There's like this big wine cask, big, huge barrel, and it's got a hole in it that perfectly fits like an SM57. It's just like, yes, this is going to be amazing. Yeah, it sounds scary. That is not a thing that would be usable.

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, benedikt Hein. If you are new to the show, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. If you are already a listener, welcome back, so stoked to have you. Today we are back with our usual episodes, so we had a bunch of like interviews in a row, I think, and so now we are back to one of the Malcolm and Benny ones, like you've been used to for I don't know, probably 190 episodes at this point. And, yeah, we're going to talk about how to like, what to do if you walk into a new studio and new room, how to make that work. Let's say, when you record at a jam space that you've never been before, when you record your friends, or if you move to a new room with your own band, if you get new gear, you know and need to set it up and work with it, whatever, like, you're going to probably at some point run into a situation where you have to deal with a new environment, new gear, new room, and we're going to share our thoughts on that and how to deal with that, and we'll share our experience with that. And, as always, I'm doing this with my friend and co-host, malcolm Owen Flutt. How are you, malcolm? Glad to have you back in this format.

Hey, benny, yeah, man, it is good to be back at this and I mean we had our chat with Christian Coley last week, which was awesome because I was kind of close to being back to the original format as well. But, yeah, no, stoked to be back, man. I've had a crazy few weeks since we Really Like since I got back from Germany, really. Yeah, I spent like a full week recording and filming slugs.

I saw one of those pictures actually. Yeah, so close.

Yeah so, but you never know what's going to happen. You know like what your life is going to be, and for me it was like a week in a tent filming slugs.

Did you tell some of those memes? You know where there was this time. Do you remember the social media memes with the guitarists with the slug instead of the guitar? Oh yeah.

I've got the best slugs for that now. Oh man, yeah, that's wild. Yeah, how about you, benny?

How are you? I'm doing great, thank you. Crazy busy weeks as well. We're signing up A lot of new coaching students, which is very exciting. So, by the way, if you want to join the self-recording syndicate, our coaching program, now is a great time. There's new partnerships in the making. We have met some people at Studio's Stena, the conference that we've been to. I'm about to go to NAMM really soon to the US. I'm going to do some, yeah, work on some connections, some collaborations there, and so you're going to benefit from that if you join the academy, that's for sure. Or, like the coaching program, the syndicate, and also I just this is very true, very honest I only have a few spots left. We are in high demand right now and I'm signing up a lot of students and I got many more calls booked and there's only. It's not going to be long until I can't serve any more people and I need to pause applications for a while, probably until we figure out some new systems. So if you want to do this, please go to thesurfrecordingbandcom and apply for our coaching program, and it all starts with a free first call. So no strings attached. We just jump on a call and then see if our program is a great fit for you. I'm going to ask a ton of questions, figure out where you are right now, where you want to be and whether or not we can help you get there. And, best case scenario, it's a perfect fit and we're going to work together to transform your recordings. Or, worst case scenario, you get an hour of free coaching. But now is a good time to do that, because who knows for how long I can offer it like this before I have to change things? All right. So, yeah, it's been a few great weeks. We also launched some of our courses again, got some exciting projects booked in the studio.

Yeah, I wanted to mention the courses as well, because I know that the long-time listeners were around when we released those courses, but we only ever released them in limited time frames. So just recently if you missed out on the Mixes on Pack series or any of the other many courses that have also come up they're now actually available all the time, so I think that's really cool. I'm excited for people to be able to get access to those.

Yes, 100%. So all of this will be in the show notes of this episode. So if you're listening on a podcast app, just go to the show notes and you see the links there. If you are on YouTube, it's going to be in the description. So this is a video podcast as well, by the way, and the link to the courses. The best way to get them actually is to go to at least at this point, is to go to the self-recordingbandcommixready, because if you go there, you'll see our Mix Ready course, which is sort of the recording course and the one thing that is relevant for every self-recording band, regardless of whether you're mixing or not. This is something everybody needs. And then there's something called the Everything Bundle that you'll also find on this page, where, in addition to the Mix Ready course, you'll get our Mixes on Pack courses. You'll get an editing course, all the things we have to offer at a discounted rate, and so if you go to the self-recordingbandcommixready, all of that will be there. But then, of course, there's the individual courses. The self-recordingbandcommix is unpacked or dead on drums, the editing course, all of that We'll all be in the description of this episode. And yeah, these are publicly available now and, yeah, it's been an exciting few weeks and one of the things that happened is actually a good segue into this episode, malcolm, because both of us are considering a kind of production comeback right.

Sort of a kind of.

I'm thinking about coming back from my production retirement in a way Not entirely, I'm going to be focusing on mixing still, but I got a request to produce a record in the US actually. So it looks like as of now it looks like I'm going to be traveling to NAMM to Los Angeles in January and then right after that I'm going to produce a record with someone in the US again and I'm looking forward to that.

So yeah, that's crazy cool. Yeah, to fill people in. Both Benny and I only mix a master in music. That's like the only involvement we have, any more other than being educators of course, but we both stopped engineering and producing for bands in studio and, yeah, I also got an offer, just like the timing it's funny because we both got offers at the same time. I mean it's not actually like we both probably got in a bunch of offers, but for some reason we're both considering them at the same time. Yes, that's the thing.

I get offers all the time, but I decide it not to produce anymore, not to engineer anymore.

So for some reason we're both like. I think you know what it's probably like we're going to talk about in this episode. We spent some time in the studio together while we were in Germany. We're in.

Hamburg for studios. Yeah, this is kind of fun. Yeah, probably that. Yeah, really honestly, I just want to do it every once in a while for selecting no projects, just because, yeah, just because of that it's fun.

Yeah, yeah, I feel like it. This is one the project I'm considering. It's like one that I could it's going to be, you know hire guns, session players, abandon a room, tracking like a lot of the bed tracks, live off the floor with like the best musicians available. So I'm like, well, how could I not have a good time doing that?

Yes, totally, totally, yeah, yeah, same here and like, yeah, certain projects it's I don't know, I just want to do it because it's fun. And then also, like you said, if it's someone where, if you don't have all these limitations, if there's a decent budget and great musicians and you can make a really good record, where you just know it's going to be fun with good people and a good result at the end, why not? And also, I'm a big believer in if we're educators right, and I'm teaching people how to record all the time, and I feel like if I don't do it every once in a while, at least I kind of how can I teach it? So I mean, I've done a fair share of like records and I know how it works and stuff, but still I got to keep it fresh. There's things change sometimes and I think I need to. I still need to practice every now and again, and so so I don't want to be one of those people who hasn't made a record in years but still teaching it. So this is also part of it.

Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense to me. You want to stay on, like, stay fresh and ahead of the curve and know what's going on with new techniques and stuff like that. You're a little more crazy than I am that you're considering doing like an entire album. I'm doing one song max and then I'm out.

Yeah, it's gonna be an EP like five to seven songs, but it's just the perfect timing, right, you know, because it's like coincidence, there's Nam, and then right after that, the artist who contacted me wants to do this record, and it's he's in the US. So I'm like, well, when I'm in Los Angeles, anyways, I can just, you know, book another flight and go to wherever you are and we'll make this record together. And you know, sometimes I don't know, I feel like the universe wants to tell me something and I just I should just do it 100%. So, yeah, this is it, and so we'll see how that all goes. The contract is not signed yet, so I don't say the name of the artist and anything because, like, I just don't want to, you know, say anything that that's not going to happen. But we talked about it and it's, it's. I'm pretty sure it's going to happen. And there's another record with a band that I, if I've worked with in the past year, where I probably will produce drums when the time comes next year. It's also going to be fun. So, yeah, a few projects.

Yeah, keeps it fresh, exactly.

Cool. So before we dive into this episode now, there's one more thing I want to mention, because I really love that. I got an email from one of our listeners and this email came from Jen. So Jen wrote he or she, I'm not really sure, it's just this, jen, I assume she, but you know, I don't know when applying for a one on one call in the questionnaire, so the person applied for coaching or was trying to apply for for our coaching. So if you do that, you have to go through a application form that walks you through step by step. You have to fill in a bunch of like, yeah, answer a bunch of questions, and then we look at this application, listen to your music and then decide if we want to do the call or not, if you're a great fit for the program. So that person said, when applying for a one on one call in the questionnaire, I realized something while, yes, I have been listening to your podcast, I've not implemented the things you talk about. So I figured, to show you that I'm serious, I need to go and apply at least some of the grass knowledge that I have before asking you for more. You'll hear from me again. Thank you, jen, and I love this email. I really really love it because the part of the reason I have this question here is I want to work with people who are serious. I want to work with people where I know like if I help this person, it's going to be awesome, like they're going to put in the work they really want to improve, they are coachable, they are open-minded. It's like, for some people, you can't just you can't do something like that with them, and I'm looking for the right people. And this just made my day because, first of all, she said, or he said, that they got like knowledge from the podcast, which I love, and then also the fact that someone would stop the application process and be like hey, I should implement stuff first to show you that I'm serious. Love it, it's perfect.

Yeah, that is the perfect yeah, so thank you very much. It's so hard to do that. Yeah, totally.

Thank you very much, jen and everyone listening. Be like Jen, like, don't just listen to our podcast. I mean, it's cool if you'll listen to it, but there's so much knowledge, there's so many like little nuggets in there, so many things you can apply. If you just applied I don't know 10% of it, it will be a lot and your records will be a lot better. So just be like Jen apply the stuff and then take a step further.

Yeah, 100% I had. I mean I used to co-host another podcast. I swear we're going to get to that episode soon. Yeah, I had another podcast called the self. Sorry.

That's this one right Self recording man Exactly. Oh God.

It's early here. Yes, your band sucks at business. What's the name of the podcast? It's still up there if anybody wants to check it out and people still do, which is really great. But we had a listener, Danny Blonde, who's a great artist as well. She took like full page notes of every episode and was like shared some of them into our community and stuff like that. It was like so awesome to see somebody like that dedicated. This is like, yes, you're studying.

Love it, absolutely. Love that, yeah, totally. So, yeah, thank you, jen, for this message. I figured I want to share it on the episode and I hope you, you, you, get great results from implementing what we teach here and then I really hope to hear from you again. This is great, yes, awesome. So to today's episode. Now, walking into a new studio or room or both, maybe even with new musicians, new people, new situation, basically how to make that work. We just did something like that. We just went to Hamburg together, malcolm and I, and then Thomas and Wayne, so the team here, and we spent a week at a houseboat that had a studio built into it, which was very cool, but we had to deal with that new studio. We didn't bring our own gear, just a bunch of, you know, mics and cables and stuff, but like, basically, we used what was there and so we had to figure out the routing, we had to figure out the gear, the mics, the room, everything, and we made it work and recorded some drum samples in there, and so, yeah, we just had this kind of situation and we want to walk you through a couple of things that you know you could do or like that you could run into, so that you're prepared when that ever happens to you.

Yeah it's. We weren't very prepared. We went in walking in like we're going to make some cool sounds and we essentially spent that day routing. Yeah, totally, I mean we did.

We did what we could, in a way, because we asked the studio owners about, like, what gear is there and you know, but there's, you know hindsight there could be, there could have been more that I could have asked about the routing and stuff. So, yeah, definitely room for improvement there and it also. Yeah, basically that we just assumed that everything's going to work, but sometimes it doesn't, at least not the way you expect it to be. There's other people using the same room, you know. You never know who was in there before you. They might have changed something, nobody noticed. And then all of a sudden you have to figure out stuff that should be on, you know should be the way it's supposed to be. Then it's not.

Absolutely yeah. Yeah, things change the studios all the time, yeah, constantly plugging different things into other things, and sometimes things get put back in the wrong way and it yeah, knowing how to troubleshoot and get it going is essential.

Yeah. So I don't know about you, malcolm, but the first thing I do when I walk into a new room is I don't actually look at. I mean, I look at the gear, because I love gear, but the first thing I do is I actually check out the room. I want to get a feel for what the room sounds like, like, where, what could you know? Which potential problems could we run into? What does the you know, the vibe, the whole acoustics, like the first impression I get from it is it very lively, is it very dark? Is it? You know, that kind of thing is like the first thing I pay attention to and I immediately in my mind I'm like okay, where could we put certain things? How we could, how could we set up in here, where's a good spot for the monitoring and all of that. So this is kind of the first thing I do when I walk into a new room check out the room itself, basically, and then based off of that. I make other decisions in terms of gear and whatever.

Awesome, yeah, that does make a lot of sense and learning the room could be Very different depending on the scope of what you need to do there. Do you need to set up, you know, like I'm not like a control station for running, like your computer and interface and all of that and like Listening to the recorded playback as well? Or is that already like built into the studio and you just need to worry about where you're gonna put the different instruments? You know? Is there gonna be a live band set up with everybody in the same room? That's gonna take, you know, a more thorough approach to learning the room and figuring out how you're gonna make it work and also just spotting the assets in that room. Do they have go bows which are movable things you can use to block sound from hitting the other? Like you know, block, block a guitar amp off from hitting a drum kit, for example, with a go bow Tools like that which, can you know, allow you to manipulate the room into what you need?

Yes, absolutely totally, and what you see a lot of people do when they walk into a new room is they walk in and they immediately start to clap and listen to like the reverb of the room in the room sound, and it kind of makes sense. But what I do is, if I have the option, if I'm recording a full band and if I know that I'm recording, you know, drums, drums, for example, or anything with low-end. So usually, if you walk around the room and you clap, you hear two things. You hear the decay like the length of the room, in a way like if there's a ton of reverb or not, but if it's a very controlled, smaller room, like a jam spaced, you probably won't hear much there. What you can hear, though, then, in addition to that, what you can hear is flutter echo. So if there is like two parallel walls without treatment and you stand in between them and you clap, then sometimes you hear this like very fast slap sort of echo. You want to avoid for many instruments. You want to avoid spots where this is like the case and you want to either treat one of the walls or you move to a different spot, or you know to do something about that. So that can help a little bit. But what I do is there's something I teach in the in our coachings and courses as well. That is the like what I call the floor tom trick, where you, unless I immediately know that wherever the drum kit is, it kind of sounds good and I just walk around and listen and I feel like, okay, this is a good spot, like on that boat. That corner was actually really cool because in the corner you have low-end build up and it just worked. But oftentimes I will walk around the room with the floor tom in my hand, as weird as that looks and sounds, and I will hit the floor Tom and I just listen to how the low-end Develops, basically, or how it how it sounds, because there will be spots in the room where you feel like there is almost no Low-end and the cat sounds kind of small. Then there are spots where it's out of control and very boomy. And then there are spots where it just sounds just right, where it's like tight, full, low-end, but not too long, and and this is to me is very important because the higher frequencies are easier to deal with. But if I find a good spot for a drum kit when I have a good full low-end without it being completely out of control. This is where I want to set up, only if the room is like big enough and you have a lot of like options. But that's something I really love to do and it teaches me a lot about the room and yeah, I just, I don't know, for some reason the low-end is what I would. I listen to mainly when I do that.

Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense, and the other advantage of something like a four tom or a kick drum is that, yeah, they have low-end. Which is their biggest benefit, because if you grab a snare there's not a lot of low end, right. Or if you strum an acoustic guitar, there's not a lot of low end. So it's harder to know if that's there. But even though it is a lot of low end on a floor tom, for example it still has all the rest. You know it still has top end. So you kind of get a full picture rather than a clap which is just top.

Yeah yeah, so you can do that. If you want to find a good spot for the drum kit in the room, that's one of the things you can do. And then, yeah, but I think, just get a feel for the room. I think just, you know, walk around there, just talk, you know play guitar, play a drum kit, whatever, and just get a feel for how the room sounds and really pay attention to that, because you can't get the room out of the recording. Really, it's always gonna be part of it and, as you said, malcolm, maybe there's ways to control a certain part of it or a corner of it or isolate certain things. But, like, put some thought into the room before. Like, yeah, not, not just worry, don't just worry about the gear, but also put some thought into the room. It's really, really important.

Yeah, no, it's great. One more pro tip. While you're walking around with that floor, tom, what you're hearing is where your ears are. Oh yeah right, not necessarily where the drum is, so you're, but that's important too, yeah. So you're hopefully gonna discover, you know, where to put a drum kit, for example, but you're also gonna pick up on spots that are a great place to put microphones right. So you can like, once you find you know your spot for your drum kit, have the drummer set up there and start playing and walk around and now you're finding your room mic spots with your ears right, so it you know, pay attention to it for instrument placing placement, but also for microphone place.

Totally, that's what we've done. When we recorded those, we recorded some drum samples on that houseboat in that studio and when Thomas was sitting down at the drums and hitting drums, I was walking around the room, or we were walking around the room just listening, for you know different aspects of, like different characters basically. So we were listening for where does the snare sound cool? Where do we get a lot of punch? Then there were spots in the room where it like sounded really thin. There were other spots where it sounded really punchy and had a lot of body, and we just Found spots that we think sounded cool and balanced and and it's. It's crazy how much of a difference it makes, even if just moving a few feet back or forth. It's like a world of a difference.

So yeah, totally. I found one spot just playing with a camera. I was filming you do something and I just like went into the sound. I was like, oh, we got to put something here and it sounded super big there. It was like a no-brainer. What one more tangent on this topic. It's really easy to look with your eyes and not with your ears when you're doing this and like we did this. Oh yeah, we saw we're on the house, though, and and like there's nothing wrong with looking with your eyes. You could find something cool that is out of the ordinary. I'll give one more example before I tell you our fail, but one more example is at Silver Side Sound, the studio down the road from me, there's like this big wine cask a huge barrel and it's got a hole in it that perfectly fits like an SM57. It's just like yeah, maybe amazing. Yeah, it sounds terrible. That is not a thing that would be usable. So looking with their eyes failed us there. You know, what failed us on the houseboat is that we saw these like cool, kind of like captain boat windows. They're like port windows with a big metal class. So we opened one up and threw a microphone outside the window, you know, out into this river, essentially hanging above it, and that didn't sound good either. It sounded like a river. No, it's just like this looks cool, but it looks cool, it doesn't sound exactly yeah, totally yeah.

So but still it can be. Sometimes you're lucky, right, you can have a good starting point, and then but, like you're totally right, don't, don't, don't stick with with the idea if it's just, obviously, if it just doesn't work. So okay, well now, learning the gear. Well, I think, when it comes to learning the gear, I think it just pays off to have some before you do that, before you go to a new room, if you know you're going to do that, if you booked for something like that, or if you plan on, like, getting new gear or building a new home studio, whatever you got, to have some basic signal flow knowledge and some engineering basic skills. Basically, this is really what you have to have. You don't have to be the best engineer in the world, you don't have to know everything, but if you know signal flow, like how sound enters, let's say, a channel strip and leaves it and where to send it and how things like that work, then you can operate most gear that's available. It might take you a while to figure it out, but most pieces of gear have some sort of input, some sort of output and something in between. And if you have some basic signal flow knowledge, if you know, like, the difference between a mic level, a line level and a DI input, and you know how a channel strip in general works, how a preamp works, what's a preamp, what's a converter, what's a compressor and where to put these in the chain. You're good. This is just something I think everyone needs to learn at some point. And yes, of course, many setups these days are very simple, but still, you're going to run into situations where somebody wired something wrong or like they connected stuff the wrong way. And yeah, that's where you have to have these skills. So in our example, I was sitting down at this desk I wanted to check out the monitoring, like the monitors that they had there, and I turned on the monitor controller and it was like crazy noisy and I'm like, hmm, I can't believe this, I can't believe this. Like this monitor controller is that noisy? Because we knew the monitors, it wasn't them. So I was like I can't believe they were listening to it like that. Like something's got to be wrong and I didn't see it in the beginning. But then at some point I saw that they were plugging in from the Apollo, from the interface lineouts which is correct, not into the line ins of the monitor controller, but into mic prees, because that monitor controller also had mic prees in. It was an interface and a controller. So they were running out of the line and output into some additional mic prees and then into the monitors, which is completely unnecessary and just adds noise and a weird stereo image. So I just we just unplugged it, put it into the line inputs of the monitor controller and then we had clean monitoring. So things like that, right, you never know, and you might run into something like that and the person working there before you they might not have known and just yeah, they've done it the wrong way. And then you have to solve it.

Yeah, you can't really assume that whoever was in there before you knows what they're doing. And yeah, that was kind of a perfect example. It was like what the heck is this Exactly, Exactly?

This isn't good and just these basic skills knowing the different types of levels and connectors. Even if you put your own setup together, you buy new gear, no matter which interface you choose or which piece of gear. If you know that stuff you can set up anything because all of it will have the same types of inputs. They might be labeled a little differently or look a little different, but like it's always the same. You always have mic inputs, line inputs, instrument inputs. Somewhere in there is a converter and in front of that is a preamp and then you send it to the computer. And as long as you know those basic things you can handle anything. It doesn't matter what the interface looks like.

Absolutely. And then, yeah, knowing, like the first thing I do you've mentioned, the first thing for you is the room, and that makes total sense. But for me my anxiety gets the best of me and the first thing I do is figure out the IO interface, IO and monitoring and make sure something can be recorded into the computer.

Yeah, probably not a bad thing to check.

Something.

I want to record.

It gets recorded Like I patch a channel and I test it and then if I can see it and I can hear it, and then also that they can hear it, like the monitoring is set up correctly for the musician that's going to be recording. Those are my priorities and I'll like I would notoriously show up way too early for this because I just like can't handle doing that stuff with the client in the room, so stressful to me. So just I would want to be there as early as possible, like a few hours early, and just hey, this is this working. Like you know, might only take, might not take any time, might just work right off the bat, but I'm like, ah good.

Yeah, totally yeah. Can you imagine us walking like, taking a client with us on that houseboat and doing what we did? I mean, it wasn't our fault that it was that way and it, we made it work and the gear was amazing. The studio is cool, all of that. But whoever was before was there before us. They, you know, did a few, let's say, unconventional things, running preamps into preamps and into other preamps. So the that one thing wasn't the only thing that happened. So imagine bringing a client in there, assuming everything works, and then you have to do what we did, basically re-viring the studio like half a day for half a day or something. This wouldn't it's unacceptable.

Yeah, really yeah. And you need to know that, like more than just the computer side of it. You need to know the patch bay, you know. If there's like a or a patch bay or a snake in like another room, you need to be able to be like okay, well, I'm going to throw the kick in one. What does one translate to? On the computer side, you know, or on the patch bay, like it. It can get complicated pretty quick depending on how big the studio setup is.

Especially if it's not labeled.

So having that figured out.

Yeah, yeah, which it was not labeled.

Labels are good studio owners, please label yourself. Yeah it, yeah it, like it really can just kind of destroy your session, and that is no. You don't want people tired and exhausted mentally before they even start recording by trying to figure out what the heck's going on with this rat's nest of cables and that includes yourself, by the way.

We not just talking to producers who work with other people. If you are preparing your own sessions, set up your own home studio. You will be tired yourself, Like you don't want to do that as well. You want to set yourself up for a pleasant experience in the session, and I've seen it so often when people set up their studio, then they don't walk in for a while and then they come back, want to record something and then they don't remember what they did. They didn't label anything and they have to figure it all out again. So don't be that person Like make it easy for yourself Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, make it easy for yourself. The best time to do it is the night before. Yeah, hands down, if you can do a setup day or a setup session, you know, like the night before or the day before or whatever, just get in there, mock things up, have mics on stands already and just like know that you're going to walk in and turn it on and it's going to be good to go. That's the best. That's ultimate, but not always possible. Yeah, document everything.

Also make checklist, label it. You know, don't assume you're going to remember, because sometimes we think, oh, that's stupid, Of course I'm going to remember that. And, trust me, sometimes when I thought that, like half an hour later, I couldn't remember. So you know, it's like there's often these small things where you're like yeah, I'm not stupid, I'm going to, of course I'm going to know that, but no, next day chances are you don't know anymore, and so just label it, write it down, do something Like yeah, it happens to me so often.

We literally had like, yeah, our snakes were mismatched with our patch bay at this houseboat recording studio. So we were like constantly like, yeah, seven is 10 and eight is two, right. And then like, yeah, we got that. And then we just completely forget, of course, because that's impossible to remember.

It makes sense of you know.

And then rename it in the computer. That's another thing we didn't do right off the bat, where we were like, okay, well, we could just make this, we could just be able to read our IO and our computer to make it work. But we will remember and then say, okay, yeah, 30 minutes later let's read that yeah, exactly Exactly. I got one great horse story yeah, or like not a horse story. But I started renting a different studio because I've usually operated out of like the mothership model, I would say where I have my mixing and mastering suite, here I can do some overdubs here. But when I was producing bands I would take a band into a studio, rent a studio to do drums and you know big setups. And then we started with a new one in the city close by and first day get the keys go in. I've been given a tour and kind of know what's going on a little bit, but I didn't get the password for the computer. Shit. So I fire it up and I can't even log in to the open Pro Tools. I was just like, oh no, and you know we're doing an early start it's like six in the morning or something and can't reach the owner. He's not awake.

Oh god, oh god.

Yep, we just, you know, we did make the best of it. We just, like you know, got the instruments tacked real good, set up all the mics and I knew I had the patching into the interface correct and all that kind of thing, but I just needed to be able to open Pro Tools. So bad, yeah, oh god, and I couldn't.

Yeah, See, that's so funny. I heard an interview once with Steve Albini, you know the guy who runs everything analog still to the state, only tape and no computers and nothing. And he said once he entered, like they do digital recording at his studio, but it's not him who does it, they're other engineers. They provide that opportunity, that option, but he just works on tape. And he said once he ran into a session in one of their studios and there were a bunch of musicians in there and the producer and engineer and everyone. They weren't doing anything, they were just sitting there and he was like what's going on? Like aren't you making a record? And then one of the guys said, well, we have to wait because someone forgot the dongle, you know, the iLok or whatever. And we got to wait until he's back with the dongle and then he just laughed out loud. It was like there's a room full of musicians and produces engineers and you can't make a record because someone forgot the fucking dongle.

You know like this is, yeah you know, yeah, there's definitely these moments where you're like a tape machine is way more reliable. Yeah, exactly.

I still wouldn't want to use one, though. But yeah, I mean I would, but like only in certain situations. Okay, so things like that happen, and so be prepared, be early, you know, do all that One of the things we just said Also, I think I put on the list here 80, 20, everything. What I mean by that is you don't sometimes you don't have to make everything work. Make sure that the bare minimum is working. Basically, like you said, malcolm, make sure you have the, make sure that signals arrive at the computer and something can be recorded. If you can't get whatever fancy thing to work, who cares? Like it would be nice to have, but like the basics should be covered first. And so make sure, like whoever is going to be playing or singing, that they have no latency on their headphones. Make sure that that you actually record signal and it's you have some kind of you know, clean monitoring. And do those things first. Like the 20% they give you 80% of the results and only if there's time worry about the rest. But don't get caught up, like you know, trying to patch in the fancy compressor or whatever you have there before you. Make sure that the basics work. Like 80, 20, everything, absolutely yeah.

Absolutely, um, I I think every studio that I've personally set up a rental for has always agreed to let me come by for like an orientation in advance. So take advantage of that, ask for that. They, they, they want you to succeed in there and rent it more, so it makes sense for them to invest some time in showing you how it's set up. That's 100%.

And, by the way, the best is when you rent out a studio. So and I I know that the majority of our listeners probably are not producers who rent out of the studios all the time, but who knows, you might be in a situation like that at some point. And I just want to say the best is when you got really good staff at the studio, when they have a really good studio assistant or someone who's going to be at least for the setup present there and shows you the patch, make sure everything's working and they know what they're doing. And those people like this is completely underrated Like those guys or girls can make or break a session. They are rock stars Like if they, if there's a good assistant who knows their way around the patch bay and knows how to fix things, knows how to get you know whatever you need, makes the session so much more pleasant. And I've had that a few times where I was so grateful that someone was present during the setup. And and yeah, those people don't get in, don't get the credit they deserve sometimes because they make it happen, even like the big producers, sometimes they go into studios. They would be lost sometimes without the staff doing a lot of the setup work for them, so 100% 100%.

Yeah, I think even more so. Actually, at that level they're like you know, they're just expecting it to work. Yeah, yeah, that's a great note Cool.

Also. Now, the next thing is one thing we skipped here, basically is don't just listen to the room and don't just figure out the gear both are important but also figure out, like, listen to the players in that room and the instruments you have available. Like you could. If you walk into a new room or if you set up a new jam space, things might sound different compared to where you were last and maybe you need to tune the drums differently now. Maybe you've always done it a certain way that has always worked for you, but now in the new room, everything's different because of the acoustics. It's crazy how that changes. Same with amps you might have a certain setting that you always liked in your jam space and that's the way you play, you record or whatever. If you take that same amp and cap to a new room, completely different. And then the players themselves too. Maybe you bring in a new person or somebody new joins the band or I don't know, but every player sounds different. So also take that into account. And everyone who's ever played live in more than one location knows that a setting on your amp that worked one night might totally fail the next night, depending on what the stage sounds like and all that. So yeah, consider that as well and assume that whatever you did last time is going to work in the new room.

So it's always different 100% and studios have secret weapons was this is actually like my favorite part about walking into studios looking for the secret weapons. If you're like, if you follow any of your local studios pages and you notice that there's always the same Mike setup on something. There's a really good reason for that. Yes, you know, they always have the same room like setup. It's because that's their frickin spot, you know, they know that this Mike and that spot is like nine out of time, nine out of ten times, success, yes. And. And then you might even notice other things like, hey, how come every band that goes in there uses the same symbols? It's because the studio has some symbols that they're like these work here, these really work. So I go snooping. I go snooping, I find their snare rack and I'm like, oh, this one looks the cleanest because, or has the most fingerprints on it. That's the snare. That's the snare that we're probably gonna keep on reserve when we find out that the drummers own snare has this crappy skin on it, or or just sucks, yeah, or there's a symbol bag. Whoo, more simple choices. You know stuff like that.

Yeah, don't let your ego get in the way there as well, because you know, just because you might know what you're doing and you might have a favorite way of doing things. But again, in a new room and new environment, things might be different and if there's someone, even if that person is not as experienced as you are, but if they know that room, in that studio and they tell you that something always works in there, give it a try. You know, just do it. I've heard an interview once with Joe Ciccarelli, which is, you know, he's one of the biggest producers ever and he's worked on some some, you know, very, very big major records and that we all love and and he's a genius. But he said once, when he goes, he was asked like where his favorite spot To put the drums in in any room, where it was like, is they asked like where? If you walk into a room, where do you put the drums? Like, is it the corner, is it the center of the room? Is there any favorite thing? And he said I start with whatever the assistant or the runner or whoever is there tells me.

To do.

That's what I start with, because they've been on a lot of sessions in that Studio and they know what a good place to put the drum kit is and they know which mics they set up. And I'll start with that and if I don't like it I'll change it. But I always listen to those first. And he could be like, well, I know, because I've made all these Grammy winning records right, but no, he just does whatever they tell him because they know that studio.

So yeah, yeah, provided this is a symbol. That studio that has put out good work. Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. Yeah, you got it. Yeah, I'm on me once and I regret it. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

But assume I always assume first that, like you know, people kind of know what they're doing. It's not always the case, but yeah, at least give it a try and Absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah, no, it's a no-brainer. Another like red or not red flag opposite of red flag in the leading indicator that it's a good decision is like you know, if there's like one cab that looks permanently set up, it's already mic'd. You know like, okay, I always got the you know the tape marks for where they put their mic. It's like that's a good sign. You know, keep that in your back pocket.

Yeah, absolutely. And then, finally, you want to be able or not, finally like you do that as one of the various things. But and rightfully so I think you should Figure out a spot in the room or a way to like monitor properly. Could be a pair of headphones, could be A spot for the monitors, but just in a new room, it's very important to find a way to monitor that Feels kind of familiar, because that is always something that's the one thing that always gets me when I get into new room. That's always tricky, and the same was true on that houseboat. They had, you know, they had great monitors there. They had atoms that I'm used to because I have similar ones not the same but similar. They had Neumann monitors. You are more familiar with those, malcolm, but still they are not the exact models that we use and it's a different room, and so we are kind of. You know we couldn't fully trust the whole system and, yeah, it was without headphones. It was very difficult for me to make good decisions just because of the different monitoring environment. So I'm glad I brought my headphones. That made things easier. But it's, yeah, it's very important that you create some way of like yeah, being able to listen to something that you can trust and that feels familiar.

Absolutely brings them. Bring some headphones. I'm a big fan of bringing some treatment. If you're not using up like actual studio, you know if you're just converting a space, you know you need just something to make a work or makes treatment out of whatever you need to kind of thing For that environment. You need to know that you can make decisions right. So monitoring is very important to me totally absolutely cool.

And then, malcolm, you have a list there as well of things where when you put like pre-production includes studio prep, you know, and all the things you can ask for in advance before you even go to that new room, if it's a studio or a gem space that you go into and you're not creating your own totally, and some studios will have this like listed on their Website actually already.

Some will have like the document saved. So it's not actually that big of an ask. It seems like a big ass, but and you could just save this as a template email, really easy. But I'll just list them off because we kind of touched on a bunch of these really but like get an IO sheet, you know then. So that's gonna like they're available, inputs and outputs and kind of patch based structure, ideally a Gear list so you know what they have for microphones, stands, compressors, eqs, input like preamps, all of it. You know a gear, how many headphones they have, you know, like that stuff can be really important. Ask what's broken, because we'll send you that gear list and forget to tell you that four of the eight preamps don't work. Yeah, or they only work if you use a certain cable or some stupid thing you know, yeah, ask what's broken. That's because, yeah, you're.

You don't want to like write down your entire plan and then find out that you can't use it or Think sorry, or you think you broke a mic and that kind of freak out for two days until you figure out it was just the back cable and the mic is actually not broken. I can argue.

What you're talking about.

No, but you know things like that could happen. You know, if you just ask for things, that are broken.

So, yes, 100%. No, that's great. I think you know inquiring about what kind of computer you're using I think is wise, just in case you're like think I don't know. I think that's just wise to know what you're working on. You know login details, like is the iLok included or do you need to bring your own? That's like some studios operate. Like bring your own license, which is crazy to me. Yeah, that is a thing. Plug-in list you know it's. Some people need certain plugins for the workflow, yeah, which is fine. So, but you need to know if they're there. Or, again, bring your own license and do that. Time the prep will include Installing plugins that you need. Yep, that's, yeah, that's a thing. Oh, here's another good one ask for photos of the room, and this works. This is like doubly important if it's not an actual studio, I think. But like this will give you such a good idea of like plotting out how you're gonna set up the band in that space in Advanced. And also, you know, plugins or photos can give you more like idea of what gears actually there, because gear lists, notoriously, are out of date. Yeah, so you might see some stuff in the photos that might be there, you know might have been brought in for that session, but gives you a good idea. And and also what instruments are available and if they need to be rented or if they're included in the price. That's huge as well, yeah 100%, yeah, big, yeah.

So what can we say to the people who are like well, we, we will probably never, you know, rent out a studio or go to like to do anything like that, like the DIY bands, which is a big part of our audience, like what I mean? Most of that still applies, as I said, if you build your own studio, if you, you know, switch jam spaces, whatever. Most of this applies, but is there anything else we could? We could tell those people.

Well, I mean, I think the big benefit of this episode actually is that I hope that some people that don't have studio setups or Rooms large enough to record drums or something have not been like, oh, I could just rent a studio if we wanted to try that with my band and that, like that's huge. Yeah, do that, you can. You're from learning the stuff You're learning on this podcast and maybe through Benny's coaching and our courses, is making you a producer. So you don't need to own a studio, you can just go use one.

Yes, absolutely. And yeah, if you want to learn those like signal flow basics, engineering basics that I was talking about, the necessary stuff, you can take our mixed ready course like this is a not too big of an investment. You can do that. It will get you up to speed, and so this prepares you for situations like that. And if you want to take it further and really know what you're doing and be like become a producer in a way, or your own producer for your Own records, but then also, who knows, you might collaborate with others or record your friends, like I did, then apply for coaching and you know that's exactly what we do here. So this is the way you learn these basics and and yeah, there's, there's some there's a minimum requirement of skills that you just need to have in order to Make situations like that work, and many people are lacking these skills and, yeah, you have to have them. Cool, all right. Thank you for listening to this episode. Let us know if you have any questions, as always, and yeah, we'll talk to you next week.

Absolutely. Yeah, hope you enjoyed this. Bye.