two? Cause I think there's a lot of people that just

understand the word production like you would in normal life. Like, you produced and you made something, you created something. Right. But it was a much more specific role.

Well, a production, and you're right, you can use it very broadly. I I produce a book, right? Exactly. So, I'm producing dinner. So, you know, I often, if I'm working with a band in the studio, I assign someone to produce dinner for me because I don't want to think about it because I'm thinking about everything else. But a production is basically, in music, is the arrangement.

and producing a conversation.

Mixerman (04:41.186)

Now what goes into the production is the evaluation of the performances and all the decision making process that goes through with that. But the production really is just the arrangement. And the mix is really just the arrangement too. Only we deal with balances and we're dealing with technical things to help get the music to do what we want it to do sonically.

But even then, try to tell people, the sonics, they don't matter nearly as much as the reaction. And a great mix of a production is something that does what the song does. So if the song has forward motion, if the song has a payoff, then we want to accentuate that payoff. And we have all sorts of tools at our disposal to do that. Rhythm,

counter melodies, and we want to push the listener forward through the production the same way that the song naturally does that. And that gives us a better payoff and that gives us a reaction from the listener. And when I'm working, that's always what I'm thinking about. Now, producing, you're running the show. If a band hires me to produce them, then I'm taking control of the budget.

Because if I don't have control of the budget, I don't have control of anything. I can't get to a point where we're only halfway through and we have no more money because somebody was spending it on things that I didn't approve. So I need control of the budget. I need to have a vision that I can sell to the band and that we can follow through to the end.

You know, sometimes you get towards the end and someone has an idea that they want to take this thing completely out in the left field. I said, no, we've talked about this. We're going to make this record the way we've set out to make it. You know, occasionally we might go off in a different direction, but in general, I'm going to keep everybody on track and we're going to make the record the way we envisioned it and the way it was sold. And I'm in charge of, you know, the budget.

Mixerman (07:07.02)

I'm in charge of, as a producer of the performances and getting the most out of the people and leading the charge and leading the team to create the production. And it's an all-encompassing, all-involved process of producing a record.

Yeah, so you're really big picture minded here. Yeah. can, I know that feeling too of you're working on a project and then that, Hey, what if we just turn it into like a, you know, space Odyssey. And then all of sudden we got this whole new vision of what we're working on. And sometimes I mean, those can be fun ideas, but you have to know when to reel those in and be like, look, if you ever want to get this thing done.

and especially if there's money and budgets involved. We need to stay the course here a little bit.

Money and budgets force you to stay within, you know, certain, stay in your lanes and not just go crazy because if you can't get any more money and you go way off track, you're done. You'll never finish it. so the, you know, budgets are very good for that, but a lot of people are working without a budget. And when you're not working without a budget, then the discipline required to finish becomes far greater importance because you have nothing, no guard rails.

force you, so you can go, I'll make it this way, I'll make it this way. And a big problem that a lot of people have is they do not finish their productions. I saw someone put up a poll on one of the Facebook groups, and I wasn't surprised by the result, but I was glad to see it, and it was that the biggest problem that people had was finishing their works. And the problem is they...

Mixerman (08:57.74)

They don't, never feel like it's done or they never feel like it's good or it's good enough. And so as a result, or it never gets done because they keep trying to change it and change it and change it and they're never satisfied. And that's the loop that people need to get out of.

Hmm. Yeah, because this infinite options, we talk about this all the time here. There's so many choices that it can be paralyzing and there's so much editing you can do. And there's really no objective way to know that something's finished. It's all judgments. It's all personalities. So you could decide something you did. A live performance was good enough. That's great. Sounds nice. Let's put it out. Or you can sit around and

work on it endlessly, overdubbing, fixing, nudging things, trying new plugins out.

And it's all after pursuit of perfection, but there is no perfection. There's only like how it causes you to react. I mean, you know, a lot of people ask, well, how do you know when a mix is done or how do you know when a production is done? When I can't like, when I'm listening to the production and I can't stop singing it to it and I can't stop moving to it and I forget that I'm supposed to be right there now evaluating the mix of the production, that's when I know it's done because

It takes me where I need to go. And I know if it does that to me, it's gonna do that to others. And that's what we want.

Brian Funk (10:28.364)

Yeah, I do pretty much the same thing. I try to find a point where I've realized I've listened to it without judging it and just enjoyed it. And sometimes I'll do that even by putting it on and maybe doing something else. Maybe I'll fold the laundry or something so that I'm not listening as in what's wrong with this? What do need to do? What's wrong? And just.

Hey, you know what? That was pretty cool. Nothing jumped out and I enjoyed it. It felt good. Like you said, the dance test that doesn't move you a little bit is always nice to just get up and feel it a little bit.

Yeah. The best is when I get to a point in a mix where I'm just tapping my foot or actually more bouncing my leg and I'm making noise in the room while I'm trying to listen to this thing. It's like, whatever. This is great. This is why we got to know this.

Yeah, the feeling of enjoyment kind of takes over. Yeah, that's a great time. But you're right. It is just the. It's probably the hardest thing. It's probably the biggest problem I see people and even people that have finished music are afraid to share it sometimes because they don't know if it's good enough and it's it's crippling. I've found for myself to think about my work as

like a larger body of work and all this stuff I'm creating is just little entries in that body of work along the way. And this is where I am right now. okay. don't think I can do that if I have something I've been working on for five years and say, this is where I am right now. In five years, I'm changing so much. I would lose that larger picture vision that you got.

Mixerman (12:17.326)

You can't name a record that took five years to make that was anybody's ever heard, right? So why take five years? Right. It's not gonna as you're not increasing your odds and the thing is like I mean I make things and I think I know what the reaction is gonna be and I'm often wrong. So like you can maybe you're not you but someone's listening to their work and they feel less than about or whatever, but you don't know

what people are gonna think about it. And a lot of times they're listening to the sound and they're like, it's not as great as this mixer stuff or this producer stuff. But people don't listen to sound. People listen to music. So put the music out there and then you see the reaction and the more you put out, I mean, this is a numbers game. The more you put out, the more chance you have at a reaction. And then when you hit on something,

you know, when you finally hit on something that you could see, this is working, then you can kind of stay in that lane and in that direction for a moment and kind of capitalize on that. But you don't find that by never releasing something.

Well, you hear it time and time again, bands, artists will say like, you know, I never thought that was going to be the hit. Yeah. It wasn't even our first single. was one we kind of put out as, you know, second side on the third single. like, you don't even know it when it happens. So to be so worried about it while you're doing it doesn't make a lot of sense because it is really kind of.

There's so many factors coming to play. mean, just the time your music comes out, like what's going on in the world and people's lives or even what season is it can really make a big difference in how it impacts the person.

Mixerman (14:10.898)

I don't know it personally, but I can almost guarantee you that the Red Hot Chili Peppers did not think the bridge was going to be one of their biggest singles. It's just not like a single kind of song, but yet it was. The first time I heard it, I'm like, my God, this has to come out as a single. This is like the best song on this album. And then when it did, I was surprised that they put it out.

Yeah. Well, I can remember watching interviews with the band back in the nineties, working with Rick Rubin and Rick Rubin like asking to see Anthony Kiedis' poetry. And I'm like, what's this? And he's like, that's not a chili pepper song, you know? And then they start working on it together and it's a real departure from what they did, it really, I think showed their, you know, the depth and the...

kind of versatility that they have and they really didn't tap into until that point.

For sure.

You just gotta make it.

Mixerman (15:19.362)

Just gonna make it, man.

Yeah, my earliest recording studio experience was in high school. And it was in a basement studio, but it was through my guitar teacher. And he knew a guy that had, you know, eight app machines in his basement and a nice setup. But he put, my guitar teacher played the role of the producer. And we ran into issues kind of right off the bat being, you know, 17 year old kids.

from like timing to arrangement things. And he knew what we had to spend and how much time we had in the studio. And he really reeled us in. He's like, okay, you're not gonna do all those fills on the drum. You're just gonna do this real straight thing. And you guys are gonna, know, don't sing that high, sing it an octave lower. know, like a lot of things to correct us that I think in the moment we were kind like, but that drum roll is so awesome, you know?

But looking back, it made us have a much more listenable record. Right. Because I think we were so used to recording on four track tape recorders where you almost don't even hear some of the nonsense that goes on. Really, all you get on those is the emotion. Yeah, right. Especially the way we were recording. mean, there was no clarity or any kind of... We didn't even understand microphone placement at that time.

Yeah, the moment you focused in, you can hear stuff with clarity, then all of a sudden things start to really stick out that didn't before, where they were energetic, but now they're just a distraction.

Brian Funk (17:00.014)

Right. Yeah, and I really have come out, I guess it's like a full circle kind of thing where, maybe it's a 180 where now I'm often looking for some of those things in my music because everything's so perfect in time and clear, right? Where I'm trying to build that in a little bit. Where I find if it's almost impossible to get things to have that feeling for me.

if everything's so perfect and tight because it's just not how I am. I'm not that kind of musician. I'm not trained.

Like recording organic stuff? Are you recording programmed stuff?

Both. It's usually often a mixture, or sometimes it's one or the other.

But I mean, I view like rawness would be if the most raw production would be if you put a band in a room with one microphone and just record them, right? And the most polished one would be everything's sampled, everything's programmed, everything's to the, know, to dial in to the nth degree. So, you know, I view,

Mixerman (18:14.678)

I view these kinds of things and these decision points as modules, right? So like, where do I want the rawness or the polish to be in this production? And if I want it super polished, I'm going to program it. If I want it super raw, then I'm going to bring the band in and try and, and, and I don't want to correct mistakes. I don't want to correct the tuning or whatever. And there's any variation in between. And so.

Like when you're programming, you have to like actually assiduously add the rawness because it's programmed, right? Or, mean, and you could do that by adding an instrument where you're, if you're adding an acoustic guitar, you don't have to play it perfectly and you don't have to quantize it or time it. And that will add like a bit of rawness to the production. So

Anyway, I have all of these different kinds of modules that I use and I think about it this way because really we're not creating anything new. We're kind of mixing and matching things to make something new. But everything that we're using has been done before. It's just that the combination that we put together is what creates the new work.

Right, that sounds like a nice logical, sensible argument against or for like the digital versus analog kind of thinking, the quantizer, not quantize, autotune or not. It's, you know, use, we have all these tools. I think maybe in my personal opinion, my personal taste is maybe we've gone a little too far with all the

Corrective stuff and making everything smooth and slick and it's kind of nice now to bring some of that back in Some of the old ways a little bit balance it It's like when you get a new toy you want to use it on everything and then after a while I say, alright Well, maybe we'll just ease it in a little more

Mixerman (20:23.702)

It's easy to overdo it, for sure.

Yeah.

I mean, know, generative AI is going to change everything for us in the next few years in music production, because I'm not talking about Suno and Udio, which are interesting and cool, know, great for a consumer who doesn't make music and can't write music.

Those are softwares where you can prompt it and it will make a song for you.

Exactly. And you can even give it the lyrics so it'll make the song with your lyrics and you can feed it your demos and it'll it'll remake those for you. well, that's new. It's it's moving it at break next.

Brian Funk (21:02.958)

Wow, I didn't know that.

Brian Funk (21:08.302)

If you're not checking every day, have no idea what's going on.

So, you know, there's a lot of people that have negative reactions towards generative AI and, you know, I get it to some degree. And there's a lot of reaction to feeding the beast with copyrighted material. I don't want to go too far down that road. I feel that that AI learns the same and assimilates the same way that humans do.

They assimilate everything they've learned and then they evaluate the patterns and a lot of the patterns we learn are innate and they apply them. They're not stealing, they're stealing the same way that a human does based on everything they've heard before. So to me, I don't buy that argument, but...

Regardless, generative AI is going to be how we're producing music in the next few years. How quickly? I don't know. It's very difficult to predict these technology in general, but especially this technology. And there are generative audio workstations coming down the pike. Several of them. I can't name you any of them. I haven't investigated any of them. Bobby Yosinski put up a

a blog post about it if anybody wants to go and investigate further. so imagine like, you know, right now you'll program your kick drum and then your snare. Well, now, what if you want to lay down an acoustic but you want to lay down an acoustic that you're not capable of playing? Whether that's too sloppy or too good.

Mixerman (23:04.908)

You know, I mean, I've had guys that are amazing acoustic guitar players that you ask them to play raw or sloppy. They can't do it because they've spent their whole lives shedding that out of their repertoire. So like they sound like awkward when they try to do it. Cause they're just kind of like pretending to mimic it at that point. Cause it's just not in their hands anymore. But if I want to lay down an acoustic guitar part and I don't want to be limited by.

the player and what their capabilities happen to be. And I don't want to like necessarily audition five players till I get the exact right player. Well, I can have, we'll be able to have the generative AI make me the part. I can tell it everything I want. I can tell it the chords I wanted to fit with this chord progression. It's not like this thing where I'm not being creative or I'm not creating the thing. It's that I'd be using it as a tool.

The same way I would if I bring an acoustic guitar player in and I sit him next to me, I say, well, let me hear what you got. And I don't like what he's got because I like what it's in my head better. So then we start working out what's in my head. And we keep working it until I hear what I want as a producer. And then we lock it in. Okay, we got that verse. Now let's go to the chorus and we work it out until we get the chorus. So it does everything that I want it to do from the verse into the chorus.

And we're going to be able to direct AI in the exact same way. And we're going to be able to do it in a micro manner rather than this macro manner that we have available to us right at this moment.

Hmm. That's an interesting way to look at it, especially on an instrument by instrument basis. I mean, we are seeing this stuff creeping into plugins that will, you know, create EQ curves and, you know, mastering like AI mastering suggestions for you. And I find a lot of that stuff useful.

Brian Funk (25:12.628)

once in a while, the click that button where it learns it. And then you say, this is what it's thinking I should be doing. And then I go from there. Sometimes it's, yeah, that sounds great. Or sometimes it's like, okay, well, maybe not that much of a boost on that frequency or something. But, you know, it gives you, guess, like a suggestion to work with and get creative with, which is kind of fun. But I'm seeing it even inside, I use Ableton Live.

And they have MIDI generators now as of Live 12, which will suggest like rhythmic patterns. It'll suggest melodic shapes. it's pretty, I'll say dumb as far as know, smart AI goes, cause there's other stuff, you know, and there's even people that have made some max for live additions to that stuff that allow you to type in the chord progressions you want.

I'm thinking of like someone that goes by MIDI to the max as one where you type in the notes and you can even, it even does link in with chat GPT to give you more of what you're looking for, I guess. But at this point, it still feels very creative. It still feels like you're doing it and you're making the ultimate decision and you're deciding yes or no, or you can go in there and adjust the results as well.

It is creative.

I wonder what the, some of the software perspective is like you trying to make your software intuitive, easy to use so that people can make their music and the software is not in the way of their work. When, how far do you let that go? Where do you, do you put the button that says create, you know, EDM track for me and then I'll edit that. There must be a real question coming up now like,

Brian Funk (27:06.414)

how many of these features do we really wanna put in?

how they're gonna put them all in. you know, how people use or abuse a tool. You know, there's this terminology called AI slop and there's people that view AI slop, which is a real thing. don't deny that AI slop is all these Facebook pages that basically prompt a movie and it's got all sorts of errors in it.

What does that mean? AI slap.

Mixerman (27:41.278)

hands with six fingers or like a car that's like only got three wheels or whatever, know, it's crazy like glitches like that, that the, that the AI puts up, but in general, it's kind of a term for stuff that's generated, but not a lot of thought is put into it. It's more of a numbers game. Let's see what people react to. lets the AI create it. And then they put it up and they get the views, but they didn't like design it or consider what it is.

that they wanted to get across or all the things that we need to do when we create things. And a lot of people view generative AI, they hate it so much that anything that uses generative AI or any AI whatsoever is AI slop. It's discounted. You're a hack, you're talentless, you're lazy if you use it. And like I've been putting up these comics,

that I've been making on my, mixer man page and, on Facebook and they've just been going bonkers. these are, but these are like little satirical comics. I'm not just saying, Hey, make me a comic about this. Like I'm writing like thousand word, like prompts where I'm describing the entire scene. I know exactly.

what I want the speech bubbles to say. And a lot of times after I generate one, I like, I'll go into Photoshop and I'll change what the speech bubbles say just to make the punch line hit a little better the way I want it to hit. And then there's the caption that I put up on the post. And so like I spent a lot of time, probably too much time writing and creating these things. And so the AI, all it does for me is draw it, right?

And I get people just hammer me. Like if I put it on, hey, audio student especially, they hammer me for using AI. I should be ashamed of myself. I should be embarrassed. I'm embarrassing myself. say, I reply, hey, I gotta be embarrassed to be embarrassing myself. I'm not embarrassed, okay? So like, and it's just like,

Mixerman (30:05.794)

You you talked about the intelligent EQs and AI, you know, mastering and all this stuff, and they don't recognize that over the past, my entire career, we've been working our way incrementally to this place. and people are like the beneficiaries of all these technologies from electricity to the distorted guitar, to synthesizers, to drum machines, to all of these more automated tools.

that we now use in our production. And it's a lineage. And they don't understand that they are the beneficiaries of this technology that allows them to work at home. Because you couldn't really work at home in the early 90s. You could, but you were working with a four track recorder and you were exceptionally limited. But if you really, really wanted to make records, you had to get into a studio at that time. Now everybody can work at home.

and they are the beneficiaries of all of that technology. Yet, when it comes to AI, they want to draw hard line and say, no, that's too far, but you don't get to do that. You don't get to be the beneficiary of technology throughout all time and then say, no, we've got to stop it now because it doesn't work and it won't happen. And everybody who's reacting this way right now to AI is reacting in a similar way to the way people reacted to the internet.

which I witnessed and to cars and to electricity distribution, which I didn't witness, right? But I did witness the internet. And after a few years, maybe a little longer than a few years, all of these attitudes, all of the naysayers were using the internet just like everybody else. And it's only going to be a matter of time when this happens with generative AI and maybe it'll kill us.

before that happens. don't, don't, there's probably a 99 % chance that'll happen. I understand this, but I also understand that we're in an arms race. I'm getting way off now, but we're in an arms race now. And there's a reason why the United States will do nothing to curb the AI companies from training their models. Because if we don't do it, China will. And if, if you think it's better,

Mixerman (32:29.634)

that US companies are stealing, believe me, China will be stealing it more. And China is already stealing. They already don't care about your copyright. Okay, so what's going to prevent them from just spitting it back and selling it right back to you?

Yeah, there was a race for sure and no one wants to come in second place on that one. I don't think there is, there might not be a second place.

No, we can't afford to cut.

Mixerman (32:58.89)

Exactly. And quantum computing ties in all of that too. You know, we have to develop the quantum computing first. There's going to be big problems.

Hmm. Well, I can remember this stuff with the internet. You bought something online, you put your credit card in the computer or you went on a dating site. You're going to meet somebody you've talked to on the internet. And now that's like the primary way people get involved with each other. I couldn't imagine being a kid telling my parents that some stranger is going to pick me up in a car.

and take me somewhere. And now I think parents would rather that stranger come pick you up than have your friend who just got his license come get you.

Interesting,

You know, just the way that's changed and it's like we're happy to drive towards the horizon as long as you don't ever reach it. And now it's starting to feel like we're going to reach it and that's not OK. it is an interesting. Like question, like what what's the line? You know, why why why now? And I wonder if maybe that just sort of fades out as.

Brian Funk (34:16.909)

I'm sure on one hand it's just we get more comfortable with it. We see it more and more. You know, after a while you start hearing about people meeting people online and it's not weird anymore. And then the kids that grew up with it, they know no other way. So what do mean? That's not weird.

Yeah, exactly.

Mixerman (34:33.422)

there's a desensitization process. At first it's shocking, can't fathom it. And then the more you see it and this desensitization occurs positively and negatively. Grooming of people is like a desensitization process. Putting up the...

the process of learning a new technology and having it constantly be put in front of you over and over and over again, that's a desensitization process. And the further we get into that, the more acceptance we have. Okay, well this isn't bad. If you play poker and you can't fathom losing $10, well when you start losing $100 or $1,000, that's a desensitization process. Now you're very comfortable with losing that kind of money. So, you know, that's how it works.

Yeah, well, we're very adaptable to our strength and maybe also downfall. Well, it's kind of funny in this case with your comics, which are definitely amusing and they look great and they're tapping into a lot of common things we as producers and music makers run into. know, this mix sounds amazing, too bad the song is un-listenable is one of them.

You know, characters. Like, which is a great point that you, and this is something you talk about a lot in your book too, like the great song is, that's the most important thing. We don't care how it's, and you said it even earlier, we don't listen to sound, we listen to music.

The song is sound and music is sound and like if those are great then the sound is great they go together.

Brian Funk (36:24.302)

Right. But you're, it's not like you're using this AI to, like you're not starting a career in comic strip making. You know, you're, you're just putting out some memes, which are, um, things that, you know, we can all kind of relate to now, you know, we can all, we can all get these things. Um, even just like this is the one about

Totally.

Brian Funk (36:53.73)

going to heaven and there's no latency in heaven so he uses Bluetooth headphones to mix. It's just...

interesting the reaction is so strong against it and I'll tell you one thing where I see it in my own self where I get this strong negative reaction is a lot of times through emails especially for this podcast where for years I don't know what happens you get on an email list you have a podcast and then

PR people start emailing you and I get a lot of generic emails that you know it's a template and it's like, hello, insert name. We really love insert podcast. And then it'll tell me like, I should really check out this chef who creates all these dishes made out of mushrooms and vegetables exclusively. It'll be great fit for insert podcast, you know? But my way of weeding through those was always if I could tell if it was personal.

hey, Brian, know, the show's great. I love that episode you had with so and so, and you guys talked about this. It really reminded me of, so I've responded to that. I think most of us when we check an email, we're looking for which ones can I delete and which ones will I read. But now I'm getting these ones that are AI summaries of things I've done and AI kind of like.

Hello, Brian, you've got very introspective conversations. For example, the conversation you had with Mixerman, we discussed the intricacies and it's just, it's like an odor it has. I think it's the feeling of getting fooled that is really kind of annoying when I see that, I'm like, not another one of these again. then I'm like, well, I don't know if it's real.

Mixerman (38:52.396)

Yeah, because they're going to get better.

And they have been, I've been watching it happen just before my eyes. And those, that's probably where I get it the most myself personally. just, I think maybe it's the feeling of being tricked or something. I'm trying to understand my own feelings on it.

Yeah.

They are trying to trick you. mean, the person who's, but it's the person who's sending you the email that's trying to, to, to trick you into, I mean, trick, maybe that's not exactly the right word, but, you're, you're feeling that emotionally, but they're trying to get you to respond really. Right. And so you listed the ways that get you as a human being to respond.

Those are the same things that get me to respond. If you just tell me, Mixer Man, you're great, and you don't tell me anything of any detail, then you're full of shit. Like, this is too easy to set, right? So, but.

Mixerman (39:58.158)

It's the person that's sending the AI that's getting you to respond that either for malicious reasons or because they want you to mention their chef on your show, which makes absolutely no sense because they're obviously not doing any real research. They're just treating it purely as a numbers game. There's 10,000 podcasts. We'll send out 10,000 emails to all those podcasts and whichever ones fit will maybe respond. I don't know. I don't know if that's going to be very effective.

Mixerman (40:30.956)

I mean, I've been using AI, you know, chat GPT to help me with things for probably a year and a half now. And you can see it's getting better. And if I need to write an email, not a personal email, but if I need to write an email to a company or maybe to an insurance company or to whatever, have chat GPT write the email for me because it can do it in about 30 seconds.

It can include all the pertinent information. can read it and say, well, you need to add this. It'll add that. And I'm done in way less time. So, I mean, from a efficiency point of view, it's great. but if you're not involving yourself, if you're just letting it, that's AI slop. If you're just, that's an AI slop email, they're not involving themselves. They don't care. It's purely a numbers game. Just throw it out there, see what sticks, see who responds and

and capitalize on that. But if you use, use the AI and you involve yourself with it and you start to understand how it reacts to prompts and how, how, how to kind of direct it, then it's a tool and you're still driving, but you're using it as a tool and,

We're all gonna be able to use AI as a tool, but you gotta learn to use it as a tool and understand just because some people abuse it and use it for AI slap and use it as a numbers game doesn't mean that that's its full potential. That's just lazy people and that exists, but that's just one way to use it.

Hmm. Yeah, and some of those email exchanges, I might respond and be like, this, yeah, it sounds like a great guest. And then I'm now getting vetted. It's as if I reached out to them to get this person on my show. And then they're like, well, can you tell us about numbers or? I'm like, wait a minute. You emailed me.

Mixerman (42:36.983)

that exactly

Yeah, you know, I have I use it as well for certain things and the thing that really sold me on it on its usefulness was I was doing a workshop last February. I went to the Ableton headquarters in Pasadena and I was granted access to use their facility to do whatever I want basically. So I wanted to do something called

finish February, so like in February you finish something. So like you were saying, the biggest problem we have is finishing music. That was the goal of this workshop. So I decided to upload my book. I uploaded transcripts of certain episodes of my podcast where I'm talking about finishing songs. And then I asked it, what are some things I like to do to finish music? And then it's quoting me and it's giving me.

my own knowledge of it. So it was really helpful in just organizing my thoughts. And it was really nice to be able to just put the stuff that I created, train it on me really, I guess, and get that unique perspective as opposed to a more generalized question where I might be getting stuff that I didn't say or didn't understand or I never actually did myself anyway. This was all my own information curated.

Like that's a thing now like you can make your own chat GPT that you can put subscriptions for I haven't delved enough into it to know what how the numbers work, but you could charge subscriptions for and you can curate your chat GPT container with your knowledge and So that it's going to lean towards what you have to say before it starts just pulling things from everywhere else

Brian Funk (44:35.202)

Yeah, that's pretty interesting. I mean, for me, that was like having another version of myself sifting through my book, sifting through things I've said, reading blog posts, watching tutorials. It's easy to forget. Yeah, it is. And otherwise I would have been doing that myself. But instead I got all of that and then I was, okay, let me structure this now. Let me put this together in a sensible order. Let me decide what I want to do, what I don't want to do.

saved me a lot of time that way and probably gave me more useful information than I would have had if I would have done it myself anyway. So that was pretty cool. That was one of those moments where I said, whoa, like this is something pretty wild. I mean, I've fooled around with it. And I also teach high school English and I get essays and all kinds of stuff run through that.

Which is a whole other funny topic, I guess, but...

There's this whole thing where they're trying to catch people using it. It's like, wow, why are you trying to catch people using it? Teach them how to use it. mean, like, what are we gonna like pretend like it doesn't exist? Or are you gonna use tools that are wholly flawed to catch people using wholly flawed tools so that we bring in people that didn't actually use it to cheat? it's just, it's horrendous. I don't understand.

I agree.

Mixerman (46:02.562)

It took us like what 30 years to stop doing cursive in schools after the word processor. It's like, or maybe longer, 40 years.

Yeah. I mean, you want them to be able to have some basic skills of communication and stuff. it does make me say like, maybe if a computer can write this essay on the great Gatsby, that's been written a bazillion times by a bazillion other kids anyway, and only in school and academic situations, maybe we need to change what we're asking them to do.

Maybe that's not a useful expenditure of their time and maybe that's why they don't care about it and they're not interested.

Brian Funk (46:54.903)

It's some...

It seems to be the way, like tools come along and we do resist them. And of course, again, too, it seems like the people that embrace those tools are the ones that progress and get ahead of the curve and start paving the way for the future.

It depends on the technology. I like in the early aughts and in the daily adventures of Mixture Man, I talk about my disdain for this computer program that I named Alcehad. a lot of people read it as all's I had. I use Pro Tools because it's all's I had, right?

When Pro Tools started hitting the studio, I had no interest in it, not because I didn't understand that DAWs were the future. My first gold album, which was Bizarre Ride to the Far Side, I recorded in a Spectral Sonics DAW. So I didn't have this aversion to digital. But when I started working in analog for years and I had like 10 years of

Well, probably longer than that of working in analog under my belt. Like the deficiencies that these tools were offering as far as sonics were concerned. They didn't make my life easier because I liked the sound of tape and I liked the sound of analog still. And this was not really ready for prime time as far as I was concerned. Add into that, you know, and I'll see, ha.

Mixerman (48:42.414)

which is someone who uses Al-Sihad, would get paid like $300 a day on a session, on a big session. We're talking about half million dollar budget albums. But the recordist, and there was a period of time that I was operating mostly as a recordist, I was commanding up to $1,200 a day. And so just...

It made sense for me to reject that technology. We still use it in my sessions. I didn't say, I won't do a session that uses it. We used it, but it made sense for me to not jump onto that bandwagon too soon because I had more value as someone with a lot of experience with analog recording. Cause it was still a hybrid process and we still recorded the big session, still recorded to analog. They just use the DAW more for.

editing and processing the stuff and then went back to analog anyway. So you don't have to be an early adapter. It really depends on the technology. But I do think that people are going to get left behind in this technology. The question is the AI technology, but the question is how far behind and how difficult will it to catch up? I don't have the answer to that question, but I do agree with you that rejecting this technology at this point

does put you in danger of being left behind to a point where you may not be able to catch up the way you want to. It's a possibility.

Yeah, I guess this is, it's advancing a lot faster than DAWs did. It took a long time for them. A long time. I I didn't start using one until 2005 and they've come tremendous lengths since then. And it used to be like, I don't even really think about processing power anymore and things that were main concerns when you were working back then. Like, I don't know if my computer can handle another reverb.

Mixerman (50:38.86)

Yeah, exactly.

Brian Funk (50:52.526)

You don't even think about that anymore. But this is like real fast. I guess that makes it more scary.

Blah.

Mixerman (51:03.438)

It seemed to take forever because like I jumped in in 2007, but I jumped into in the box mixing in 2007 because budgets were starting to come down 2008 really budgets were starting to come down precipitously in LA. Where are you looking at?

Long Island, New York.

long. So they were starting to come down in LA and it was starting to get to the point where, okay, I no longer have this budget where if I, could allocate this for the studio and still have enough leftover for me. So it made more sense for me to keep my price the same and just mix from home that brought in all sorts of other things, you know, with the acoustics and getting a room that that's accurate. mean, it took me over a decade of struggling.

to try and figure out how to make, you know, rooms in your house work. And it wasn't really until the last house, which I was renting, I got that room really good. And then I built this room in the house that I bought and it's a big room and I use the golden triangle.

And then I've got cardioid monitors. for the, it took me what? Let's just say we got that together by 2023. It took me 15 years to really get myself in a space where I could trust the space and trust what I was hearing completely without having to like check and try and find the deficiencies in the room, try and find, you know,

Mixerman (52:52.524)

where, I'm blowing up the car speaker because I got too much, too much hundred Hertz. because I can't hear the hundred Hertz, you know, that sort of thing. So it was a long, long journey. took, you know, converters still were like, there were big differences between converters back then and now just about any interface. The converters are not an issue. They're just not even, it's not even anything to even think about. It's part of your monitoring chain and you don't have to think about it. So don't think about it.

there's just so many other bigger fish to fry than your converters, but it took so long for plugins to come to where they are. And, know, it's just this slow incremental progress. And for people that never worked in analog, like they didn't know anything other than this. They just see it improving from their baseline. from my baseline.

It took a long time of analog. It took a long time for it to get to a point where I'm like, yeah, I don't really need analog. I certainly don't need tape. I mean, if I'm recording, I definitely want to use analog, but for mixing, I don't need analog because my whole system of work is about applying distortion. It gives me more control because now I can apply distortion as layers on different things.

It doesn't have to be recorded that way. I'm not stuck with how it was recorded. People record much more passively. So it gives me a lot more leeway as a mixer to, to fuck it up. And, you know, it's a whole different process, but it took forever. It seems like, I don't think that's going to be the case with AI.

No, doesn't seem like it. Yeah, all that stuff, I mean, it's funny to think back to where we were. And like you said, even just worrying about like your interface and you're like, now it's like, whatever. Everything sounds good. When I first started, when I first moved up from four track cassette recorder, you know, and got a pair of ADAT machines, which was...

Brian Funk (55:07.182)

a lot of fun to have as like an 18, 19 year old, whatever we were. I've realized like, because I spent a little bit of time kind of obsessing like, oh wow, microphone placement and all this and how it gains stage. I was really worrying about it because I was realizing it makes a difference. But I also at one point just said, you know what? I could worry about this stuff and it'll take me forever to record my music or I can just

that.

Brian Funk (55:36.226)

Go at it, record these songs, not even worry about it. And even if I don't worry about it at all, it's gonna sound a hundred times better than my four track. And it really did. It was just night and day. And of course, if I would have applied some more knowledge, learned more, I would have gotten a lot further. But it kind of feels like that now where even if you have no clue what's going on, you come away with like a pretty decent.

That's true.

Brian Funk (56:04.462)

product in comparison to what you would need to know to get something decent out of some of that older equipment.

Yeah. I think the biggest thing people struggle with is their acoustic environment, you know, cause I mean, if I'm, I realized when I recorded, don't remember what drummer it was the first, probably Jr. I recorded John Robinson the first time and I was like, I had drum tones in like 10 minutes time and usually would take, you know, two, three hours sometimes.

with a band with just your average band drummer and like, and then I get these tones with JR in like two hours and like 10 minutes and I'm like, right. Well, when you have an amazing player in front of you and they have amazing balance on their instrument and amazing tone, like it's difficult to put the mics in the wrong spot. we're putting the mics up becomes and you need less mics too, right? So putting the mics up

really is and, and, and, and the moving them and like finding the exact right spot, the sweet spot that's damage control. Like if they're great, you could capture them with one mic on a wire recorder and that will translate through that will come through their greatness because of that performance, because performance is sound and yeah, on the wire recorder, it's all limited bandwidth, but it still comes through. So like,

Yeah.

Mixerman (57:42.358)

That's when I realized that like, so when I spend all this time worrying about my mic placement and my mic preamp pairing and all this, that's because I need to fix what's in front of them or do damage control. Fix is a strong word, but you know, I need to do more because I don't have what I need coming out towards

Okay.

And so, you know, when I was spending time coming up with complicated recording techniques, I was a dedicated recordist. That's all I was doing. That was my job. I was in charge of the production. I was in charge of the performance. was in charge of capturing it. And I had plenty of time on my hands and I had to capture it well. I had to capture it accurately and I needed to give them all the tools they needed to

have control later, right? So even if I had a great drummer that I could Mike with one Mike, I use lots of mics because I didn't want to put the producer in a position where they had no control over the drums, the drum balance. Anyway, I'm probably getting a little lost, but the thing is, you know, you. The engineering, if you have to do the producing and you're doing the songwriting and you're the artist.

The engineering is the least important thing. just capture it and get your room wherever you're recording such that you're capturing a somewhat neutral tone so that you're not getting just like this outrageous reverb or you're not in a closet where it's so dead that the moment you apply any kind of EQ into the lower mid range, you're gutting the sound completely. Like you need to have a reasonable acoustic space, but if you have that,

Mixerman (59:40.142)

There's really nothing, and you have a couple of decent microphones, there's really nothing preventing you from making great music.

Yeah, I can remember those feelings, especially the vocals. know, I'd sing into a mic and I got to do all kinds of crap to make it sound okay and listen. And then I'd record some friends and like certain people would get on the mic and I'd be like, what? Like it's like, it's like already produced. Just your voice is so good that it sounds like I did all this work to it and nothing. It's just.

how that sound comes out of you. Just like certain people, the way they hit the drum or the way they play the strings on the guitar, they're just, it's all in those, hands, the fingers, the voice.

Brian Funk (01:00:31.682)

It's very obvious when you hear it, you know. And that's some interesting advice, though, that, you know, just really worrying about the room. Do you have any thoughts on things like the average folk could do to get their room to sound decent enough where they don't have to worry about that kind of stuff as much?

specific cases of course, but.

I mean, you got people that, man, I go on the, I go on one of the acoustic forums on our groups on Facebook and then I'll read, you know, their whole thing.

what they wanna do, their problems, and then you see the picture of their room, and you just go, my God. And you start to see all these pictures and you go, you got no chance, man, in that room, I'm sorry. I am so sorry. And every now and then I'll say it and you just get like, I get pummeled for it. you're being negative. No, I'm not being negative, I'm sorry.

I'm being realistic. You have a seven foot ceiling. You have a hundred square feet, not even like all you're going to get our standing waves. Are you going to get a reflections? All that's going to get picked up by the mic like, or they'll have a closet. It's just completely covered in, in, in fabric or, or blankets and foam and whatever. And it's like, do you hear yourself in that closet? Does that sound good? Well, that's what the mic is picking up.

Mixerman (01:02:17.536)

And yeah, we can use a dynamic mic, but even a dynamic mic can't deal with that dynamic mic has better rejection qualities, right? It doesn't pick up nearly as much of the room as a, as a condenser does. they're also much more sensitive to where you are on the microphone. So, you know, coming up with mitigation, advice in the abstract is just impossible because you don't, I don't know what anybody is dealing.

And every situation is completely different. But the only advice I can give is if you could talk in your room and you listen and you aren't, you don't want it to be completely dead, but it's kind of neutral. Like the room like isn't really imparting a lot or the room is imparting good things either way. then

that's a good place to be. And if you're getting your advice from people online, that is not a good place to be because there is a lot of misinformation where it comes to this. So you got to go to reputable sources.

You know, lot of these acoustic places will put up information on their sites and if they do acoustic design, like you want to get your advice from a professional that understands it. But even then it's limited because if you hire them, they're going to come into your room and tell you all you need to do. And if they come into your bedroom where your bed is behind you, they're going to tell you, dude, like you need a real room.

What are you even talking to me for? could like, this isn't a room. This is like a little production area. So use headphones. And I mean, I tell people they should use the slate system. I don't use their rooms. They hate it when I say that. Because I

Brian Funk (01:04:26.606)

That's the kind of emulator.

Yeah, they have these emulation rooms, which are basically just like CrossFeed with coloration as if you're in a room. And it's like, man, I don't want to hear coloration. The CrossFeed makes sense because the CrossFeed helps it so that it's not completely isolated to left and right.

That's like, um, just, I'm not sure I understand that completely, but that's kind of like the way when I'm sitting in front of my speakers, even though there's a left and a right, they're interacting, but in headphones, they're not. So that's what we're talking about cross-feed.

That's why it's harder to tell phase issues in headphones sometimes.

Or sometimes it just sounds weird because I read a section of your book where you're talking about that where if you're, you you were talking about panning, I believe, and just.

Mixerman (01:05:17.582)

Yeah, sometimes if you pan something to left and there's nothing on the right, the headphone listener or the headphone mixer gets all weirded out by it, especially if it's their music.

Well I remember listening to The Beatles for the first time on headphones and being like, what? The drums and the voice are all on this one side and everything else is all over here. You don't notice it when you hear it on the radio or when you're listening in speakers.

I say when it's someone else's music, but he's yours. You're all of sudden. my God, I can't do that. I can't have that. You don't notice that everybody, every major record pans the guitars hard left and right. But now you're like, no, I'm a tow them in a little bit. It's like, listen, you only have, you can tow them in. The listener will never know. They have no idea. Fine. Whatever. But it matters for you as a mixer, because all you've done is you've taken, you have this much space.

And now you've gone and you've made it this much space. And so that makes mixing more difficult because if you can put things out further, then you have more room. It's all space. And it would be no different from like taking your top frequencies and your bottom frequencies and filtering them out and going like this. But no one would ever dream of doing that for anything other than an effect. Yet, like there's this fear of like panning things hard, whatever. The listener doesn't care.

They won't know that you pan something here. They probably will think it's pretty cool. I've never heard a punter complain about panning, but it will make your life a thousand times easier if you use the full width and the full height of your, of your mix palette, of your mix space.

Brian Funk (01:07:01.71)

Sorry to pull you off that idea of just using headphones if the room's not good.

Right. So the VSX are, I find like I just did a couple of monitor mixes in them and I'm like, wow, these mixes like they're on point. Like just like as far as frequency spectrum, like there's nothing weird going on. got my low end, right? Everything's like built up, right? I was like, wow, these are, these are actually, first when I heard them, I'm like, these are weird. I can't even wrap my head around these. Like, but then I realized like that's okay.

because like if you get it sounding good in them, it'll sound good in other places. So I think people were right to, to really like these, these headphones. I just don't agree with the room coloration. sounds weird to me. Like I'm like, I don't even know what to do with that. I wish Steven would just put out like a cross straight up crossfeed, which a lot of, which you can get anyway as an app. So I believe as a plugin, you can get like a crossfeed thing. So it sounds a little more like it's

interacting between the sides.

That's cool. Interesting. Yeah, you this might be a good place to get you to bring up something I had written down that I was interested in your concept of the five planes of space in mixing. one of them is what you mentioned panning. And I love the analogy using the book. You say like it's like having a room. But you put all the furniture like five feet away from the wall and now you have no room.

Brian Funk (01:08:38.568)

in there, whereas if you pan fully, now you've got all that extra space to place things in that room.

Yeah, exactly.

put your furniture against the wall.

Yeah. So there's the, the panning is the left and the right. Uh, and then the frequency is the top to the bottom. The low frequencies are going to appear on the bottom. The high frequencies are going to appear. It's a tweeter level and come very directionally towards your ears. And like, if you close your eyes and you're on a, in a proper monitoring environment with a suite in the sweet spot, you can, you will actually, um, picture, can picture those frequencies in your mind, just building up.

Then we have balance, which is our front to back. So something that's very forward is going to appear closer to us and something that's further back, lower level is going to appear further. But we enhance that with reflectivity because usually when things are further away from us, we hear reverberation or delay with them. So the reflectivity of those helps us

Mixerman (01:09:47.064)

to create the illusion of depth and space. then we have music goes across time, like it unfolds over time. So we have contrast. And contrast is dynamic. And we use less dynamic today than we used to. Like a classical song will have a very large dynamic range, but

If you ever listened to classical music in the car, like you'll be driving along and like, you're like, why do I not hear anything? And then the next thing you know, you're like, it tears your head off. So we don't want our music too dynamic in noisy environments, which we're commonly in. So we use loudness, which means we use less volume dynamic in our music these days. So contrast becomes really important because contrast

is how we, the illusion of a dynamic, if you have a sparse verse and a very dense chorus, and the verse is kind of warm frequency wise and the guitars come in very bright and gritty, those are both contrast planes. Because over the course of time, we get set up in the verse with this warm hug and then the chorus hits us and we're like, whoa, and we get a big payoff.

even though there's not a huge level differential at this point between the two. And so contrast is our time-based and reflectivity are our time-based planes of space.

I like that concept of contrast. I'm often telling people and reminding myself that everything's relative. Where if I want a loud section, it's only going to be loud if I have the quiet section before it. Exactly. It's like, and I ask these questions like, well, what's loud? You know, if I drop a glass on the floor, is that loud in the middle of the night?

Brian Funk (01:12:00.982)

In a quiet house, yes, it'll wake you up. In a concert, won't even hear it. Right. So you have to sometimes almost sacrifice certain other parts of your song so that the next part has what you wanted to have for that impact.

Absolutely. Like you could bring a snare fill up. You know, you're like, I want to really excitingly get the person into the chorus and you bring the snare fill up, which is a good move generally. But if you bring it too far up, now you've just shrunk the size of your chorus because that snare you've dwarfed it. And so you got to be really conscious about what happens when, because what happens now is affected by what happened before. That's the relativity.

And that's the contrast.

It was a big realization for me because in my early days I was like, I want my guitars to be big and fat, I the bass to be big and fat and the drums are gonna be big and heavy. And then they're all just small. They're all just normal, you know? But once I started making little sacrifices, well, I'll cut a little bit of that low end in the guitar so the bass has the room and now the guitars ironically sound thicker now because the bass is supporting them.

Even though if you soloed him, you'd be like, kind of thin there, but it's just that interaction and the, everything it seems like is contrast. And I think that's how our senses work. I mean, I could be staring out into space and not really notice anything until something moves. What was that? Or if I'm sitting in a room, the air conditioner might be humming along and I don't notice it until it turns off. Where'd that go?

Brian Funk (01:13:47.692)

I didn't even realize it was happening. All of our senses kind of operate like that. They pick up on change and we're really playing around with that in music.

Yeah. And we like change. We don't like change in our lives, but we like change when it happens in music and everything else. and, you know, it's really just more important than ever to get your contrast right and to use that. So your most important tool in mixing now, because everything's loud, like everything's really loud. Like there's not that much big, that's not much.

that much volume difference between your chorus and your verse, so you need to generate that dynamic in other ways.

Right. I've, I'm wondering how much you do this because this is kind of a new discovery in some of my work, but playing around with panning and changing it throughout the song. I'm working on a EP with my band. We're three piece rock band. And I just kind of on a whim did this like

You can't do this, you're not allowed to do this. But I took the drums and I just made them completely mono on the verses. And then as the chorus comes in, I just automate them to be full stereo. And I was just blown away by like, making the drums mono, first of all, all these like little details that are in the verses that are generally quieter. Suddenly like there they are, they're over here, the drums aren't in the way. And then when the chorus comes in, it all blossoms.

Brian Funk (01:15:32.406)

And I kind of thought the guys in the band would be like, what the hell just happened? Like the drums, no one noticed, no one picked up on it, but they felt it. I was very surprised with how much, especially in panning, how much I could get away with. Because sometimes you hear panning effects and it's like really obvious, something just swirling around your head. But if you do it in these like transitional moments,

Like I said, I would have never done this except I was just kind of feeling almost like mischievous as Nixon. Let's just say I made a copy of the session in case I ruined it. And I was really surprised at how effective it was.

Yeah, that's like, that was you using contrast to its maximum right there because your switch going and panning is a very effective place for contrast. You're going mono to stereo. It goes, you're listening to it, you're here. You're not even noticing like the air conditioner that's on with the hum, right? And then it goes, and you're like, whoa, what just happened? This is great. I love this. That's a dynamic. So like,

Sometimes I'll get a production, they'll have the guitars just blaring the whole way down, get rid of the right one on the verse, and then bring it back in on the chords. Now we're going from asymmetry to symmetry, very effective use of contrast. So, you you've got to derive it wherever you can. And that's a very effective way to do it, going from the mono drums to the stereo drums.

It was a lot of fun and I kind of like laughed to myself. I'm can't believe I'm getting away with this, you know? But it was just a nice new dimension of expression for the song that, you know, we want the song to kind of explode at the chorus, you know, we're building guitar feedback and like, know, closed high-hats open up.

Mixerman (01:17:41.224)

noticed. That's all they noticed was that. They didn't notice what you did. They just noticed, whoa, that's really exciting.

Yeah, was one of those moves where I was expecting to get a little pushback, like, I don't know about that. But it's, I guess also subtle enough. You're not really thinking about that. Like you said, the panning is, you notice it when you're making the decision to move that knob, but when you listen to music a lot of times, it's probably,

on the list of things you notice, it's probably pretty far down the list. If you think about what the average listener hears, they hear the vocals first and then they hear music.

Most of the time people are in like an acoustically mono space. They're not like sitting there in front of the speaker. They're wandering around or they're using a Bluetooth where the speakers are this close. Their phone. So really it's only the headphones and they're just such a skewed way of listening that like you don't want to be making your decisions based on headphones. They're designed to allow someone to listen in solitude without others hearing it.

Right

Brian Funk (01:18:44.184)

Yeah.

Mixerman (01:19:00.92)

they are not designed as a wholly accurate way of listening to music. So the headphone listener, I'm not going to pay them much mind and worry about their feelings about panning because they're using a skewed system that makes the panning more obvious. I'm going to stick to how it sounds in the air.

Yeah, that's like the other instrument almost, the air, the room where you're listening. I think that's especially true when you're recording too. It's the room you're in, the air. The air especially is something I've been interested in because when you have tape, right, you got the hiss, it's almost got an environment through that noise.

But when you're in digital, when you're in the computer, it's negative infinity decibels. This is so unnatural. So I'll often allow a little more noise into my recordings. almost too, you know, you're capturing a moment. So if somebody gets in the recording a little bit in the background, it's like, cool. Like now you're just part of it. You're part of the world of this song.

People freak out about a little noise and I'm like, you have no idea. Like you don't even understand how much is on all these records that you love. You don't even know it, but it's there.

Yeah, I don't really worry about it anymore. I used to. But there have been a few recordings I've done in my life that the things that got in on accident like kind of make it for me. have a song I did like almost 20 years ago, I guess. I was recording a classical guitar part and it's in the middle of like a rock song, but it got quiet and it's just classical guitar.

Mixerman (01:20:52.878)

Absolutely.

Brian Funk (01:21:06.094)

And my cat just decided he wanted to hang out at that moment and like was going through my legs and his little collars jingling. it's loud. You know, I'm using a condenser to record a classical, so you hear it. And I almost redid it. But I was like, you know what? going to let Theo get in on this track.

And still to this day, like when I hear that, I hear him walk through my legs and I remember where I was, what I was doing when I recorded that. And it's like half the fun of listening to the song for me. know, just the end. It's like that in a lot of old when I think like old Beatles recordings, there's always someone shouting in the background or there's some kind of noise that happens that's not really supposed to be there, but adds to the feeling that.

People were here doing this. This is a moment in time that happened. Sonic photograph.

It's like, well, we call them happy accidents. It's randomness. I'm a big proponent of randomness. purposely give myself opportunities for random things to happen. When I used to, when I was mixing on a console, I would leave, I wouldn't have the assistant reset it and I wouldn't have them.

turn off all the EQs, I'd say leave it exactly as it is. I'd start plugging in the next song. You know, I remember on an Ian Moore song, I was mixing. I went from one with the full drum kit to one with just like a loop. And somehow the loop ended up on a channel that was completely filtered. And I didn't even realize it. Like I heard the filtered drum.

Mixerman (01:23:01.518)

and I'm bringing up the try. I'm like, that's, that's fucking great, man. He's, that was a good idea to filter that, that drum, that drum loop. And then he comes in he's like, wow, that's great that you filtered that drum loop. I'm like, I filtered the drum loop and I look and I'm like, shit, I'm filtering the drum loop. But I would have never like thought of that. Like that was just a random occurrence. So after that happened, I'm like, I just always, I'm going to leave.

opportunities for random shit to happen because if it's if it's bad or fucked up, it's as easy to undo as undo it, But but if it's great, like you wouldn't have come up with that. These are good things. These are what make things feel that's part of the art of it. Really.

Yeah, leave the door open for that stuff, right? Sure. Yeah, I've had that. I miss that about having a mixer, having a console. When I had my ADATs, I had my 24-track Tascam mixer. And yeah, I never zeroed that thing out. I see what would happen and half the time it was probably bad.

Every once in while something fun would happen where the mix would be totally different. Like, wow, I really liked the way that sounds when the toms are that loud or something funny happens that you don't quite get that in the computer sometimes because you're so deliberate. But yeah, no, just invite the chaos. I think that might be some of the antidote to maybe some of this AI stuff, some of this

generative stuff is to allow the world to happen, allow the chaos, the humanity in as much as possible.

Mixerman (01:24:55.066)

I mean working with AI is kind of bringing randomness in because you you tell it you want to do this and then generates it and it's like, whoa, how did it add that? Like what is that? But that works, that's good, that's great, I like that. Like I don't want to get rid of that now, right? That's the same process of bringing randomness in to me. So that's why I find it such an effective and interesting tool.

Hmm. Yeah, I mean, anything with some imagination can become a creative tool. So I don't think there's any reason to worry too much. I think we're just probably in reflecting now, the thing that bothers me is the fake out, feeling like I got fooled or something like that.

in like personal communication, like the breakdown of personal communication is might be where I'm feeling the nag of it, but.

It doesn't come out without its faults.

and what does, what in the world does.

Mixerman (01:26:10.754)

And doesn't mean that it's not, it could be a useful tool. John Krivitz said this to me the other day, he runs Hey Audio Studio. He's like, just because AI is a useful tool doesn't mean it's not inherently an evil one. And that may be true too. I mean, it has a point with that. But, you know, there's an inevitability that we have to face and

you and I or anybody could say, I'm not going to use that. That's not going to stop it because for every one of us that's not going to use it, there's two or three that will. So.

Right.

Brian Funk (01:26:52.472)

Yeah, and within this like unknown landscape, there's a lot of room for innovation and new stuff.

Yeah, we have no idea where it's gonna go. Really.

Yeah. I could almost envision a world where some of this, the problems with it are the features in a way, you know, like you mentioned like the six fingered hand or there's, you you see like AI band and like the guitar frets don't look right. And some of these weird misinterpretations could almost be the thing we want, the thing we enjoy about it.

We are. love distortions. love distortion. We love distortion. Like Picasso never made anybody that was accurate or anatomically accurate. But we love him for it, right? But an AI does it. that's crap. I even made a comic about it where they're looking at a Picasso. I see it.

distortion itself.

Brian Funk (01:27:36.771)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:27:54.476)

Picasso. Yeah, I slept.

And one calls it AI slop, the other says divine. And it's like, and then everybody thought, well, you're comparing AI to Picasso. No, I'm saying that you love the distortions that Picasso puts in it, but the moment a machine does it is pure crap. How does that work? Where I don't understand that.

I'm looking at this on Instagram right now and you gotta comment, why are all the paintings in the gallery the same? Intriguing.

Right, so they focus on, you know, this thing that really isn't have much to do with the point of it. That's like, that's actually kind of the more artistic thing about

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:28:37.96)

It is actually kind of funny that the AI decided to put the same painting three times in this gallery.

Exactly. then so I looked at it and I go, well, do I want to fix that? I had the opportunity to fix it. I'm like, no, that makes it funny.

Yeah, you might not think to do that, but you can see the humor in it.

Yeah, exactly.

Right. Yeah, that's a fun way to, to exploit it almost, you know, to use its own shortcomings. I mean, that's a lot of what we do even now. I mean, I'm, I'm running stuff, I because set tape machine right here to make things sound a little more, you know, gritty and saturated and wrong. And, back in the day when I had the four track, I was fighting against that.

Brian Funk (01:29:27.778)

But now it's like, I'm going to pull a little bit of that back. You can imagine like maybe in a couple of years as AI improves, we'll be like, I kind of want those like weird hands AI used to make and you know, some of those funny things that it used to do. Like a retro feeling to it.

I need that.

Mixerman (01:29:43.469)

Exactly.

And the thing is you can't like the tape plugins, they don't actually generate that sound like, like, you know what it sounds like you've used it, you go and you use the plugin, you're like, that's not like, I don't know what it is, but that's not what the tape did for me. And then you go on the tape, you're like, there's that fucked up sound. But people who've never used tape are using these plugins and a lot of them, apparently. And it's like,

But that's not what tape did. A lot of times they over exaggerate the saturation, But the transient response and like I use tape for fidelity throughout my career. Most people that I knew tried to use tape for fidelity.

not like, oh, who are the two? Their names are a scary meeting. Like some producers did where they constantly abused it and their input to it and they were using electronics of the machine and they were using how the tape react as part of the sound that they wanted to create, which was a creative decision.

I wasn't using tape in general. Sometimes it would, but it would be an effect then I wasn't using tape in general in that manner. And so like, if you really want the sound of tape and you want that, you know, that hiss the way it is and everything to sound, then you should use tape.

Brian Funk (01:31:25.294)

Yeah, I do enjoy a lot of those plugins. I think they're fun for coloration and character. But to your point, I guess, you know, when I run it through this cassette machine, that's what I get. I have a VCR over here too for the same reason. I don't have control over it. And if I got another VCR, it would sound different. but it's just how it sounds. Whereas when I get into the tape,

is that

Brian Funk (01:31:54.542)

Sometimes I have too much control. just like, don't know where to draw the line. And sometimes I find myself again in that sort of creative...

inability to make decisions. Whereas if I just run it into my tape machine, like I said here, like that's what I got. Onward.

I would buy analog gear like a compressor or like an Ampeg, not Ampeg, an Ampex like tape electronics or whatever to use as a mic preamp or whatever. And I had some compressors that were so fucked up. Like you couldn't even imagine what to use it for. And I'm like, I'm keeping it in my rack until I find the thing that this is perfect for.

And I would just wait sometimes to be in there for years and then I'd like use it and be like, that's it. This is great. I'd never get this sound from anything else. And then I'd sell it. So, you know.

I got a few cheap microphones for that purpose. They sound terrible, but sometimes in the context of a mix, they just live in their own little world and you just don't have to do anything.

Mixerman (01:32:58.368)

Exactly.

Mixerman (01:33:09.134)

pull that tone on your own. Like it just has it.

Yeah, and I think you're also just, you accept it. Well, that's what it is. Whereas if I'm trying to emulate that tone, I'll spend hours trying to get it right. I turned a telephone handset into a microphone, which is, you know, a real simple soldering job. I don't solder anything, so anyone could do it. And the sound of that phone is just great.

Exactly.

Brian Funk (01:33:42.484)

It sounds like you're having a conversation with someone like in the 90s.

The Village Studios had one of those that we would use every now and then.

And I often do that effect on things, vocals especially, but there's nothing quite like the real thing. And also you just say, that's the real thing. So I don't have to do anything to it from here. That's what I'm going for. And that's what it is. End of story, move on.

Yeah. Well, that's, know, vibe versus perfection right there. And, know, when you worked all analog, you really had to work in vibe because you didn't have perfection. When you have perfection, then you have to really, work hard to avoid perfection because it's so alluring. But if you allow for vibe and randomness, which is kind of in the same area, you know,

then the pursuit doesn't become perfection anymore. And when you aren't pursuing perfection anymore, that's the best place to be in when you're making music, because the perfection isn't in how you do everything. The perfection is in how it comes to you. And if you aren't trying to make it perfect, then it will become perfect. So you get all Zen on you. I mean, that's the truth of them.

Brian Funk (01:35:06.51)

That makes sense, you got your yin yang icon here on Instagram. Because you're right, it's... For me, my way lately has been working like at top speed. Try to move through things as fast as possible so that I don't have a time to get caught up on the perfection aspect of it. To just go for it, it feels good, cool, move on.

Limiting your time is like one of the most effective ways to do it because if you just force yourself to work really fast like I tell people in my mixing book, Zen in the art of mixing, mix fast. Don't think, do. Mix, make your decision, move forward. It's circular in nature, still you're gonna come back, you're gonna hit it again. But don't try and search for perfection, try and search for speed. Because if you limit your time and you work fast,

then you'll get a better product. In general, you'll become less oversaturated, less hypersensitive, and you're not like, you're reacting to what you do rather than assuming you can pre-plan everything and make it perfect.

Hmm. Yeah. And I think I got a lot of that through like demo-itis where you kind of make something quick and it's flawed. It's got problems. But like when you listen to it, it's like, it's cool. You know, so now I'm going to do it the right way. And then you really try to perfect everything and they're like, well, where's the feeling? Like it doesn't, it sounds better, but it doesn't feel better. It's contrived.

Yeah.

Mixerman (01:36:41.742)

Exactly.

Mixerman (01:36:46.488)

No. You're trying to match the feeling too. You're to match the feeling, but you're trying to match the feeling by taking away all the things that give it the feeling. So it's like you're just working against yourself.

Right.

Brian Funk (01:37:01.57)

Yeah, that's funny. A lot of weird paradox going on there.

Yeah.

It is, and like when you're doing it too, like I think a lot of, like how I do it and how a lot of people listening probably do it, you're doing all the jobs at once. So you're trying to be creative and artistic, but you're also trying to be critical and you're trying to manage your time you're producing, your engineering, your performing, and they're very, some of those mindsets are very much at odds with each other.

And I feel the most recording vocals because you need to be in it, you need to feel it. But then I'm also being critical. Am I in key? Am I in time? Am I... And it's like two different people in my brain.

Yeah, that's why that's why it's so difficult to produce yourself. I mean, it always will be. And that's why at some point, most people have to produce themselves. There's nothing wrong with it. But it's not really producing because, you know, if I was to produce you, it's still your music. It's still your song. It's still you. It's still you performing. It's still all that stuff. It just becomes

Mixerman (01:38:15.852)

a matter of efficiency and me coming in and saying, listen, Brian, these are the things that I think we want to accentuate with you. And these are the things that I think we want to kind of pull back and, and then make a plan towards that. But that's very difficult to evaluate on yourself. Right. So, you know, a sounding board is really important when you have bandmates, at least they, you offer

a sounding board for each other. But when you're just in a room by yourself, you know, it's very difficult to get out of that left, right brain where you're trying to use both at the same time, which doesn't really work. You can only kind of use the left brain, evaluate the technical and then like get the hell out of it and go on your right brain and create.

Right. Yeah, playing in the band over the last few years has been very helpful just to have somebody to say like, ah, take those effects off your voice. Let's hear it without it. You know, let's see what happens if this happens. And I mean, probably 50 % of the time they say that to me, I'm in my head thinking like, I don't know if that's going to work, but you know, I'm being democratic and you you want to.

The goal here is to continue playing music together, not to get my way on my guitar part, say. So if I have to lose the vote on a guitar, say, fine, least we're all still playing music together. Hearing that stuff and then trying things that you would probably not do yourself because you, for whatever reason, don't think it's a good idea. And then hearing it work is so eye-opening. It's like, wow, like.

I would have never done that because of whatever reason, but that's very effective.

Mixerman (01:40:14.048)

And it's important to get people that can challenge you and challenge what your view of, really challenge, challenge your, what's the word I'm looking for? You're right. guess, I'm going to put the reverb because I always put the reverb on my vocal, but is that really the best treatment for this track? And, know, I guess it'd be good for people to try and develop that critical side.

This goes back to the randomness again. You know, when I'm trying doing discovery, I'll solo things together at different spots. And that tells gives me a lot of information because it's random and I see how things work together and then I might come up with a great drop or whatever. It's important to challenge yourself. Well, am I just doing this because I always do this or am I doing this because it's right for the song? What's right for this song?

how do I get myself out of my comfort zone on this? At least to hear it, because if you hear it, I assume in this case, you liked it without the reverb. But if you had challenged yourself the same way, you may have come to the same conclusion. So it's important to really push yourself beyond your comfort zone and just try things and see where it lands.

Yeah, yeah, vocally for me, I'm probably trying to hide my own insecurities about my voice behind effects. And then to have them say, no, strip it back, that's cool in this context.

You know, reverb is really a horrible hiding tool. Everybody uses it for that. I find anytime. Anytime I put reverb on something that's particularly awful, it just becomes more awful because all I'm doing is elongating the amount of time I have to hear it. So like,

Brian Funk (01:42:00.738)

put a lot more reverb on it.

Mixerman (01:42:17.932)

Where was I going with that? I'm sorry. So you were talking about, yeah. So reverb, like I don't view reverb as a fix it tool or it can be used as an airbrush and it can be an effective airbrush for some things, but not so much for featured things. And, but I view reverb and the use of that space, reflective space, purely in terms of intimacy. Do I want

the song to appear intimate or do I want it to appear like distant, like a stadium, like there's a separation between me and my audience. Do I want them to feel like they're sitting right next to me or do I want to feel that distance? And the song kind of dictates that for me. And I have a feeling that having heard this song that your bandmates who suggested this wanted to feel more intimacy with you as the performer on the song and

It doesn't matter the voice or the flaws of the voice because those exist either way. And you're not really hiding it with the reverb. You're just kind of accentuating or at least leaving it the same. It doesn't hide it. So really it just becomes a matter of, does it feel better with you close or does it feel better with you distant?

Hmm. Yeah. And I think the comment was, feels like we're in your mouth now or something like that. You know, like we're in your throat. Like we can feel it. And yeah, we would go for like visceral garage rock energy, know, not anything polished ever, which is, which led us to actually like recording without a click and just

playing, we're like, well, that's what we do. We just play. So why are we going to now suddenly like try to be all perfect? Like our whole shtick is that we're not perfect. We're sloppy.

Mixerman (01:44:16.566)

Yeah, so why fix that?

Because it's funny too, because as soon as we record to the click, like now my vocals really have to be on point. I mean, I gotta be in tune all the way through and on time. Whereas when we're just playing, I got so much more play with even rhythmically and with pitch and my bad voice doesn't sound so bad.

The moment I tune one note all of a sudden I had to three notes this way and three notes this way and then it just It's all downhill from there. It's like, my god, we're tuning the whole thing. So like I really As a mixer I don't tune too much. I mean if there's a real clunker It's like pulling me out of the song every time it comes and I'll fix that but I Won't necessarily pull it perfect

just make it so it's palatable, you know? But that's the thing, you fix, start making things more perfect and you gotta make other things more perfect. It's this very slippery slope.

Yeah. Well, it's been the challenge of mixing acoustic and electronic or digital instruments together for me is, you know, this, when I play C3 on my, you know, digital synth in the DAW, that tuner is on C and it's, you know, that green dot is right in the middle. When I play the guitar string, it's like, it's, you know, kind of waivers a bit. Sure. So when you have stuff that's so in tune,

Brian Funk (01:45:54.324)

anything that's not with it is weird. But when everything's a little weird, then it's like, okay, like our in tune is like a neighborhood now instead of like one specific point in space.

Analog Slop. It's your friend.

Yeah. Actually this synth here, the Prophet 6 has a knob called slop. And it just detunes the oscillators and the timing of the envelopes and the filters and stuff. And it's great. I mean, there's a point where it's, you know, off where you turn it too far, but you know, there's a nice spot there where it feels good. It's not the same thing every single time.

it price.

That's the problem with samples, right? It's the same every time. And that's why now we have sample libraries with all these detailed articulations and, and like, and you like actually have to program it meticulously between the articulations and stuff. I can make a horn section sound like a real horn section within the context of a production, but it's really time consuming. if it's just straight samples, it's like, you know,

Mixerman (01:47:10.67)

Like that doesn't work. That's just it.

Yeah, it's funny how we have to navigate that stuff and be aware of what's actually happening. You like if you hit the snare drum harder, it's a little brighter and it's usually a tiny bit higher in pitch. And now we're trying to program that all in.

Yeah, exactly. Now you got to program it all in. Like, oh, I want it to feel human. Okay. Well, so we're going to spend hours to try and make it human, meticulously programming every variation, random variation that happens naturally just by someone hitting stick on a snare drum head.

human.

Brian Funk (01:47:56.782)

Right. That's when I start going down those rabbit holes, that's when like the acoustic guitar becomes the most amazing instrument in the world. like, wow, you don't plug it in. You don't charge it. It doesn't need a battery. You just play it and it just works. It's like what we want everything to do now. There's no cables. There's acoustic drum set. You just hit it.

Oh to practice a lot of years to get to that point.

Of course, right, but it feels almost like that's what we're trying to get again. We're trying to get ourselves back to where we started.

Yeah, but without human involvement in any way.

Yeah, the shortcut. Can I ask you a little bit, because we spoke about this very briefly right before we hit record, the story of how you kind of got your name out there back with the daily adventures of Mixerman, because this is a fun also. I think it ties in nicely to what we're talking about, where the internet was this new place and it's weird to be on there.

Brian Funk (01:49:08.174)

You have this kind of early story of this kind of internet celebrity thing happening that I think maybe there's a nice way to kind of round out our conversation after talking so much about new technologies and how this worked out for you.

So in 99, I was recording Ben Harper's Burn to Shine and my assistant, Dan, was like talking about Usenet. And he tells me about Usenet. I'm like, what? There's a place where people go on the internet and talk about audio and recording? Cool. So I go on there as myself and I gave an admittedly inaccurate answer to someone about 1176 and quality of the compressor. Someone handed my ass and said, it's a leveling amplifier.

asshole. and I was like, no, no, no, no, no, I am not doing this under my name because like, I am going to get into fucking vicious fights with people on this fucking thing. So, and there was no moderation on use that there's no, there's, if it's on there, it's on there forever. Amen. So I'm like, no, I'm going to go, I'm going to

Mixerman (01:50:22.676)

So I come up with Mixer Man and I go on as Mixer Man. for a couple of years I'm on Usenet and then, and I kind of make a name for myself. I just tell people, know, listen, I'm in LA, I've done some known records. So I know what I'm talking about. So forget about my anonymity. And I just let my, my, you know, my advice do the talking. And so

company came to me and said, hey, we want you to do this on the internet. We want you to moderate this forum. All right, I'll moderate a forum. That's cool. So a year of this and there's just crickets and it's like, there's just nobody there. And people are like, now they were suspicious of the internet. Use net was the real deal. The internet's bullshit. That's just people trying to make money. And so in 2002,

I had a family member that was going through a health issue and I needed to take a few months off. And I got this idea to write this story about me as Mixerman in the studio with an infamous producer in a bidding war band. And I would play it off that the entire thing was happening live in real time. And I was just coming at the end of the day and posting up these blog posts.

And so I wrote the one, the first one, I put it up and Fletcher who was, who owned a company called mercenary audio at the time. And he was running a form, one of the forums there. He started putting it on at the time it was called gear sluts. Now it's gear space and a couple of other audio forums. George Masberg had one Craig Ann and, and so he puts up with it. I'm within like.

I don't know, by the end of the, after five entries, like I would, was getting, you know, 200 people a day coming to the site in the first week. I was refreshing and getting like five views. Every time I refreshed, refresh five more views, refresh five more views. I'm like, Whoa, okay. After four weeks, there was 25,000 people coming in to read this thing. And I had, and it was, it's totally a satire. I'm totally like,

Mixerman (01:52:44.012)

I mean, technically I'm trolling everyone with this, this, this idea that I'm on this session, but basically I wrapped up every bad thing or every, crazy fucked up thing that happened on every session in my career to that point and put it all in one story. And, you know, I took all of the, the, the characters and I gave them composite aspects of different, different people. Like the drummer was based on three different drummers.

The producer was based on three different producers and just little tiny personality things just to, you know, bring them alive in the story. And so by the end of the story, like I was going, well, even at the beginning, I was going onto these websites and I'm like reading this reaction to this story and people are just handing me my ass saying, I'm an atrocious person for posting these things and I've like,

You know, I should never work in this in this industry again And I mean they had a point if I was actually writing about a real session that actually but I was taking the piss and the further along I got in it the more Crazy things would get and the more I was just trying to shake people off Which is what good satire does you bring them in you suck them in and then you start to try and shake them off? As you get further along the end and they're like, I just I was had

Right. And so I didn't give them the, I was had part because I couldn't shake so many people off. Like usually you can shake off a good 90%. I couldn't shake off people. So for years, I wouldn't even admit that it was a satire. Like I'm only like now kind of admitting it because we're 22 years out from it. But, uh, by the end, I had 150,000 people reading this day. Um,

Everybody in the, in the, in the industry knew about it. I was getting emails from people that were on tour with Bruce with, with all these big bands are like, dude, I don't know if you've read this, but you got to read this or, everybody is reading the whole crew is reading this. Even Bruce is reading it. And like A and R people were telling, talking to me about it and saying, if I ever find this mixer man guy,

Mixerman (01:55:12.302)

He's never going to work at this town again. It's like that. And it was just the craziest thing. And it was viral and 150,000, you know, today that's nothing, but then, and in a contained niche, like container, like recording and mixing where people were, didn't have home studios to speak. Like that was an enormous amount of impressions in, the industry. And now here I was, I had.

I had gold records to my name, well beloved records from Ben Harper and the Farsight and the brand new Heavies. I was way more famous as Mixerman, not that I was famous as Eric Severin, but I was now famous as Mixerman, far beyond what my discography, which was modest compared to others, of course, I was still early in my career.

I was famous as this guy, Mixerman and infamous too. it was just, it was a crazy time. And so then I just kept going with the Mixerman thing, kept going with the forum and then started writing more serious books, less satirical, more, more about, you the inside of, of mixing and producing and, but keep it entertaining. And I keep my wit.

throughout and my dry sense of humor throughout them and they aren't meant as entertainment, but they are entertaining. And so that's pretty much the beginning and then the story of how Mixerman came about.

It sounds like you rode that line of satire really well where There's enough truth in it that It almost truth. You almost missed the point that it's satire

Mixerman (01:57:12.366)

So if anybody wants to hear it, you can hear it for free now. put it on, I took the audio book, which I made in 2012, which is like, based on fire sign theater. I don't know if you're familiar with them, but they kind of did. There were 60s comedy troupe that made plays based on 1940s radio where you'd have the guys with all the, the Foley things and the, and the sound effects and the, and the, the, the Oregon and they'd have an Oregon player in there and shit. And so

Basically, I did that and I had all my friends, Ken Scott, producers and engineers, very famous Ken Scott did The Beatles, Ed Churney, Ron St. Germain, some of the biggest names in the business hall came and Dave Ponsado and read the character lines for me, performed the characters. And so I made this dramatization.

that anybody can listen to, just go to Apple podcasts and search the daily adventures of Mixerman or Spotify, any of them, and you'll find it and you can listen to it. And, you know, now you know it's not real. I'm not sure that matters at this point. It's so, so old. I don't think that will, will. I mean, that was really the hook of it back then, but now you can enjoy it kind of as a historical perspective, I suppose of, of

some of the things that we went through with the technology at the time. And you'll find that the crazy personality shit has not changed at all. Like that's all the same, but it's just a different way of recording, but dealing with the same shit when it comes to the people and to crew trying to create in a committee environment.

Yeah, that's really fun and I guess, know, some things you are, the truth is stranger than the fiction.

Mixerman (01:59:12.302)

It was so fucked up it had to be true.

Yeah, you can never write it.

I mean, was time I didn't dare tell people that it wasn't true even a years after like years after I told this drummer was just enamored with the story and he's like, you got to tell me who the band was. I'm like, there was no band.

I mean, you, you, might as well have told him I killed his mother or his mother died. Cause that guy was like silent for like half an hour, just sitting there just like, my God, my God, this wasn't true. He was so invested in it being true. He could not even process it being not being a satire.

He'd probably seen a lot of that in his own life, in his own experience as well.

Mixerman (02:00:01.912)

Yeah, I'm sure. mean, everything's based on that. That's the thing that people liked about it. It was like, my God, this is my life. my God. I've seen all of this. my God. This is, this happens. This is real. Cause for them it was real. Like they re they, they identified with it. They identified with it. I've met this person so many times like that, you know, I know this person, this archetype, like I have the picture of that person. So like,

That makes it so it connects, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. I think I know that guy. I know who you're talking about. That's funny. Yeah. It's, it's cool. And it's an interesting time for that to all happen, I guess too, or like you said, like just things blowing up on the internet. you.

Yeah.

Mixerman (02:00:50.968)

growing up on the internet, change in technology and the industry, all of that.

Yeah, a lot of interesting stuff actually happening in that time too, guess even just how people were listening to music and...

Napster was around now, so now there was theft. Yeah, it was a very interesting time.

Yeah. And it still is, right? We're heading into more and more interesting times.

We are, for sure.

Brian Funk (02:01:24.93)

Yeah, I'll definitely put a link to that in the show notes as well as your new book, Mix of Man's Ultimate Guide. Yeah, looks awesome.

Kind of wrapping up.

Mixerman (02:01:37.762)

There it is. this is the book. It's a big boy, 600 pages long. You know, we touched on a lot of subjects that we talk about, that I talk about in this book.

but there's so much more. mean, there's a lot of technical stuff to get into. it's randomly flipped polarity of microphones, know, like ways of miking preamps, compressors, programming tools. Then I really enjoy.

I told you

Mixerman (02:02:05.44)

Anybody can understand it is the thing, you know?

And I enjoyed the, it was the politics of band entity. That's just some great practical advice too. Just the whole interacting with people, how to have important discussions and know when to listen and know when to stand your ground and just really useful human connection stuff in there as well. And that's big part of us, you know, like,

at the end of the day, you're dealing with people and a lot of times people in vulnerable situations, sensitive, they're expressing themselves. So knowing how to navigate those waters.

keep some, maintain some control over, you know, hurting, hurting everybody towards the goal.

Yeah. Yeah. And even if I think you're not working with other people, it's like we said, you've got so many different jobs when you're doing it yourself, it's almost like you're working with a team of people. So some of that stuff is applicable even in the solo situation.

Brian Funk (02:03:21.292)

He certainly will be. Is there anything else we should get to before we wrap this up? You've been really generous with your time. I want to you have a day to have still.

I think I'm shocked how much we covered. We covered a lot of ground. It was a great conversation with you. I appreciate it.

Yeah. It's great.

Brian Funk (02:03:45.504)

Thanks, I love talking to you. So much to learn, so much experience. I'll put links to everything, but Mixerman.net is a good place to start, I think, for people. They can find all your books, which you have many that we didn't mention as well. A real wealth of knowledge out there, and it's really kind of you to put that out for people to learn from and get some perspective. And in the case of the Daily Adventures, a little laugh or two here and there.

Well, you know, I think that, know, one of the reasons I wanted to write this producing book this broadly was because I know how much things are going to change in the next few years. And I wrote it knowing it's got a shelf life because like, I'm ready to write the one where you and how to do it using AI too, you know, but it's we're not there yet, but that's going to change everything.

But it's good to know how to do it yourself to some degree, you know? And the human stuff, that doesn't change. The human interaction and understanding how to drive a process, that doesn't change. So it'll always have relevance on that side.

Yeah. Yeah. And the emphasis on the title too, I noticed the capitalization of producing, really stressing that aspect of it. And I think you kind of cover a lot of the different ways we can interpret that word too, from the actual like kind of traditional producer standpoint, but also just to creating and finishing and getting through and all the different steps it takes to actually

have the product of a piece of music at the end.

Mixerman (02:05:33.912)

Yep.

I recommend it. It's a good read, it's funny, it's informative, and it's something you can kind of flip to. You can kind of jump around, you can read cover to cover, so there's a few different ways to approach it, which is also kind of cool.

I wanted you to be able to read it like a novel, but of course it's got encyclopedic value to it too, and resource values. So you can jump around. A lot of people say about my books that they can open it up, you know, on a random day and find something, a nugget. And like they didn't necessarily make the connection. Like the further you get to go along, the more you learn. The more some things you glossed over, didn't really like realize

you know, what was meant by it. And then you read it again a year later and you've kind of learned that lesson and then it makes sense. And you're like, now I get this. I didn't like even register that before. Cause you can only learn so much, you know? I mean, it takes like, I've been doing this nearly for decades. So like it takes that long to learn everything and people want to do, want to do everything. And it's like, okay,

But if it took me four decades to learn everything, how are you going to learn it everything in a year?

Brian Funk (02:06:57.944)

By reading a book,

is just not, but we can accelerate things and we can put your focus on the things that are important if you're willing to buy into it. And I can give you tips and tricks to help you to accomplish your goals and to cause a reaction. that's what can help people with the book.

Well, so many of these concepts are lifelong pursuits. I things you might not ever master, you know, if you really, they're the kind of endless, endless journeys that you just.

Sure.

Mixerman (02:07:37.39)

can't become a world-class mixer if you don't mix every day on lots and lots of different things. The only thing you mix is your own stuff. You're going to become a good mixer at some point at mixing your own stuff. like people think that they can just do that and then they can become great at mixing. And it's like, no, you're only going to get so far with that. Like I didn't become a great mixer.

until I was doing it every single day for years. And because that gave me the repetition and the time and the lessons to recognize the patterns to more quickly achieve the goal. So, and to learn what the goal is, you know? So that's what it requires. So we just have to become as good as we can.

at those things and become the best that we can at the things that are the most important. And if you're an artist, it's most important you're best at being an artist. And if you're a producer, it's most important that you're best at being a producer, not an engineer. The engineering, we just kind of want to get out of our way the best that we can so that we can be as effective a producer as we want to be.

Hmm. Sounds good. Okay. Hey, thank you so much. Mixerman.net for everyone and check out the book Mixerman's Ultimate Guide to Producing Records, Music and Songs. Thank you everyone for listening.

Thank you.

Brian Funk (02:09:17.134)

Brian Funk (02:09:21.528)

Thank you for listening to the music production podcast. If you want to help support the show, the best thing you can do is tell a friend, someone you think that would enjoy the show. I'd also love it if you could leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to support my work, you can go to brianfunk.com. I've got tons of Ableton Live packs, tutorials, samples. You can check out my book, The 5-Minute Music Producer, which gives you 365...

short music making activities to help you get started, stay inspired and finish more music. And there's also the Music Production Club, where you get my latest releases as soon as they're finished. It gives you access to a community of like-minded people who are making music and sharing ideas. You can share your music, find new collaborators and participate in our live meetings where we set up some kind of musical challenge and then make music together and share our results at the end.

That's the music production club. It's a lot of fun. And you can find that and everything that I do at brianfunk.com. Thanks again for listening to the show and have a great day.

music production podcastmixerman

Brian Funk

Mixerman and the Ultimate Guide to Producing Records - Music Production Podcast #407

Takeaways:

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk is a New York-based musician, producer, and Ableton Certified Trainer. He hosts the Music Production Podcast. Brian teaches music production at Berklee Online. He is the author of the 5-Minute Music Producer: 365 Music-Making Activities.

Mixerman and the Ultimate Guide to Producing Records - Music Production Podcast #407

Takeaways:

Links:

Episode Transcript:

The ONLY Secret to Making Music - Music Production Podcast #406

Brian Funk is a New York-based musician, producer, and Ableton Certified Trainer. He hosts the Music Production Podcast. Brian teaches music production at Berklee Online. He is the author of the 5-Minute Music Producer: 365 Music-Making Activities.