Any given BTS record might have 50 provisions or more. You have to understand. You're in a day and age where you know people. They know what they want. If it's a hi-hat down 0.5 dB, that's their given birthright man. They paid for the mix.

This is the Self-Recording Band Podcast, the show where we help you make exciting records on your own wherever you are DIY style, let's go. Hello and welcome to the Self-Recording Band Podcast. I am your host, benedict Hein. If you are new to the show, welcome. So glad to have you. If you're already a listener, thank you so much. Glad you're coming back and you're hanging out with us again. Please know that this is also available on YouTube. If you're discovering this on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or some other podcast app and vice versa, in this case, this particular episode, you might want to check out the YouTube version, because this is our live interview from Studio Stina 2023 that we had with Jason Joshua. So this is very exciting and the experience will probably better on YouTube in this case. Yeah, as always, I'm not alone here. I'm doing this with my friend and co-host who just came back from Germany. Hello, malcolm, how are you?

Hey, benny, I'm good man. I'm excited about this one because I still can't really believe we got to chat with Jason Joshua, that's incredible right.

I can say it.

Yeah, if you're not familiar with who Jason Joshua is, you've heard so much of his work and you just have no idea he's. Well, it was at 15 or 16 Grammys, I can't even remember. Something like that and countless more nominations on top of that, and he's done, like Beyonce, rihanna, justin Bieber, michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson yeah.

It's insane, so crazy.

Usually I don't like to play favorites, but I have to say that this is probably one of my favorite conversations we've had so far on the podcast. I just have to say this was very, very fun and also educational for us, because it's a little outside of what we usually do. You know, we primarily work in rock and all kinds of guitar music, and Jason knows that as well, just for the record, like, he's known as the hip hop R&B guy, but he definitely also knows rock. But still, primarily what he works on is not really what we do, and so we are students in this case as well, and we are always interested in looking to other genres and learning from the specialists there so we can take their approaches and apply their techniques and everything they do to what we do over here. And I think so many artists these days are blending genres and it's really important to be open and constantly build new skills outside of your comfort zone, and this was a perfect opportunity for us to meet Jason and ask him all kinds of questions and just to also learn about how things work at that level is fascinating. I mean, we've been doing it for a while. We've worked on professional records before. We've been to big studios, all of that, but his level is different and there's only really a handful of people in the world who operate at this level.

It's like it doesn't get any bigger than this. It's millions of dollars on the line. When he does a mix, there's millions of dollars behind it and I'm not saying he's charging a million dollars, but there's the scope of how much is going into these productions and the marketing behind it and that artist is just beyond what we can imagine. I mean, we get into it in the episode but there's like I think, a lot of people misconceive success with thinking it's going to be less pressure because you're just like everything you touch is gold, but the stakes are way, way higher. So that's fascinating.

They are for sure, by the way that, as I said, this happened at Studios Zene 2023. If you want to be there next time, please save the date October 22nd to 24th 2024. So, october 22nd to October 24th, it's going to happen again. You want to be there? Get your tickets. I don't know who's going to be there next year yet, but it's going to be just as exciting. It's going to be even better than this year, and so, as you can tell by our conversation with Jason Joshua, they've got some heavy hitters and if you want to be around those people, ask them your questions and just be a part of that, you want to go there, for sure.

We might have got some off the record hints that who's going to be there next year and it's exciting. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Totally All right. So yeah, Jason, we asked him questions about the revision process and major projects. I think there was also an audience question about this, because there was an actual live audience there, which was very cool for us too. We've never done that before. We've asked them things like are the most successful artists also recording themselves? Or is it all like big fancy studios all the time? Interesting answer there as well. Then we also, as you said, malcolm, there's a lot on the line here. It's about a lot of money and a big project, so we also wanted to know if he's playing it safe or if he's taking chances still in these sort of situations. Great answer there as well. So, yeah, there's a lot to learn from Jason, joshua, and also he's just what's just a cool, inspiring conversation. I really, really really enjoyed that one.

Yeah, yeah, couldn't be a nicer guy, and thank you, jason, for your time and I hope you enjoy this episode.

Totally Before we finally dive into it. One more thing If you are not already part of our little world here, like our little ecosystem at the surf recording band, you want to get in now because we have a Facebook community, we have an email list, we have a coaching program. There's various ways to become part of that community and you want to do it now because we are. There's exciting things we're working on right now. It's only getting better. It's growing all the time. We can't tell you anything specific yet, but it definitely didn't hurt to be at this event and meet some cool people and, yeah, you're going to benefit from that in some way, shape or form. And now's the time to get in If you don't want to miss out. If you want to see what's coming there, please go to the description here below this video or the podcast show notes and join us. All right, here's our conversation with Jason Joshua. All right, hello and welcome to the self-recording band podcast. I am your host, benedict Heijn. We are here once again streaming live from the Studio scene event, studio scene here in Hamburg. We're at the studio sofa, the guys that sound in recording with people of sound and recording. Let us use this sofa for three days, which is great, and, yeah, that one pretty comfy and yeah. So, as always, I'm here with my friend and co-host, malcolm Owen Flood. Hello, everyone, and today we are joined by Jason Joshua. Hello, thank you. Yeah, if you don't know, if you don't know Jason, I mean you probably know, but if you don't know, it's about as big as it gets when he comes to Mix Engineers these days. I think If you look at his credit list, it's massive. Think of, like you know, name 10 artists in the big, 10 big artists you can think of in like pop, r&b, hip-hop, any of these genres, and there's a high chance that he's worked with them. So it's very cool to have you here and we have a ton of questions and I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you, I love being here, yeah, awesome. So the first question, jason, is or my first question would be we are, as you know, that the podcast is called the Self-Recording Band, so we work a lot with, in our coaching program and in our audience, a lot of people who record themselves, who are DIY people. So, for someone at your level, do you still ever get to work on like self-recorded stuff, or do big artists these days sometimes record themselves at home. Is that something you ever deal with?

I would say about out of every 100 times I go into the studio, maybe one time out of that 100 will be a recording session where the mix, the person involved with the mix, would want to do an overdub or recut, a vocal or something like that. But once you kind of it's kind of weird. Once you are in a certain section of the engineering world, you kind of get lost in that. So for 15 years I've done nothing but mix my predecessor, dave Pensado, I remember. I remember doing something for him, putting a patch in or whatever, and he didn't know how to do it. And I was saying to myself this is Dave Pensado. How does he not know how to patch in some outboard gear real quick or what have you? And you realize once you take your focus off of something and you don't do it for a while, you become really bad at it. So I always tell my clients, if they want me to ever record their vocal, they're going to get a great sounding vocal. It just might take some time.

Yeah, and in terms of being sent something that has been self-recorded, that's what I mean when people record themselves and send it over to you.

Does that happen? That's 90% of the mixes now I would say, yeah, a lot of the upper echelon clients are buying their own studios now. So whether they have their own studio in their house or they have their own studio somewhere else, they're pretty much self-contained. But a lot of the newer artists are understanding the value of saving money or keeping the money for their studio time. So basically they're buying their own equipment and recording them themselves in the hotel studio. I've seen I've been in with clients where they'll have the big studio with the big microphones and the engineer and everything's ready to go and you see them in the ISO booth with their engineer and their mic that they're used to bypassing the full studio. So yeah, I mean it's now really getting into a more personal space when it comes to the recording of projects. I think we see this with the bigger studios closing that a lot of, especially in rock, a lot of the I mean especially everything except rock a lot of the clients and artists are preferring to record themselves.

Wow, okay, that's interesting. And is there any common thing you have to struggle with? Yeah, shitty vocals, because they don't.

I mean, you have to understand. Technology has put people who I mean back in the day. To become an engineer, you really had to know your stuff. You needed to know. You know the room, the board. You know how to record, how to get a great sound. But now, with you know the invention of Pro Tools and all these other great software programs you know anyone as a novice can start and record themselves. If you have a little bit of know how, go on YouTube and figure it out. But there's an art to it that hasn't been taught. So that art is being lost. In a vocal, I mean, I remember just 10 years ago you would turn up a fader and the vocal will almost sound completely mixed because the person who recorded it has an ear and gave you something very, very, very fantastic to start with. Nowadays, you know, we get people who, who you know, all they want is to get the voice to the recorder Right and they're not paying attention on what the voice sounds like. So, and then now in hip hop, that actual crunchy I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Sound is now the sound.

It's popular somehow.

Yeah, it's now the sound I don't know if you guys remember, maybe in the late 90s called the Wu-Tang Clan and sure, and they came up with you know they did everything in their basement, you know off a four track. They didn't care, it was just raw. And then everybody wanted to sound like that for some reason and that lasted about nine months but their sound kind of took over. And that's the same thing with, you know, the newer artists that are coming out now. It's just like I get mixes and I swear I've done the greatest mix in the world and they'll come back and say it's too clean. So you really have to. It's a balance. It's like you have to understand that yeah, they're shitty vocals, but now how do I make these shitty vocals have a sound of its own? I guess you could say Awesome.

Thank you, that's fascinating. Yeah, that actually brings us to like the next question that I really was wondering about and that I think there's this misconception that at your level, everything's perfect and nobody ever asked for a mixed revision and you, just you do whatever you want. You can do no wrong. But I actually would imagine, if I actually sit there and think about it, that it's probably the exact opposite, because you probably have more than just you know one singer saying, hey, my vocal sounds weird. You probably have maybe their A&R involved or their managers involved, like what's going on there?

I'll give you a. I'll give you a recent story Me and my head engineer did a mix on a co mix on a record that was, I guess you can say, a fan or person who's been a fan. She had a little, you know, steam or little buzz going, but she wasn't the biggest artist in the world, but she was a super Jason Joshua fan. Oh my God, I cannot believe I'm getting you to mix my record. This is going to be the best experience I've ever had in my life. Oh my God, you're the God, just do whatever you want. I'm like oh, this is going to be great.

So we start.

So we start the record and we finish it and you know we're high five in each other and we're like, oh, this is really dope. I'm happy to give this person, who appreciates me so much, a wonderful mix. She wrote a letter, probably about 20 pages, on how I ruined her life, and the mix. And she could not believe this was me. You got a restraining order.

Oh my God, it was so disheartening.

I'm like I don't understand what just happened. So she's like there's something about the rough and you went so far away from the rough and then we listened to the rough. I wonder if she's going to figure out. If she ever saw this, she's probably going to figure out who I'm talking about. But, we got to hear her mix and we couldn't understand it. It was distorted, I think the roughs were at minus four, it was just it was. It was pretty bad and we matched it perfectly, sent it back to her. She says I knew it, I knew you were the one to go do it. It's like, so you get it. My point is is you get this all the time? I mean, we are definitely in the world of technology where we have to worry about demo items more than we ever, ever and we have to respect the demo. But I've just, you know, I've been doing it so long that I've, you know, I only know how to mix one way and that's just to make the record. I always tell people I don't mix for the client, I mix for the record. I'm just trying to make the record the best that I possibly be. If I fail I'm sorry, but just know I'm doing and thinking of everything that I could possibly think of to make this record better and if you don't like it I humbly apologize and I would say right about now I wouldn't say not like it, but I would say revisions-wise, I would say we would get about 90% of the time we're getting revisions. So there's maybe out of 100 mixes, maybe five would be no changes, but pretty much everything after that is a no or two.

Yeah, you guys got to work it.

Thank you, that's interesting and that's all that's all

this I mean talking to my counterparts and talking to my colleagues and my peers, we're all going through it now. We're all really high because you know when they, when you do a mix, you're spending about a day on it, right, and when you're recording the record, it's a process. You have a process where they get the initial idea down, maybe, and then you know the engineer probably spends weeks upon weeks tweaking, doing his little mix and then everybody's been listening to it for, you know, two or three months. And then they get to the mix and everyone's used to. I mean, it's just a scientific fact when you listen to something repetitively, your body gets used to it. So when it hears something different, it goes into fight or flight mode. It's like what is this? And it's no. In between, it's no like, and it could be as simple as a hi-hat being up or too many delays added, but one little thing can throw off the whole mix and they're like I can't even listen to it past verse one because there's a delay. So, yeah, I mean you do this for so long. You hear so many, so many different stories. But you know for the most part fortunately enough, the other 95% appreciate what we do.

Right, yeah, absolutely so. Yesterday over there we learned that you really enjoy talking about AI.

No, no no, we're not gonna go there. No, just kidding, we're not gonna go there.

It's not that I don't, it's just it's so new, it's like you know, yeah, of course it is.

I like it, I don't like it, you know who knows?

Yeah, just kidding. No, let's get back to mixing, because you said something else over there yesterday that I remembered, that I wanted to tell like ask you about. You said you're taking chances when you're mixing, like you're risking things. Sometimes you, you know you're, I'm risking the mix. Yeah, of course.

But yeah, you can lose the mix if you go too far, yeah, but you still do it. I mean, we've all been there, yeah, but I still you do both.

You make the both decisions. So I was wondering do you do more of that? If it's like a quote unquote, like smaller project, are you like more careful?

on bigger things.

Great question so because you would assume right, when it is a very massive project, you would play it safe.

Great question, you don't want to mess it up, great question no, I go fight or flight every mix.

Awesome.

I've been in situations where will be at odds, where I'm speaking and I know I'm probably one of the only ones who do this, but I'll tell the clients like this does not sound good and I'm willing to take you through the finish line with this, but don't put my name on it.

Right.

I've had that a couple of times. I've had a couple of times where it's like maybe I should walk off the project and, because I always find it fascinating, where this is all we do, I mean, look at this, you guys came to hear this podcast. Sit here, talk shop, we're all like-minded, we all love mixing, this is all we think about. But then you'll have a client come in and he'll have his best friend or his girlfriend there. You're like what do you think, baby? I think he has too much bass. And then you're like you're really going to listen to the person who's never been in this room or in this environment Like this is all I do. Trust me one time. But you know, after a while you totally understand that it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. And what I mean by that is that you have a situation where you put your heart and soul into something and if they don't see it the way you see it, it's maybe because they're having a bad day. And I would say about 90% of the time the records that sound different or as different as the rough is because we believe, as mixers, that that rough is not going to work in the marketplace. So if I went to like, if you go to a doctor and you say to a doctor, doctor, my heart it skips a beat and the doctor says, take this pill, your heart would be great. Honey, should I take this pill? No, you should try green juice. You're gonna listen to this? We're the only ones where the girlfriend might overrule us doctors of mixing over here. So I never take it personal anymore. I used to, early in my career I'd be like, oh, my career's over, they hate my mix. You'll get two. Don't get two in a row. Oh, if you get two, I don't like your mixes in a row. You just think, oh, I'm the worst, but it's not the case.

It's hard not to let it affect you, though, but you just gotta keep playing with it.

No, in the beginning I was following my mentor, Dave Pensado, he would get devastated, Like if someone critiqued his mix. It was like, ah, it's all. I'm like, Dave, dude, what are you talking about? Right? But after a while you start seeing patterns. You're like, okay, I get it, and never take it personal. Just go on to the next mix, because you'll do 100 mixes and 80 of them will be amazing, and 20 of them you might have some, and that's just because those 20 people don't hear the same thing.

Everyone's ears are different, so you can't take it personal that that person doesn't like bass or doesn't like high end or however you feel the record should be Absolutely Something that I feel like I really strongly believe and it makes me willing to make bold choices in a mix that I don't know if the client's gonna like it Like I have no idea, but I'm gonna do it because I think, like you said, it's gonna be. The best choice for the song is that mixing is still a creative process and that you're still adding to the production at a production level, like if you make something repeat.

That's actually a great way to put it, because when you do that, that's when you start deserving the point, right? You know, when you bring that production value to that producer or to that song or to that record, people start wow, if we don't go to them, we're not gonna get these extra bells and whistles. You know what I mean. I always tell my assistants, you know, you want to amaze the client to the point where they feel that they can't go nowhere else, and if they did, they wouldn't get the exact same sound, because you're only as good as your last mix. You know what I mean. We have no advertising, there's no commercials for mixers. So you know you're only as good as your last mix. So why not try to hit it out of the park? Yeah, and surprise them. And then you won't have mixes that are out on the radio that you feel like I've done this, where you, you know you have a big, big, big record, but you're like I really don't think this mix is good. And then you have to post it and you know all your peers are gonna see it and you're like, oh my God, I don't wanna post this. And I've been doing that lately. I've had some pretty big records come out of late and I have not posted them because I just haven't appreciated the mix and it makes it. It makes it fun. So now it's like With me. If you go on my page and you see the records that I put up there, it's records that I'm proud of. You know, what I mean, that sense of, and I can separate the two. I can always separate, you know, the work that I go into. And then it's finding. You know I always tell people finding like-minded creatives to create with. You know you'll have somebody come in and you'll listen to a rough and it's like I've had this a million times where they'll be like the rough is amazing. And I'll say to myself it's absolutely not. Maybe we should talk about this first, because I'm hearing it in a different way. You know, you just want me to make it a little bit better. I don't think it's even you know. So those type of early discussions are always best.

Yeah, that's actually really interesting A pre-production meeting before a mix, and that's very hard to get.

Yeah that doesn't happen. You know they usually just send it and you know hope for you to knock it out the park, and that's another thing you always got to say to yourself. They came to you for a reason. They want nothing more than to hear something absolutely amazing from you. So you can't take it personal that you know you don't hit it. You just fall back on the aspect of I tried my best, I did everything I could. Let the chips fall where they may. Is there anything you do to try and build trust?

with them so that the next time they come they give you more leeway in being creative.

I think the trust came from the trust it came early with me with, you know, finding. I always tell people find your vessel, find that producer, find that act that truly believes in you. So I had two producers, tricky and Dream, who we did a lot of early stuff with Rihanna, beyonce, justin Bieber, celine Dion, and you know it was like really big pop records and if you know anything about pop and mixing, there's only a couple guys out there that people go to and for this young guy to come in, they had to stand up for me and once they stood up for me, no, this is our guy, this is our guy, this is our guy. And then, once you have success, now you're the guy. So it's finding your vessels that help get your information or get your mixes to you know, whoever your future clients are going to be Like oh man, I love that record and that's where most of my work comes from, is from people listening to records. Oh, that's Jay again, let me, I gotta go to Jay.

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. One of the reasons that I think, One of many reasons, but one of the reasons people come to you for your mixes is also your low end. You're kind of famous for that, at least over here. I don't know if it's the same way. You have to get that, but many people that I talk to they are raving about the way your low end sounds and how big it is, but also not overpowering, and so you probably answered that a thousand times already. But if there's one thing that you could point to, what is it that makes your low end sound like your low end?

Sidechain compression. Sidechain compression is. I can't do it any other way, and my whole thing was I was in a loudness war with Fruity Loops. When Fruity Loops first came out, it was so loud and their rough mixes were actually killing some of us engineers because, wait, how can a dog be loud?

just so we understand, well, fruity.

Loops' soft clipper is amazing and the first. I'll be the first. If there's any developers here, the first person who makes the Fruity Loops soft clipper for all the dogs is going to be the king, because this thing really, really, really, really really gets records loud and a lot of the producers will do their rough mix and they put the Fruity Loops soft clipper and I'm talking to everything's going through it Vocals, kick drums, 808s and it would be extremely loud and extremely distorted, but it had something to it. So we had to develop a system where I can get it just as loud but take away all the stuff, the bad stuff that the soft clipper added, bring the dynamics back, bring the transients back, so on and so forth. So once we created this template or the system, I realized early not only by trim tooling, the what am I supposed to say? Trim tooling, the 808 compression, sidechain compression. I also use now Soothe, which I'll take the kick drum have the kick drum go, feed the Soothe sidechain compressor and every time the kick hits the bass will drop out. And the reason why Soothe is so good is because it follows the envelope of the kick. So if the kick it's not taking the whole thing down. It's just taking the energy of where the kick is coming in, so you don't even hear the 808 drop out, you just hear the kick come in and the 808s is staying all the way through. So it got me about two to three more dB of headroom. So I would say sidechain compression is absolutely the key to victory for me, for my low end, because I like a very sustained, in-your-face low end that makes people feel warm. I'm a high-fi guy, I like the lowest of lows, I like the highest of highs and with sidechain compression it really really got me to have that low end that I was looking for.

Thank you, that's a great answer. Great answer. Does your mix bus have also anything to do with it, like, for example, the cop particle?

Yeah, the cop particle is remarkable in the sense of its control of the entire frequency spectrum with this multi-band compressor, but especially in the low end. It was something that we really really harped on. It took us a minute to figure out, but if it's not the cop particle, I would say it's going to be pretty hard to get it to the minus 7, minus 6, low area and still sound dynamic without multi-band compression on your two bus. So with the cop particle, having the multi-band compression on the two bus and really really focused on the control of the low end and keeping that last, I'll tell you a quick funny story. I was working with Murder Beats and Big Time Producer, all the Drake stuff. so on and so forth.

It's kind of plug in with Slate, I think. Right the Murder Melodies thing. Oh wow, that's amazing.

So he came in and he was a person who was like I love the mix, but I'm not feeling the low end. Jay, telling someone like me that you're not feeling the low end is like the world's coming to an end. No, low end, what are you talking about? So I go up on the big boys and I'm like what are you talking? We're killing yours. He's like yeah, you are, but you're not killing it in these. And I'm like well, what do you mean in these? He's like I'm listening to it on my headphones and he had his headphones. It was the weirdest thing. I'm listening to the mix and I turned behind and he has his headphones on, listening to the mix on his headphones and I'm like but you could? I'm like never mind, that's another story. So the way it works is that 20 and 30 hertz that I would roll away. These headphones would make it up in its synthesized based way where you can hear more low end if that 20 and 30 hertz wasn't rolled out. So we had to figure out a way of how do I keep that 20 and 30 hertz without getting the wobbles and the shakes and all the other stuff that it brings to it. So I think that was one of the Eureka moments with the God particle Very interesting, Thank you?

Is it always the God particle on your mix? Yeah, I never. I don't know.

Since the first day we hit that Eureka button where we finally figured the God particle out. I think it's been like three years now.

That's amazing, yeah, and so from what you're saying, I get that. Do you do the mastering yourself, then, or do you deliver mixes that are?

that loud. Why not? Because we're like I mean, a lot of people, a lot of people tend to not realize that most mixed engineers are really good mastering engineers as well, because they know what they want the record to sound like. And before it was kind of like a lot like a dark art of mastering. We knew what to do but we really didn't know what to do. But over the years, with the mastering plugins and the suites, you kind of started teaching yourself and people started talking and you realize like wow, it's really just taking a step back from your mix and coming back to it and figuring out how to make it better. And with the tools that we have today, I just don't see why most mixed engineers don't master their stuff. And that's no disrespect to the mastering because there's some mastering engineers whose ears are so good that you're really like you know what. I'm not going to them because of what they know, because I can do what they know. I'm going to them because I feel that their ear is helping my record. And I have a couple people that are like that when I need to take a step away or if I'm feeling like there's something missing. I love the mix. I don't know what it is, let me see what their interpretation on the master is. But you know, I would say about right now, 90% of the time I'm mastering my own records.

You can always do both too right. My master, my buddy's master, which one's better? That's all that matters.

The thing is is now the mastering engineers are becoming like mixed engineers, where they're asking for your ref?

the one that you sent the clients first. Can you send me that?

You never got that. They never used to ask for that. Now they're like can we get your?

bounce. And if you send it off to external mastering engineers, do you deliver it that loud still Like? Do you send the minus six, minus seven, or do you turn the God particle over the last part of the chain down for that?

I respect the art. I'm going to say my peers. I know this for a fact. My peers don't. They send it as hot as it possibly can you do what you need to do. Just either lay it in and don't touch it or put a little whatever you think you need to do to it. But with me I'm a little bit more respectful. If my client is really asking me to send it to mastering, I'm not going to be the guy that's going to, you know, not send it. So all I do is take the limiter off the guard particle it goes down about five dB and hope for the best.

Does it ever go wrong?

Always no.

No, that's the thing.

It's like I mean, we're all good mixers, we're all good engineers, and if you trust your ears, or if you have the complete confidence in your ears, why would you send it to anywhere else? You know it makes no sense. But, like I said, sometimes you need to take a step back, and sometimes certain ears are better than yours when it comes to a two track. But for the most part, though, I'm 90% of the time trying to master Well, 100% of the time trying to master my own stuff.

Right, yeah, so oh, I was just going to say if you're not happy, why are you calling it done? I guess, right?

Yeah, that's what I never understood, especially with the limiter. No one's sending out. I don't know who's doing that anymore sending out a mix without a limiter on it oh man, you got to listen to it with the vibe man just turn it up like no dude. If your shit's not hot, your shit's not going to get picked up as the mix. So I highly suggest whenever you send your mix out, you send it as hot as you know commercially possible.

Yeah, totally thank you. So before we wrap it up here, because I know you have to be in there for the soundcheck really soon, right? Yeah, no one is back yet. No one here have questions for Jason in the audience, because we have a wonderful live audience as well here, which I appreciate. Anyone has questions for Jason?

No questions. Amazing. It's the first time I've ever sat in the audience without one question. Nobody's got one. No, oh yeah there we go?

Actually, yes, but just a short one. Coming back to the mixing for the biggest of the big clients and the revisions of that, is there a difference in the number of revisions and the kind of revisions that you get from, like great teams versus independent people?

Any given BTS record might have 50 revisions or more, 50. 50. 5.0. What? Yeah, you have to understand. You're in a day and age where people they know what they want. If it's a high hat down 0.5 dB, oh I'm sorry, 0.2. Now that's their given birthright man. They paid for the mix, but yeah, it doesn't matter. I think the best way to give you an average is the average mix. For me it's like version 4 or 5. In each version we're probably thinking about maybe 5 to 10 notes. It kind of affects you as a mixer because you're like you say to yourself, all that extra shit that you want to do. Maybe I shouldn't do it, maybe I should wait because I'm about to get 50 hundred notes and then maybe make a suggestion. Or you can do what my mentor does, which I don't understand, but he takes the time and does it He'll send out two versions. Here's your version, cooled down, and here's the. This is where I think it needs to go Adding drops, stuff like that that just gives excitement and movement to a record. Taking out a part here because it clutters. A lot of people don't understand when you work with music. Today. No one's making music together. The producer will make the beat, send it to the top liner. The top liner will write the record, not paying attention to what the producer wrote. Then the producer, all he cares about is the beat, and then he'll have a melody line that's going over the top line, or synth going over the top line. You're like let me mute that. Then the producer will be like what the fuck are you doing?

That's my shine.

I'm like you're stepping over the lead vocal. No one's paying money to hear your synth, unless it was a huge melody. Like I said, it doesn't. Most newer clients they're afraid to give you notes, but the bigger clients are. I remember one time we got to what's Mike, mike, what's the big version that we got to with that one record, the version 59? The BTS record. Think about it. You're in the 40s. After five you probably don't even know what the record sounds like anymore. It's a totally different record. So that's the main reason why I have all my assistants do my changes, because it's like I don't want to see my baby ruin.

It's too much, too much, too much.

Awesome, awesome. Thank you. Any more questions there it is. Use this chance, mike.

Oh, we got away, oh we got away, we got okay, can you explain something about your template, like the thought process behind it and why you built it like the way it?

is Well, my template is very, very OCD. It's color coordinated, it's basically put together so I can get through a mix and get all the bullshit out of the way as fast as I can. So I can become extremely creative Very, very, very, very quickly. We all know we've all done mixes where it takes us two or three hours just to get the mix prepped, get the fades in, get all the clicks out, blah, blah, blah. By the time we start mixing we hate the record. So I came up with a system where it's relatively simple. My assistant set up the record, so when I bring it up it sounds exactly like the rough. But my template is so I can isolate each individual parts of the record and really attack them like I'm mixing them individually. So what I mean by that is like I'll have the drums with the drum bus, so now I can mix and master the drums before it even gets to the two bus, so the two bus doesn't have to do anything. I have my high end perks. Same thing, I have my synths and my keyboards, and then I have my sound effects and vocal effects. So, with all that being said, I like to mix and master before I get to the two bus. I treat the vocals like a mix and master. So when I get to the two bus it's not doing anything. So when we are at minus seven minus six, it still feels like it's open, like it's at minus 14, minus 15. So I just like to isolate each individual section and if you go into the master class next, I'll get very, very in depth with that.

Awesome, go check out that master class.

Obviously it's a no brainer.

Yeah, absolutely All right, I think we got to wrap it up. I think we got to wrap it up. I think we got to wrap it up.

But we got to go in there for the soundcheck.

Thank you guys, man, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you guys for listening live If you watched the stream, thank you for listening on the podcast If you watched this after the fact and, of course, thank you guys for being here live.

Thank you all.

Joining us. So a big round of applause for Mr Jason Tosher. Thank you, thank you.

Well done, guys.