Ep.7 Evan Morgan | LevelsFM Music Production Podcast - YouTube
[Music] [Music] what is your name and or your alias my name is evan morgan and uh i don't actually use an alias i've never really had a name for a studio or a production alias or anything i just kind of like to use my own name so evan what i love it and where do you currently reside i am currently in vancouver bc in canada
love it me too um if i met you in an elevator and i didn't know you and i do know you but if i didn't know you and i asked you what you did what would you say you do um before i used to call myself a producer um but i've kind of switched recently i say that i mix music or that i'm a music maker um sometimes just just because of you know the way that i'm working with music these days music maker i like it yeah um [Music] are you ready for the lightning round let's do it i love it everybody says that so cool so confident what is the best song of all time oh well if i'm if i don't think about it the first thing i popped in my mind was was prince song of some kind maybe purple rain by prince yeah that's i don't know if you can see the purple back there but i i have just
a little little hint of purple in all my studios just to kind of make me get in the prince that's great why why would you say that uh why would you i just i think it's it's that perfect combination of uh songwriting and aesthetics um you know there's certain songs that you can tell the craftsmanship of the songwriting and the and the you know the expertise of the songwriter is there and then there are some songs that are you know perfectly perfect aesthetically but you know the songwriting might be here or there and i just think that's a really good combination of you know the aesthetic presentation of a really really good song that's a great point i love it and and the aesthetic uh of the artist maybe too right yes well it all kind of plays into it you know the aesthetic is is something that you know as when i was producing more that was something i really try to kind of find and and bring to a project was you know because the song is the song
and the notes are the notes and the chords of the chords and the melodies the melody but like how are we going to aesthetically present this you know is with something as simple as like you know an acoustic guitar going to lead the chord changes or is the piano going to lead the guitar changes and and and you know is more of a guitar band or more of a synth piano kind of band and you know the aesthetics are such a huge aspect of the presentation and i just i don't know there's something about prince and his aesthetics that just really you know the drum machines and the keyboards and right vocal presentation and you know yeah i like it that's great great answer i'm a big fan of presentation and design uh who has the best voice of all time again first thing that came to mind freddie mercury uh just popped right into my head um yeah i just his his dynamics and his range and his and his uh yeah maybe just more his his dynamics and his ability to do
anything from rock ability to to opera is uh you know it's pretty hard to beat that's great and for listeners that don't know what you mean by dynamics what do you mean by dynamics i don't really mean like loud and soft per se i just mean more like dynamics uh of vocal chops you know there's okay there's belters and there's and there's you know lots of head voice kind of falsetto kind of singers um and there's certain artists that do certain things exceptionally well you know like michael jackson or or justin timberlake for that kind of thinner sound and and but i don't know he just had the dynamic ability to pretty much do whatever he wanted and he showcased it all the time you know which was really interesting because a lot of singers are exceptional but the music that they choose to make it kind of sinks them into a certain vibe and they don't really have the ability to to play as much as some freddie mercury
did with right music i love a great answer so like dynamics and delivery or yeah and and performance and presentation and you know also volume but also tonality you know doing more of a nasal thing versus a super chesty round thing right that's great i love that uh who is your favorite musical group or band banned i this is this is a obscuring um but right now at this very moment there's a band a duo from l.a called the midnight which i've just been listening to non-stop and it's just a throwback 80s synth pop synth wave kind of synth pop vibe um kind of cheese ball 80s like old movie soundtrack 80s but yeah the midnight um that was the last concert i saw before kovid and uh it's going to be the first concert i see postcode i i've got tickets to see them uh in november here at commodore so full
circle i love it yeah um who would be your dream collaboration hmm i mean again if i'm just going for the first name that popped into my head uh the weekend would be one that i would really dig um i just you know talking about what we're talking about with aesthetics and vocal performance and that kind of stuff i just i think that would be something i could have a lot of fun with for sure i love it well let's put that out into the universe uh laptop or recording studio ooh laptop um and it's it's kind of this has been an interesting thing for me um if we if we get into you know history and and and kind of my my journey through through music there was a time um when i started traveling a lot and i would um travel to to record and i was down in
l.a and i was in toronto and in vancouver i was kind of had this little triangle i was just doing a couple times each each year and uh just being able to bring a laptop with me and abandon vancouver that i had finished up oh we need some changes to the mixes and you know well let me pull it up and get that done for you rather than i'm gonna have to wait i'm not home for another month so you know that's just the flexibility of having a laptop and running everything off a laptop and i currently um i have a studio computer like i have a permanent room and i have for a couple years now um and it's just just mine and everything's set up exactly the way i like it and i have a studio computer but i use it i just i just bring my laptop and i plug it into the dock and i have everything docked and you know uh i have a nice monitor and all my interfaces and all that kind of stuff and then uh work all day and then i unplug it and i take it home um just because i was trying to sync my laptop and my computer so that every day when i finished work you know everything would be synced i just got too hard to
keep it in sync right and uh for the way that i'm working and and you know the way that i have my laptop set up i can run 80 channel mixes easy without bennett and it doesn't seem to be a problem so laptop i get it i'm with you i mean i love recording studios but the laptop's just so convenient yeah well there's you know what the big thing i've been getting into the last couple years is uh workflow and you know the the music making comes from the workflow yeah and having the studio helps with the workflow so having you know a bank of knee preamps or or a couple 1176s in the rack is nice and it helps with the workflow but the music comes from the workflow it doesn't come from the studio you know and if the workflow um is is benefited from the mobility of a laptop and the music
is better because of it then you know that's that's what wins and that just seems to be the way things have been going for me for the last and for well obviously for for most musicians i think for the last five to ten years and especially in the last 18 months that's just been wrapped up our workflow has been sort of foisted upon us okay i'm just writing down that quote the music comes from the workflow yeah well you know the music comes from it just it comes from the people it doesn't come from and and the people being able to work as best as they can whatever way that is you know for some people it's a very specific piece of gear right in front of them or a specific set of speakers um but but just setting yourself up to be able to um create like that is is what gets gets the job done and for a lot of people it's just on a computer they're comfortable with with software they're comfortable with right and they can just
you know off they go yeah there's less technology to get in the way yeah um what is your favorite audio effect like delay reverb eq compression saturation probably actually which is funny because a lot of my clients comment on how clean and polished and professional my mixes are but i use a lot of saturation on things and and and a lot of it is subtle saturation but it's kind of ends up on almost everything um so i feel like if i even before eq i feel like i could get a mix really close to where i want with just a really good tonal saturator that's all right so that's kind of my my main thing i think well maybe that will be the answer to your next question what's your favorite plug-in um no that's not the answer because my favorite plug-in is uh the fabfilter eq
the pro-q3 that one is hard to hard to beat it's just a really functional eq i can move really quick on it i like the dynamic features i like that i can right you know if i'm sinking i need some dynamic control i don't have to reach for a compressor i can kind of just like it's just this band that i want i just want it to happen you know at these certain moments so let's just put a little dynamics onto my eq move there and move on what did we do without dynamic eq before how did we we eq'd and then we compressed and then we eq'd again and then we compressed some more and you know just kind of smashed things until they uh until they uh you know sounded the way we wanted [Laughter] um which song sounds great oh which song sounds great um i'm just trying to think of like a mix
that i've listened to recently that i've been totally like blown away by um you know though i like i like a lot of the way the weekends new stuff sounds um there's a there's actually an an engineer a guy named taylor larson who does more like super heavy bands but he's also i feel like kim and i would have similar aesthetics that you know we kind of dip back into our nostalgic 80s and early 90s kind of vibes and and he's got a band called the evening who have some really really interesting and polished sounding mixes that i like a lot so the evening the midnight and the weekend i'm starting to see a uh a pattern if your band doesn't if your band doesn't have the in front of it you're not cool uh that's the end of the lightning round what did you think the lightning round oh it's good man good questions get you uh i guess i wasn't that fast with my lightning a lot of my answers most people aren't it's it's it's kind of uh a misnomer i think
um okay so i want to get into uh everything i have so many questions for you we haven't seen each other in a long time and and uh it has been a long time and i know that you've done a lot of great stuff and um so we can go down whatever whatever rabbit hole we end up going down but let's go way back to the beginning and sort of tell us where where you were born and yeah sure and an early musical memory okay well i was born in lethbridge alberta um and i'm not i don't really have a musical family at all nobody in my family plays any instruments or you know parents or grandparents or or but but uh my dad was a big music fan so we always had music on he he was big into the blues and and rock and roll and you know stones and eric clapton and bruce springsteen and that kind of you know dad rock kind of stuff um but he would
always put on the music and we would move the coffee table out of the middle of the of the living room and and just kind of dance around and you know and that's i feel like a lot of my musical sensibilities come from falling in love with the records that might i'd like right like bruce springsteen and prince and those things um and then i started playing music as a kid just you know typical piano lessons and and that kind of stuff switched to guitar when i was in high school because it was cooler and started a band in high school and uh tried to do some recording and you know this is the stereotypical start for an engineer is is you know didn't like the way the recordings were doing so let's look into how i can do it myself cool um and i got one of those little uh porta studios it was a it was you know those roland uh you know studios that are little hard disk recorders that they had back in the day right it was a boss one it was a little four track one um and i just started
making demos in our little rehearsal space that and uh you know got interested in it and then um the band that i was with at the time got an opportunity to record down at full sail in uh florida oh wow so there was a student down there that was a fan of our band and talked to his instructors and said if i can get this band down here like maybe we could do like a whole project thing so we me and the guys loaded up in the van and we went all the way down to florida and played a couple shows along the way and it was just a really fun kind of summer i think this was the summer between high school and university it might have been the first year university um and uh and anyway so we went down to full sail and that was kind of my first like oh wow this you could actually like do a thing out of this because it wasn't um you know a little little porta studio or a little inbox or something they you know they sell consoles and and and these kids uh it was pretty much one song each each uh class in the in the program would would
do one song and so we left there with six recordings from six different stores with different you know classes and you know learning how to set up drum mics and all that kind of stuff so that was kind of my introduction into education of of uh engineering and then we got those mixes back and they weren't any they weren't pretty awful so i got the the student to send me the the dvds of of all the pro tools sessions and uh i was going to university in lethbridge i was taking the pre-med actually i was taking biology and for my electives they had some music courses and some they the new media department and the music department got together and made this kind of music technology course it wasn't really like a recording course but it was more like they had a little studio room that had like a little voice over dead room and they had a pro tools set up um and they had a couple computers with little inboxes the original you know blue
tall inboxes and uh so i kind of you know was was doing that as my electives just trying to learn more about recording and and so these these dvds came from full sail of our songs and our approach sessions and me digging into those and just trying to figure out how to make them sound the way i wanted um was really kind of what got all this going and then um you know i kind of had a little identity crisis and and said you know do i really do i want to try and do something with this or do i want to just keep going with you know because i was looking at med school up in edmonton there or well if the university were kind of my two you know once i finished pre-med then i'd go there and it's kind of is this really what i want to do and so i started looking at audio schools which at the time there weren't a ton i know there was metalworks in toronto uh and then there was full sale which cost a million dollars it was ridiculous right and so i just couldn't justify you know spending that amount of money on audio education so i ended up finding a
school in england of all places uh in manchester um and it was an 18-month program and it wasn't fair i think it was like four grand four four thousand pounds or something so it was you know almost a two-year program so it was it just seemed like more of a doable thing um so in my early 20s i moved out to manchester on my own and and joined this audio school and and just kind of tried to figure it out and that was started my my whole thing out you know went to to patty is where i met you but i i at this audio school in england which was called the school for sound recordings uh ssr um i got there and because i had already um taken some music classes in university i i knew a little bit about recording and you know running pro tools and that kind of stuff and so i talked to the principal at the school and said you know if i'm one of the more advanced students
um maybe you know i could help you know do some interning or do some you know teaching assistants or something like that and so they essentially gave me keys to this place and you know said just keep an eye on the other students and help them with you know their studio time and and if anyone has any questions or whatever and so i did that during the day and then i had keys to this place at night and they would let me go out and find bands in manchester and bring them in and record demos or record eps or whatever so i just spent the tears there going to school during the day recording bands at night getting like four hours of sleep waking up to go to class at 10 in the morning the next day and and uh yeah by the end like we were literally there was just the overnight sessions we would just you know start at eight o'clock when the school shut down and we would go till late in the morning and then it was uh and i you know recorded lots of cool young bands uh lots of kind of rockier stuff indeed indie pop stuff some emo kind of you know hardcore bands
that were kind of big and messed at the time and and uh yeah that was kind of trial by fire for sure that was a lot of fun and uh right yeah and then once we finished or once i finished school and i graduated school um i kind of you know my student visa expired and i was a little bit like do i try and stay in england and and you know somehow get a visa or get you know try and get a job at a studio and get them to sponsor me for a visa or do i come back to canada and try and make a career here and i obviously chose the latter and um at the time toronto and vancouver were kind of the two spots that you go if you're in music so um i had a uh girl at the time that i was interested in that was gonna be in vancouver so that kind of solidified my decision there um moved to vancouver and started looking around for a facility that i could use and at that time i can't remember you know this is going to be late 2000s early 2010s i would guess
um you know that that was kind the start where the studios were um oh my computer's gonna the studios were all um not taking on full-time assistance anymore a lot of them didn't really have full-time engineers anymore so a lot of the studios that i went and chatted with you know they kind of said we can put you on the call list as an unpaid intern and if something comes up then we can call you um but you know that that wasn't really gonna gonna work because i didn't really know anyone in the city and and the one place that i ended up finding something was the pacific audio visual institute um and i had a friend like a one of my my parents friends that knew tom and somehow just put my name in the hat and he got you know when sat in his office i just played him some of the stuff i had made in manchester and and he was quite taken with me and he kind of said you know i don't have a studio
really anymore so i can't really offer you a studio job but i do have this school and if you want involved in the school then you could do that i kind of said that i'm not really that interested in education like i was in my early twenties i was like i just wanna make records you know i don't don't really wanna teach people how to make records um but uh they had the same kind of deal um that ssr in manchester did where you know it was all class during the day and the students had all access to the studios but then um there was no overnight sessions and there was no weekend session so the the faculty and you and sean cole and and me and and you know some of the other faculty were able to use the studios on the weekends and they were beautiful studios and so i took that gig knowing that i could use the studios and started to do the same thing i did in manchester find some bands in vancouver that i thought were cool and and say hey i have access to the studio that's you know we we have to work on weekends and needs but you know we can do a single or we can do whatever
and uh one of those bands was a band called in cura which um ended up this is what we did uh one the seeds competition the seafox seeds right local radio station local radio station had an annual competition um that you know had had turned into at the time it was kind of a pretty pretty big thing a lot of bands that had won it had done gone on to do pretty good things matt goodbenden and nickelback and and so you know it was it was a pretty well funded pretty pretty good uh gig and um so yeah that song did really well and that kind of started um kind of allowed me you know to to start working with lots of different bands that were either you know interested in in doing seeds in coming years or just had heard my work through through seeds and and so but it was yeah it was all all production stuff so kind of top to bottom pre-production songwriting and then get in and you know find a studio and either do it at patty when i was still there
and then and then when when that ended and and we left i you know we just rent out mushroom or rent out um the factory or or greenhouse studios which is on the road here uh rain city now um you know rent out studios for drums and and some things and then do some guitars and wherever and vocals and other studios and just kind of put records together that way how do you approach pre-production um it's mainly just with the songwriting um and that all kind of shifted um if i continue on the timeline uh let's see got signed to coalition records in toronto and um coalition is is run by a guy named rob lanny whose brother is arnold lanny and together they kind of launched uh our lady piece and finger 11 and simple plan and a lot of these bands uh rob doing the management label stuff and uh aren't doing all the
the production and and songwriting and all that stuff and uh so in kira got hooked up with coalition and coalition wanted them to go down and uh work with arn um as a producer but part of our agreement was i would do their single for nothing um assuming that once they did you know get signed and that i would go along and i would do the record so they kind of had this agreement with me and they they wanted to work with arn um and so they were you know kind of hesitant and they called me and they said uh you know we got this opportunity to work with our delaney and like you know we i know we have the screen with you so like what can we do about this and i i want to meet our own like just bring me along like i'll i'll just sit in the corner man i don't even say anything like just just take me down there and uh and so i learned a lot about production from arnold um because uh
he he he's a songwriter first and foremost and he is a very good producer and a very good engineer um everything he does stems from the song and the melody and so approaching pre-production in terms of you know what are the notes you know what are the chords that you're actually playing and what are the notes that you're trying to sing over the you know and then everyone else kind of stems from that like i said you know the aesthetics and the arrangement and you know are we gonna have you know quad-tracked guitars here with an octave guitar at the middle like that doesn't really matter until you know what the notes are um and what you're yeah so that that was one thing i learned from aaron that i i didn't know before because um you know on my own as a as a you know self-made producer without any kind of mentor most of my background was in the engineering side so i would approach things um technically and i would you know try and record things and make things sound as good as they possibly could and i you know i had written songs and i was in a
band and i you know i i play piano and guitar and singing so like i had a little musical sense but everything i was approaching it was all you know we've got to get these drums to sound amazing before thinking like okay what are the parts that we're actually even playing here you know great so great yeah that's so true it's like i like you i started from the engineering perspective so it's almost like you know you've got these great sounds and you're trying to make this song sound great when you're mixing it and something's just not right and then you kind of realize oh the the melody's wrong or or that's that bass note although it works would completely change the song if it was actually this bass note like you don't you haven't really looked at the key elements of the song until the you know you're in the mastering room going there's something not right here but that's that's such a great thing and i can totally relate to that too yeah yeah i know and that's that's like iron
i learned so much from him and it was such a funny interaction because um the first phone call i had with him is he he he's the sweetest dude but he can be a little um confrontational sometimes and uh he uh he called me up and he said so i hear we're uh working on this record together this new incura thing and i said yeah i i guess so he's like cool so who are you and i said oh i i'm evan i'm uh i'm evan morgan i i you know did the single for the the last band and and uh you know they're they're hoping to bring me down and he's like cool i've never heard of you that yeah that's that's understandable i yeah i i totally so there was a little bit of you know and so i'd all i think i just had to reassure him that it's like you know i at the same i was the same age as the the band like we we came up together so this wasn't any kind of like you know we're all excited to the prospect of working with you and learning from you and seeing what you can bring so it's not going to be like a
you know who's wearing the top hat kind of thing and um so it you know after that conversation it all worked out really well we went down to california he was down there he had recently moved from toronto to california moved his family down there and he had built a studio down there and it was kind of fortuitous because he um had been trying to find an assistant he had a long time assistant in toronto um but he was trying to find an assistant in california for like the two years that he was down there and he just never found someone that worked he works you know he's he's kind of a uh particular guy and he's he's got some idiosyncrasies that you know i i think are a little challenging for some people and and uh yeah he just he just wasn't able to find someone that that helped him you know complemented his workflow and allowed him to do what he does right and me going down there and i kind of took on you know like like we were saying more of the engineer role because that's how i was coming kids all the time anyway and that allowed him to just kind
of sit at the back of the room and just focus on the songwriting and the production and you know he didn't have to worry about you know getting the tones or anything like that and uh yeah it worked out really well and we did that record for coalition and then we ended up i just stayed down there and we ended up doing five or six or you know a whole bunch of records together over the course of a couple years um and sometimes i'd come back to vancouver to do some records here and and then he would get a project and he'd fly me down to california and i'd be down there for three months um sometimes we'd go to toronto if it was like a coalition thing um and uh yeah just learning from him it was again it was just such a perspective shift on on how to approach the creation of music or the creation of a record or the creation of a song you know and starting from the notes um and the melody and then building everything out from that you know like if you have a melody what chords complement that that melody you know you can sit on the same and just just pedal one one chord while that
melody moves and that has a very different feeling than you know a typical full chord sequence which has a very different feeling from more of a progressive you know kind of chromatic thing that moves around and that changes what the melody is even without changing the notes of the melody you know and then just kind of building everything off of that is it was just an interesting uh perspective because my own background in engineering and then some of the the mentors that i did have you know like like you or or or garth or or mike mike frazier you know just some of the guys that i had met here in hoover that all kind of come at things a little bit more from the engineering side you know seeing the fact that like none of the engineering matters at all until we focus on the song was just an interesting a different perspective you know and every project different and finding balance in between them you know because some projects i've worked on since working with arn don't need another song
you know songs are great and the players are great and what they need is is a producer an engineer um and then some song some some records do need another songwriter you know and that's kind of what they're they're looking for that and they've tried this producer and that producer and this producer that all kind of come at it from an engineering side they're not getting the things that they want because what they really need is a additional songwriter to come in and kind of help shape the songs um before getting into tones and whatever right yeah did you did you find that arn sort of had a vision in mind for the sounds he wanted and he explained that to you and you got them or did he sort of let you do it after a while maybe both um a lot of times he had a a very distinct vision about what he wanted a part to sound like but how we got there with the tones wasn't wasn't quite as concrete so he was definitely always down for experimentation um and
he like i said he always had an engineer so um when he was forced to engineer himself he kind of would just fall back on things that he knew and had tried before so he was always kind of keen to to hear different ideas um and i think that was part of his creativity too was was he would leave the room and say okay find a tone for this like you know guitar tone and have all the amps that we would want and all the guitar you know 12 guitars on the wall and just a just a you know drawer full of pedals and okay well let's let's find a tone and we'd end up with you know this guitar going into to this big muff into this you know filter thing into this vox amp and he would be like okay that's where this really good start can we get a little brighter can we get a little and we would kind of but coming into the room with something already set up would kind of spur his creativity a little bit you know 100 percent so i think i think he kind of once he knew that he could trust me with that he kind of leveraged that a little
bit and allowed to kind of because he would do that with lots of like keyboard patches all kinds of things he would just you know find something that's kind of buzzy it's like okay you know and then i'd i'd scroll through 150 400 you know patches and find something i thought was cool and then and then we could build from that right that's great because you know i'm sure you were getting amazing sounds but the more the hours tick on you're losing perspective he's out of the room and then he can just come in and go oh that's we need to do this this this and this and you're like sure love that yeah because you're so that perspective is is a big thing and he he was really careful with that you know like he would he would um he would leave the room a lot or he would he would take a break to go for dinner and come back and and that first listener that fresh listen was something that he found really sacred and i kind of still keep that now like especially when i'm mixing or you know that first it's because you can never get it back again you know you start to dig into things and you start to to get inside
things houston think oh yeah that is sound good but that that initial listen is what you know 90 of you especially if you're working with a new band or a less established artist that first listen is going to be what what 90 of the listeners are are getting you know right so like what does it make you feel within the first 25 seconds you know and and is it does it make you feel like this does it make you feel like this and and you can kind of lose perspective of that really quick too you know like it doesn't take listening to a mix for for four hours to lose your perspective or working on a song for a month to lose it you can it can happen within just a couple listens you know and you start to focus on individual things that the listener would never really focus on and oh i gotta i gotta dial in that tambourines two to piercing focus on that for the next hour you know like that perspective is like okay just sit back walk in the room listen okay what's what's going on with that vocal melody that's that's that's weird you know like we were here and now all of a sudden we're down here and we kind of lost a bunch of energy let's let's work on that
100 i i always tell people like when you're working in the studio i don't care what you think let's go grab some randos from the street and bring them in here and ask them what they think because they don't they're not going to talk about kick drums and snare drums and three kilohertz they don't know what any of those things mean they're either going to say the song's great or the song sucks or the vocals to the vocals probably not loud enough it's going to be something basic like that and that's going to be the truth and all the stuff that we're arguing about which should we use a keplinger snare what language are you speaking nobody nobody talks like that nobody cares about that stuff well and that's that's kind of why i keep using the word aesthetics because to me that's that's the way that i think about it that you know like it doesn't matter what the snare is or how the snares mic all that matters is does the snare sound aggressive does it make the song
sound more aggressive or does it make it sound like a certain era you know does it have that that 60s thud that kind of instantly makes you think oh this just kind of makes me think of a beatles song or uh or whatever you know like it's it's that aesthetic that that you're you're hunting for and then with there once you kind of know the aesthetic then you're like okay what snare is going to get me their best and what how should i make this up to get me their best but the whole like you know or those real amps are those kempers like i don't know you know it's all it is is that tone doing what you want for the song and taking the song in the direction that your intent is or that you're hoping it's going to take your listener on right you know and all of that stuff is super fun you know for sure of course but it's a it's a whole separate rabbit hole from the actual song speaking of arnold lanny and speaking of snare drums when it when you said arnold lanny the first time the first thing i thought of was that first our lady peace song i forget what it was called with that snare drum sound remember that pinky snare drum sound
like navigator probably again that was him um trying to find a uniqueness right because when he like and you know i i don't know how much i should speak on all this but but when he came across our lady piece and they were a bunch of young kids in in toronto trying to do something you know um one of the things he said and he always says to his singers is um if if you can't be amazing then be unique you know that's like if you can't be literally the best singer then just try and do something that is unique and interesting um and and that's you know like if you think of rain's voice like what he was doing with the the breaks and the yodels and and that kind of stuff was was so unique at the time yeah so aaron was just trying to okay well if that's my main character here what's going to happen around him that's going to
complement that uniqueness you know the guitar was really unique and in its delivery you know at the time when everything was was double tracked kind of heavy guitars it was kind of this you know single guitar line thing and the drums were unique in their recording and their you know playing even the beats you know like all that kind of syncopated god you know like it was just interesting beats that that weren't being played at the time so it was just trying to find that uniqueness that's great that's great perspective yeah when you walk me through that i can really see that it's really cool um do you have any favorite instruments i mean the the instruments i focus most on when i'm either producing or or now mixing is uh drums and vocals for sure um so drums are kind of
the foundation you know like i think of it as as the the set of the movie you know like the characters doing what he's doing um but is he doing it in a parking garage with you know burning cars is he doing it in a diner sitting down with you know ambiance around him and and the drums and the tonality of the drums and the aggression of the drums and the presence of the drums and the atmosphere you know the ambience around the drums like how roomy they are all kind of dictate that to me you know um so the presentation of the drum and the drums a lot of the um you know the nostalgic or the aesthetics to go back to that word again are are tied to the drums you know whether it's more of an 80s kind of vibe or a 90s you know kind of punk rock thing um like a lot of modern music now is is kind of pulling that nostalgia from you know that that late 90s pop punk kind of stuff so they you know they're using more
real real drums or real sounding drums a little bit more snare ring and a little bit more things so that's that aesthetic is coming from the tone of the drums and yeah there's some keyboards in there that are also giving it a little flare and and but the drums and the vocals are kind of the two star performers for sure i love that when you mix how is there a certain way you approach the mix do you sort of bring everything up and listen to it statically like all of the instruments or do you start with key drums and the lead vocals and and then get them going and then bring everything around it or or something totally different yeah it depends on the genre actually um because i i kind of i used to do like when i was producing it was mostly rock and variations of rocky you know indie rock or or heavier rocker um but as i've gotten a lot more into mixing i'm doing a lot more pop and i'm doing a lot of hip-hop and rap now
um which is is something that's that's unique and so depending on the style kind of depends on how i start the mix if it's a pop thing or anything you know pop pop rock pop hip hop you know pop anything i always start with the rough mix um because mixing has now become an extension of the production and um so rather than you know take a band that recorded all their bed tracks in a studio and you're starting from zero and trying to build a mix from that like a lot of times i'll actually get the producer to send me their pro tools session and i'll start my mix where they left off you know and i'll turn off plugins if i want and but but the idea of them giving me raw stems and me having to recreate a lot of these production things just doesn't make any sense so i'll usually start with a rough mix um and if if i don't have their session then i'll i'll listen to the song um top to bottom with their rough mix and then i'll start my mixing and it
usually starts with the drums and vocals um but i'll usually bring everything up and just kind of find that initial balance and then mute things down and just start with the rhythm section um or drums and then low end you know whether it's 808s or or bass and then start to bring in the the key instruments um you know whatever kind of the main instrument is and then the vocal will usually come back in at that point and then i start to bring in all the auxiliary instruments um uh but a lot of times especially lately i've been i've been getting uh instrumental mixes before i you know i keep bringing the vocal in just to kind of make sure things are going but i try and get a really solid instrumental and then uh then the vocal kind of comes in and the vocal becomes the main and then you start carving away at your your instrumental right to make room for the vocal but but yeah usually um start with the rough and listen to everything and then uh drum bass instruments vocals work your way up so let's say
we're we're i don't know how long it takes you five minutes 20 minutes two hours whatever and you've got your first rough mix pass up and it's listenable to you and now you're ready to sort of roll up your sleeves and dive in what's the what's the the gain structure like do you have plug-ins on your master already are they there from from the get-go or there's nothing on your master are your levels generally seeping into the red are they pretty nice and perfect or are they way down low where are you gain structure wise well again it depends on genre uh so i mix differently depending on you know what the goal of the of the album is um but most times i'll have you know like in in pop and and hip hop world i do i do have some templates that i that i lean on um and those will have a couple plugins on the master fader um but it's all pretty
mellow stuff um just like a little bit of saturation you know like a little channel emulator kind of thing um i don't really use a lot of eq on the mix bus just a standard batch compression you know just like a ssl style 41 little just a tiny little bit uh and i start with that on there and i mix with that on there all the time um and the structure like everything comes in way too hot now especially in the pop and hip hop world you know all the samples are limited um so i i end up pulling everything down by usually about 10 db from the clip level you know like before hitting plug-ins um and then i'm into plug-ins and um you know very like i mix pretty conservatively um level level wise um just uh just to keep things in a in a good gain stage kind of area
um and you know most of my faders usually live around zero to negative ten um and and so i'll kind of gain things clip level so that they can kind of live in that place if something was right you know printed at -20 then i'll i'll pop that way up so that it's hitting the plugins at the proper level and and you know i can use my faders at the proper level um but yeah a lot of times i'm i'm bringing especially instrumentals i have to bring them down 8 10 12 db just to even get started because they're all just cranky right so what he's saying here for people that don't understand is not on the fader level like when you see the faders in your daw he's not talking about bringing those down he's bringing it down way before that basically when it comes from the hard drive before it goes into the mixer or the first thing that it does as it goes into the mixer is he's bringing down these levels with either a trim plug-in in pro tools or or whatever
uh plug-in you're using has an input level or something and you're bringing everything down 10 db so that you can bring those faders up to a more reasonable 0 to -10 level which is where faders traditionally like to live you don't really want to have your faders at minus 20 and minus 30 down here a because it just doesn't look very cool and b because of the logarithmic nature it's a little tweaky down there so you want to get up near zero right yeah definitely yeah and it's again it's different for different styles because normally when i have live drums come in they're recorded at a level that's pretty good you know i can i can set the faders to to zero db or around there and and and the levels look okay but a lot of the sample based stuff um to come down and whether i'm doing it on the actual regions themselves so the actual blob of audio you pull right there's a little clip or like you said back in the day we always have first first plug-in on every single channel with a trim plug-in and you kind of set
the game stage there and then that feeds into your plug-ins and subsequent fader and subsequent master fader and all that when you're working with uh hip-hop stuff specifically but i guess you know all genres how do you deal with low end management how do you in the case of hip hop make sure that the 808 is as big as it can be do you put saturation on that too yeah definitely um now that that also comes back to the you know our conversation about the melody and the chords making sure right you know making sure you have the right 808 sample is is the the thing there all right and you know 808's have come become so ubiquitous um and and getting them getting the right aesthetic of the 808 a lot of times is kind of what makes or breaks these records aside from the vocal obviously you know the vocal and
the lyrics and that whole thing is is is what everyone's tuning in for but so much of the aesthetics like i was saying before that the drums used to be the thing that kind of dictated the aesthetics but now a lot of it's coming from the 808 is it is it super super low and super smooth and really warm is it is it distorted is it clipped you know is it that that weird kind of clipped trap 808 sound um that has its own unique flavor and is cool um so don't tell any of the artists i work with but there have been times where i've changed at the mixing stage because i was fighting an 808 for a long time and trying to get you know the low end out of it or trying to get it to speak through small speakers and it just was not a sample that was going to allow that to happen so right i'll find my own 808 and you know swap it out um are you changing the note of the 808 maybe yes that's another thing um so some one of the things that i think makes me
unique well not unique as a mixer but one of the strengths that i have that i lean on a lot is my musicality and my musical background um and the fact that i can play a lot of instruments and you know i can i can sing i sang with you know musical theater companies all through that was my job you know in university was was i would i would sing with these musical theater companies and you know would do these big kind of eight part harmonies with you know all information live on stage and and um so there are times where um a record will come in especially like a hip-hop record or or a you know more of a trap sounding record that um it's my thought in communicating with the artist that they did want a certain section to be more musical you know they're they're singing a melody and there's there's there's and um a lot of times the 808 doesn't follow the melody at all um and sometimes the 808 that the
producers will pick is a little discord with the chords that are actually going on in there and um you know so if it's like a e minor you know chord progression then they just have like a c sharp or a c uh you know just constant 808 just kind of going through no matter where the chords go um and sometimes that's cool and sometimes it's really really not so there are times that i will recreate the chord progression with a native pattern um to try and make the low end just have more of a musical character you know um right uh but but this this is pretty rare like normally i use uh i i try and take what i'm given and and and make it um just feature it in the best best presentation as i can um right and best closest to what i think the artist's idea for what they were trying to accomplish is um so low end uh a lot of it hopefully a lot
of it's already there so i'm not having to fabricate a live low end with the 808s but usually there is a decent amount of saturation that comes into play just to try and again make it speak on all different types of systems you know iphones and laptop speakers and little headphones that don't have any bass and and you know people are consuming media and all kinds of devices now it used to be you know just just the car and the some headphones and that was the two things that you would think about the car stereo and and the headphones but now maybe the boombox right yeah but even the boombox now isn't isn't a boombox like with two stereo speakers it's it's a little pill you know right either a mono signal or a really tear out of phase stereo signal um and yeah so just having to kind of think about how people are going to consume it and and just try and give it the best possible chance to to sound the way that
me and the artist and and the team and everyone wanted to sound on as many different systems as possible um which is a you know never never winnable battle right but you're just trying to you know do the best you can with it do you have a some references around your studio that you can listen to do you ever listen on your phone or your laptop or yeah so there's a plug-in i think it's audio movers um which is something you can put on your your master fader and it sends it out uh wi-fi and then you can instantly stream it on your phone or or you know a laptop or just different things and i i use that a decent amount just because not only is it you know bounce a file put it on my phone and then listen on my phone it's actually got the streaming con you know component in there too like right right which texts things more than you think simulates a codec kind of thing right codecs are a big a big thing you know i i i've been tasked to do a lot more mastering lately
um which isn't something that i thought i would be doing um you know i've always been more interested in just mixing records and and having but but being uh the final leg in it has also been something that i've done as well and the codecs are a big thing you know they really affect a lot you know the the loan information the high end information the the dynamics the the front to back depth you know um so trying to understand that and you know that that was another thing not the codex side but that's one thing i learned from aaron is is if you're gonna make a move you might as well make it bold um right so if i'm doing some reverb throw or something that i think is this really tasteful you know little moment of front to back ambience and then i listen you know through audio movers at a low bit rate on my phone streaming like it's it's gone you can't it's there's no the
reverbs just completely disappeared so it's kind of like you you reference that so that you know okay if i want this sound to be a part of the final presentation i need to kind of like really lean into it and just just go hard with it and make it make it a moment you know which is a good artistic sort of default anyway right yeah when you're if you're going to make a move make the move um by the way shout out audio movers the the plug-in's actually called listen to but everybody calls it audio movers but yeah great great plug-in it was uh super helpful during the pandemic and continues to be yeah yeah definitely um so let's talk about you as a as a performer so you said you you did all this singing in musical theater you played other instruments drums and guitars too yeah yeah so i started on piano as a kid um which i think is is kind of imperative i think anyone that is in any kind of music should at least take you know three or four piano
lessons just just for fun because it just just the layout of of the notes and the the way chords move and like i think of everything as in in piano terms now even even melodies you know i think of them in terms of of notes and and where they're all living um but yeah guitar drums um i've kind of over the years and i think a lot of producers end up like this it's kind of a you know i can play everything adequately will and there's a lot of times where you know uh there needs to be some base you know we we're using a synth base but now we need a real base and who's going to play that well i'll i'll play that's fine you know so i there's there's enough um understanding of the different instruments to to uh get something down on on record that that will work um i'm definitely not you know the the greatest at any of the instruments you know i wouldn't be ripping out a
you know forefront guitar solo on a record but you know if we need a little edge delay you know bouncing delay part or you know we need some some big chords or you know there's there's there's one local artist who's who's one of my favorite artists i work with a guy named in heart um and we've done a couple eps together but yeah we you know between me and him we just play all the instruments on the record you know and and he jumps around with styles from from rap and hip hop to to kind of rock and and pop and stuff and so the songs are always evolving as to what what they need you know um and it's it's fun to be able to to pick up all any of the instruments and just kind of uh put something down did you play live a lot yeah yeah so i i you know all through high school and into university i was i was playing um with all different things um singing and guitar mostly um and then you know live stuff with the musical theater companies um which was more of a you know go to
the theater and you know that kind of thing and then um not so much recently but there was actually a couple years ago there was a band i was producing that that they kind of roped me into uh being guitar player for them for a little while and that was it was really fun it was there's a band called marsalis and they're from seattle and and uh we had some some really good because you know i would end up playing some of the parts on the record or we would um you know because there was only one guitar player in that band and you know we'd end up just in terms of making the record we'd end up with you know some different guitar parts and let's have a high part way up here that's really cool and then they're like oh hey ps uh we got a show in three weeks so how are we supposed to play these parts like you're gonna have to come and play that guitar that you put in that's fun and uh yeah no they're and they they're not playing as much anymore um i think they've just with the pandemic and stuff they've kind of taken a back seat um but yeah they had some really good shows you know they they would we they had a couple sold out
shows at the crocodile down in seattle um they brought me down to la and we played down uh the whiskey uh they played the viper room in la as well cool so yeah they were getting some really good shows they were kind of hard to say no to you know so how does the live performance aspect find its way into maybe your mixing or just your approach when you're producing like how important is capturing a performance or how important is the performance aspect of music to your thing uh it's it's imperative it's it's kind of the whole thing um so i guess like 85 of what i'm doing now is is mixing external stuff that was recorded somewhere else by someone else sent so trying to you know find some of those performance-like moments and showcase them in the mix is one way but when i do produce something and i
you know i am working with a vocalist on it's it's it's everything um you know is trying to find something that every song wants to be um you know have that more live presentation um and uh and the performance aspect is is depending on what the song is wanting to do you know whether it's more of an emotional thing or whether it's more of a cool factor thing or it's more of the delivery of the lyrics in a in a way that that works um but but trying to dial in what that performance is is is everything you know and and most of my recording sessions uh end up with kayla to sound and we'll spend the first 10 minutes or whatever getting the sound and then we just never think about it again and the only thing that we're focused on now is is you know how you're playing that part or how you're singing that word or or all these things because even with something you know like vocals is the most obvious thing but even something
like bass you know like how you're playing that part and you know when you move to the higher octave how that changes the whole energy of that that moment and are we going to slide up to that and and then you know come back down are we going to kind of pop up to that you know and it seems like an insignificant thing but it's it's that's the feel of the whole record is is in those performance parts and to not focus on them or to not give them the attention they deserve is kind of doing a disservice to the record totally it's like musical storytelling right it's how you're how you're letting the the idea unfold um and we talked a little bit about uh marketing and storytelling before i started recording today um and i wanted you to maybe discuss um how how you've not moved into but added on to your mixing the sort of youtube element where
you're going through like tutorials and showing people how you approach a mix i've seen a couple of videos of you doing that maybe tell us about about that about how you're approaching that and what you're hoping to achieve yeah well it started um like i'm a huge youtube consumer um i i you know i just everything that i whenever i want to learn anything or i i you know need to figure out how to do something around the house or something like i i just youtube like i don't have i haven't had cable and i don't i don't know how long you know i just most of my media consumption is is just done through youtube so it's always been something that i've wanted to contribute something to you know because i think it's it's a not not youtube itself and google and alphabet and all that but just just that idea of of you know online creators making stuff and that's always something that i was interested in um and um a lot of it came from when i did
transition uh to mixing almost exclusive because the production side with you know like we talked about that incura band here locally and and the kind of buzz that that created and they were big in the scene at the time so they were playing shows almost every weekend and they would you know talk about my work and and and with other bands and and so that that um kind of seal of approval from from a known entity was something that that served me well uh in the marketing sense i guess if you want to get like technical about it um and then as i got into scene and i got out of the local scene and into you know national clients i've got clients from toronto now and and montreal and then down to the states and in florida and california that word of mouth kind of um marketing is part a little bit and you know it becomes more about credits and people
have a song that they like and they see your name on it and okay who is this guy and and what is what is he all about and would i ever think of hiring him to mix my music and so a lot of the ambition with youtube was you know types in evan morgan into google you know what are they going to find um you know a web page that's that's mine which is fine but everyone has a web page but if if um there was some content there where they could kind of just see who i am a little bit and a little bit of how i work and a little bit of you know how i approach music and and that that would you know just kind of help um them decide whether or not they wanted to involve me in their project um and that you know it's just just it's there and it's something that that anyone can do through youtube or instagram or whatever and i've always been really bad at it in terms of self-promoting and smoothing and you know all that stuff
like i've always just been a let the worksheet speak for itself right kind of person which is fine and it served me fine but but there are moments where that you know it doesn't really help and and um having some people be able to to just get a little more familiar you know so the reason people do podcasts and and do things is is to put value out into the world and to be part of a community but also to help people understand who they are and what what they do and what you know what their skill set is and and something as simple as you know this is how i mixed vocals on this one song that you have maybe heard that you kind of liked you know like it just gives people a window into um what it would be like if i were to mix their vocals per se right right and it's kind of uh you know just teaching people about the process too just seeing how seeing how easy you make it look on video
can kind of sort of calm people down and say hey this looks doable all of this looks very doable you know because sometimes i think some of this stuff seems very out of reach and as you and i both know although there's a lot of stuff to learn around audio it's not like the most difficult stuff in the world to learn and you just have to go and do it and then you i'm sure you realize the same thing i realized once you know all this stuff then the only way to actually make it work is kind of to forget all that stuff and just just use your instinct anyway because that's all that that's all that matters three three kilohertz and high hats at the end of the day don't really matter that much it's all the stuff that people don't that don't know anything about this it's the things they focus on that that matters so it's about forgetting all that stuff anyway right definitely yeah cool dude this podcast could be four hours or five hours i think so i'm gonna move it along but i i i would
i i feel like we haven't even talked about anything yet like we have no i don't touch the surface um well well one thing that just speaking of of uniqueness and and one thing i remembered when i was uh you know thinking about doing this podcast with you and you you would reach out to me and said you know it'd be fun to chat uh one thing that i though i remember the first time i met you was because there was a band that i was really into was in university um and they were i think they're from calgary and it was a band called strata and it was a band that you had produced and and mixed and when i met you at pavi uh the first time i was kind of like i had a there was a little star struck and it was it was funny because i was like you know when i met arn and i met garth and i met these different people i was never like i was like oh yeah these are these are giants in the industry but i was never really that star struck but for whatever reason just this record that like really resonated with me when i met you i was like oh that's that's what she he did he
did the strata record but yeah that had a really unique snare sound on it and you know some unique delivery and yeah it was a cool record i remember you being star struck and i remember me thinking he's completely off on this but i'm gonna milk it for all it's worth i'm gonna let him think whatever he needs to think but meanwhile i'm in the back of my head i'm like there's so many things i want to go back and fix about those mixes but i won't tell this guy i'll let him think that they were all planned um yeah that was a really fun record to make those guys were those guys are awesome and that was a super super fun uh album to make and we learned a lot of stuff yeah that was great and then for for you to say that and for you to really like that record really meant a lot to me because you know you you do you do a record and you think this is going to be the next never mind and then you know whatever happens you know most
of the world doesn't care about the music you're making and then you're like what why wasn't that big so as long as your art reaches one person that approaches you like evan approached me uh it makes it all worthwhile it doesn't matter if it's a billion people or one person um okay so i've i'm going to move to the other side of my uh page of questions but there's one last question on this first section that i want to ask you what is music production um music production is um i'm trying to think of this this one quote that you know it's it's it's uh i don't know if you've heard this but it's uh it's a recording of a performance or it's a it's a you know a final presentation of a specific recording of a specific performance of a specific arrangement of a specific song um that's correct so you know you you
have this song idea and you want to capture it and and so you go through the process of of putting it together as a as a piece of content or a piece you know i hate the c word nowadays content and we've got to make some content but you know bar means a specific piece um and if it is a song that that exists through the ages there's going to be lots of you know you know youtube covers and different live ventions and there's going to be so many versions of that specific song but what you're trying to create um a specific performance in that time a specific capture of of that song idea you know that musical idea that's great that's that's all true it's it's the parts it's the performance it's the melody it's the how does it sound at the campfire with an acoustic guitar
it's all the bells and whistles it's the sonics it's the mask a lot of time the the production side especially when i get into a song early you know if if it is a you know a couple guitar chords with a melody and some lyrical ideas you know then you really about what is production and what do you want to achieve with this because it could go anywhere you know especially with a newer artist that doesn't have a established sonic brand yet right you know it could be do you want to do it more of a pop thing do you want to do it more of a band thing do you want to do it more of a edm thing you know and so taking those those you know for lack of a better word that psalm of you know this melody and these these chords and these lyrics tied to this melody and working on a specific arrangement for it you know that has an organ at this part and then it goes to you know acoustic guitars at this part and that and then finding you know the performance of that
specific arrangement you know so exactly how are we going to perform these parts um that performance um and how are we going to capture these parts are we going to do it live off the floor or we do it piece meal piece by piece are we going to do it all digitally you know and then presenting that there's so many stages to what you hear is the final product you kind of scale it back and scale it back and interesting to hear especially you know older super successful songs that have been around for a long time and have had lots of different arrangements and lots of different performance of the same arrangement lots of different recordings of a very similar arrangement you can kind of hear what the production is and what the production team or whatever was allowed to contribute to that piece of music at that time right yeah that's great it makes me excited just hearing you talk about that um that's why i like working with singer songwriters with just a guitar or just a
piano because you can do anything it's like should we get a choir or a drum machine it's like how about both yeah and sometimes it's a little scary it's a little done to like we could literally make options anything like we all all we have is notes and chords and we could we could change the tempo we could change the key we could you know we could change the arrangement aspect um there could be you know heavy drums throughout there could be no drums we could do a no drums arrangement of this song and i think that's why you know guys like arin we were talking about would leave the room or would kind of just throw out some random obscure thing and then leave and come back and see what was there because if there was something just anything that he could kind of start to work with and it's like okay there's a direction let's go with that you know now we're moving yeah there's that one little synth line and now sudden i hear what drums could be used for that you know i hear what kind of bass instrument you know whether it's a you know i hear a vocal arena put to that and also off goes to production
it's like a puzzle and somebody puts the first connects the first two pieces in the middle of the board and now you can see it all yeah and now you have some some reference point right i love it um that's great the next question uh is a guest question from my friend tamara edelman and it's a two-part question what has been your biggest career high and your biggest career challenge so far biggest career high if i'm just going from a recent one is uh one of the artists that i work with a guy named tom mcdonald has this year i think it was this year he's kind of broken into billboard land and and um you know he's had a couple on the hot 100 he's gotten a couple billboard number ones in terms of you know digital sales he's gotten emerging artist number one a couple times and that he's someone i've been working
with for a couple of albums now i think we've done four or five records together but uh this last batch has really started to connect with people and and um you know so being involved in a billboard charting you know is is it's been it's been good it's just it's nice to kind of get that validation of you know kind of peer evaluation or validation i guess right so that's that's kind of a recent high um and a challenge is on the start of uh why i kind of started transitioning to mixing more was one of the things i've always struggled with and i've always had the biggest challenge with especially as a producer is working on a project for months and months and you know and and putting a hundred percent of my attention into a project and then for whatever reason you know label or or band breaking up or
you know marketing things uh it doesn't come out or it doesn't get released the way that it should or you know it doesn't right um there's there's been a couple tricks i've worked on with that you know all people involved were super excited about it and then for usually reasons that have nothing to do with the music at all it just doesn't uh and that stuff has always been out of my hands which is something i've struggled with as you know because i've never wanted to be a music label or a music marketer or you know but i that surrendering of of a project to you know another you know whether it's a record label or another entity or something and just saying you know now this the potential for this to succeed is in your hands you know like the music's there and the songs are there and the performances are there and so you know do with it what you will um that's always been challenging for me
um and yeah most of the stuff i'm mixing is coming out now because if it if it has gotten to the point where someone's willing to hire an extern whether it's or you know an artist themselves is saying i want to pony up some money to actually have this get a professional mix then 99.9 percent of the time it's gonna come out um and and uh it's like yeah it's just it's i've always found it challenging um especially because i'm a very you know i i most of the bands that i've worked with in terms of like band records always joke that i you know you just become another member of the band for for the eight months always your or whatever time frame you're in and you know being a member of a band of a project that that doesn't see the light of day is is a little heartbreaking yeah yeah i can i can relate to that so much that's so true
[Music] um and the really frustrating thing if it doesn't come out or if they make changes to the album or whatever is you're always right and you know you're always right so you see these changes happen or you see it not come out and you're it's so frustrating that's amazing that's great perspective um [Music] how did you meet tom mcdonald that was through it's it's funny i i um you know people talk about networking all the time and how you know it's it's not what you know it's who you know and all about the networking and sometimes i think people misconstrued that like the way i've started looking at it more is it's not about networking it's about the network that you have already and what that network is right and the way that the people within your network whether it's your local scene or you
know communities are able to connect and and interconnect and so that brandon heart artist that i produce who i met through the incura drummer a guy named phil gardner who if i look at my network you know he's he's a he's a center point um that so many artists that i've been able to work with you know it's it's like that five degrees of kevin bacon it's it's five degrees of of phil gardner um because he's he's just you know he he's such a sweet guy and he knows everybody and everybody loves him and he he really likes my work and he's always um down to talk about it and so i met brandon hart um because phil was drumming on some of his project and he said you should get my buddy evan to work on your stuff if you want to take it to the next level and brandon uh is best friends with tom and they have been touring together they're they they're touring partners um
forever and once i started working on brandon stuff tom kind of said you know his head popped up and said who's this you know how come your stuff sounds the way it does now like what's what's the deal there and he has always been self-produced so he makes all his own beats himself and records it all himself and he was mixing it himself as well but he had one song um if i remember correctly it was called ashes to ashes which was like a rock kind of song rock crossover tune and i think he just he wasn't sure how to approach the mix on that in terms of you know drums and guitars and that kind of stuff and hearing his friend brandon stuff he thought you know maybe i'll i'll give this a shot and see what an external mixer can do with this song because it was a little out of his wheelhouse at the time um and yeah so i just took that project and ran with it and uh he liked it so much that he just got me to do every song he's put out since which i
don't know if you follow him much but he puts out songs like no he's just done double records back to back he's you know i we must have done hundreds of songs now um because the last double record we did just here in august was 36 songs and we did a double record before that which was like a record and then a mixtape is both 16 to 19 songs he's done two collab albums which i've mixed everything on one with mad child from uh swollen members and then one with brandon and his uh his girlfriend nova which is kind of one of my favorite projects they've done it's called as far as the stars it's uh and then there was two records before that yeah so i think we've done like eight records together now um and it's it's yeah it's been a great relationship he's a extremely talented dude and he's just he just puts out songs like nobody's business
uh shout out tom mcdonald shout out uh gardner what's gardner's first name phil gardner and hey brandon and brandon brandon heart all right yeah love it um yeah well i i was a little star struck when i found out that you were working with that you were mixing tom mcdonald stuff because i haven't really followed his career or anything but he just sort of popped up on the radar i don't know maybe a year and a half ago or something because i was like where are all the punk rockers where have they gone why why is nobody raging against the machine anymore including raid rage against the machine where are all the rebels there are no rebels anymore not in metal none in punk rock not in folk no not in rap where you would expect there would be some rebels nowhere and then tom mcdonald it's like there he is
there's the guy that guy's talking about stuff definitely a punk you know uh only raging against the machine that's for sure yeah i love it and so i was like okay this this guy's great i'm i'm i'm a tom mcdonald fan now seeing him do all this stuff and then i find out uh my buddy evan's work with them pretty cool it's full circle right so there you go that's great i love it but it's it's really really exciting stuff and i just i love anybody who's just i don't know asking questions do we do that well i love i love the independent you know spirit but all i i just i love how you know he's he's kind of proving to everyone that that you there's so many ways to do it now you know and and there's so many successful artists that are thriving um within record labels and the record
labels are providing a great service for them and there's so many artists that would be better served doing it on their own and and it's a hundred percent possible you know for someone like tom to be on billboard you know and and be knocking nicki minaj and and you know people like that off of number one spots on itunes for a couple weeks um you know where some of those songs he'll have an idea you know especially some of the more topical political stuff like something will happen and he'll have an idea and he'll write it that night and he'll record it and he'll send me the song and he'll say while you're mixing it i'm shooting the video already um and there's there's been a couple times where you know i've wanted to like nudge a vocal or something but i can't because he's already shooting the video and it's all gonna it's got to be in sync because it's moving so quick and you know within just like again compared to some of my
experiences before as a producer working with different labels and and you know some of the promotional timelines and you work on a record in the summer and then you're done in the fall and they decide they don't want to release it they want it to be a summer release so now we're gonna wait till next summer to release it and some of this stuff is like this is this is fresh now you know and it's not going to be fresh in in a year so right you know the ability to do it independently and turn out uh extremely professional sounding song with an extremely professional video in under three days sometimes like it's it's nuts that's unbelievable and just being able to you know because it's a part of the internet in the way that the internet works you know topically and and you know um you know there's issues of the day and issues of the minute and and being able to to put out content that relates to that um
just independently is is is really cool and i really respect that yeah that's huge that's really great um we should probably move on to the fast track assignment section of our program so that's when evan is going to pick a topic that of something that he does really well and he's going to break down a couple of steps and tell us how we can practice doing that at home well just based off of our conversation about you know melody and and and that kind of stuff uh i think one thing we could look at is is mixing vocals um so whether you're mixing your own vocals or you're uh starting to to get into mixing yourself and you want to learn more about it i think a lot of times people get bogged down with stuff especially vocals um so if we kind of break it into three steps um the way that i deal with vocals is
is always starting with balance um you know so getting uh like a level balance and a tonal balance um and step two would be dynamic control and step three will be uh spatial effects so if we look at the balance first you know a lot of people i think they forget about their fader um and the fader is literally the most powerful thing you have in terms of mixing and you know a lot of people will get tracks and they'll instantly start you know all that i the vocals not clear so i'm going to start boosting 3k or i'm going to put a bunch of multiband craziness on then mess up all the phase and you know sometimes it just just that's all all that it needs so um the the balance of the vocal uh in the mix is so important and then we get to tonal balance and that's where my you know fabfilter pro crew 3 comes in if i only had one plug-in um that would be one and finding you know how in-text how that vocal sits with the music um
and a lot of times vocals are recorded very dark and the final presentation of vocals vocals in a mix are especially nowadays they're very very bright and there's a lot of brightness and heightness in there so trying to find that tonal balance um using the fader um but also you know kind of tweaking the the top and the bottom or or the the low mid and the and the top um is is where 90 of of vocal mixing comes from on my perspective um and again i feel like people get bogged down in you know like a lot of these these sessions that i i get um you know starting from the rough session like we were talking about you know they'll have 10 or more plugins um it's funny to see uh a pro tools session come in where all 10 plugins are there and a lot of them are doing something that's undoing something else farther down the down the chain and then they'll they'll send it to a bus so that they can get more plug-ins on there
you know um and it's just you take them all off and you you balance the fader and then you do just a basic tonal balance of top and and kind of low mid and and all of a sudden the vocal is alive again and it's it's there and it sounds like a voice and it sounds like a real person singing into a microphone um so that's that's always step number one with with me is is tonal balance and and volume um and then dynamic control is something people talk a lot about compression mainly um and i do a lot of that nowadays uh at the clip level so like we were talking about turning the clip uh down before it hits your fader in your plugins you can do that word for word if you want so you can start to level um you know if rather than then bang a vocal into a compressor where sometimes it's doing 3 db sometimes it's doing 10 or 20 db you know some of that you can actually do by hand and it takes a lot
of time but it sounds so much better it sounds so much better um and so a lot of my dynamic control if needed um will be coming from actually uh click gaining automating the the and what's the signal that's actually coming into your plug-ins um right and then you know de-essing and and can kind of fall into that as well you know like there's there are some de-essers that i like massey makes a good one um there's one in the slate bundle uh i think it's the osis de-esser that is you know very smart and intuitive um but a lot of times if you want to turn down the s's the best way to do it is to grab the actual audio file of yes and just turn it down before it hits your eq before it hits your compression all that kind of stuff so dynamic control is is big um but there are a lot of new tools and you know dynamic eq we were talking about as well you know there's a lot of new tools since the advent of the 1176 that allow you to do what it is that
you're trying to do but a lot more effectively and a lot more um practically than just you know banging a 1176 on you know 20 db of gain reduction nothing wrong with that no that's that's it still happens a lot um a lot of times it'll be uh you know if we do the the level in the tonal balance number one and then we do some dynamic control number two uh at the gain level then a lot of times banging it into an 117x or parallel processing or something is you're able to do it more as an effect to get the sound that you want in your head rather than being forced into doing that because you have an overly dynamic vocal and you know right you can't approach it the way that you want so now all you have to you have to you know and the loud words that are getting too much gain reduction are starting to have a you know your tone to them that you're not in love with and then you do more plugins to try and compensate for that and and
you know it's um mixing vocals can be uh simpler than you think and i think a lot of people complicate it a lot of times especially when it gets to multi-band stuff and and parallel processing and you know multiple auxes with all these different parallel things um a lot of times especially inexperienced engineers engine that maybe don't have as much of a technical background there sometimes they're doing more harm than good um by doing a lot of that stuff you know in terms of phase and and intelligibility and and you know all those um and i guess the third step would be uh any kind of spatial effects that you're using um and i 99.9 do that on sends uh a lot of newer up and coming engineers will will do you know put delays and reverbs and stuff on their actual mobile channel and and they i i think
there's a lot of problems with that in terms of your gain staging and your your overall level and how that affects stuff um so if you're doing it as a sound design perspective for ad-libs or whatever that's that's another thing but on your lead vocal um you know look look to using for most of your spatial effects and spatial effects come into that uh aesthetics thing that we were talking about before a lot of the aesthetics of the vocal presentation come from the effects um you know if you listen to the weekend or or travis scott or tom mcdonald or you know rain maida from our lady peace some of these artists we've been talking about like the presentation of the voice outside of the performance you know obviously the performance is is everything the way the artist is delivering their material but once you get into the mix stage so much of the aesthetic is coming from the effects you know whether there's
slap day to give it that antiquated you know kind of throwback vibe whether there's a big wash of reverb which you know was popular a couple years ago but is now starting to ride that line between you know does this sound like a like a 2010s record or you know um and so having that that big wash of reverb um is is part of the aesthetic as well um and so i usually in my different genres uh in my different templates i will have all kinds of things set up ready to go so that i can send to you know whatever i i think is needed for the song there's usually three reverbs you know like a short long and medium then some spatial things you know like an h 2000 pitch um you know i there's there's a couple videos on my youtube channel where i talk about some of these these effects that i like to use um there's usually uh multiple delays there's you know slap
delay and then uh eighth and quarter and and half note delay and depending on they're all kind of set up ready to go um with you know whatever plug-ins that i'm using at the time they'll change you know a lot of echo boy a lot of valhalla verbs um lots of sound toys stuff um and then i can just start sending there and see what does it sound like with this big reverb what does it sound like with a slap delay is that too you know is that the right kind of aesthetic for the song or not so much and it's just uh it allows you to move really quick um and so yeah i know this is supposed to be fast but but uh just just if we again break it down to three it's it's balance tonal balance with your fader and your eq dynamic control and spatial effects and just start there and you know you i i promise you you don't need to go crazy with some multi-band parallel you know like there's there's lots of times in mixes where i will do a parallel especially the parallel distortion thing that kind of comes in
and comes up for certain moments and comes down um but that's all auxiliary stuff that's all the the salt and pepper on the actual the meal you know you got to get the the meal right before you start you know a little extra pepper on there right right right that's great man that's huge love it lots of lots of clutch pieces of information in there do you have um when you have your reverbs you said you had a short medium long kind of reverb are they are they rooms are they plates are they usually like again it different things for different genres um and i've got a couple like all my my templates are all just essentially buses there's no like you know pre-set up tracks or anything it's just it's just routing and then and then a whole bunch of of effect sends um and depending on the style i'll i'll pull in different ones but normally the short one is either a
ambience algorithm or like a short room um and what i'm trying to achieve with that is a little bit of a room you know just having that vocal that's you know normally recorded like this and bloody and just have it have a little bit of ambience on there um the medium will probably be a plate uh you know like just an emt or something just you know maybe not a second and a half kind of and then the long is usually a hull or or a really long plate if i want to do something right um but you know pop it might be more of a of a really long plate um you know kind of a rockier thing it might be more of a hull just something a little darker and just kind of has that you know that ambience in the background um and yeah a little bit of uh vintage valhalla vintage verb has been one i use a lot i've been on the the um liquid sonics they're caspi uh i think it's i can't remember what it's called the seventh heaven is is one that i absolutely love um
[Music] and uh yeah reverbs reaper's good reverse resolutions are good valhalla gets a lot of luck yeah it's just really it just sounds good and it's it's affordable and it's it's just it's just a good a good one and it covers a lot of bases too so if you only had to if you were only able to get one that would be the one to get because it has good plates it has good rooms it has good halls um you know there are like emt 140 emulations that i like a little better than their plates if i really wanted to go down that road you know um but uh in terms of a one-stop reverb that's you can't go wrong with you know valhalla that's great would you say your mixes tend toward realism tend towards surrealism or somewhere in between somewhere in between and it and it a lot of it depends on uh the the what the artist is trying to accomplish um right that's that's another thing
that i i kind of try and pride myself on a little bit is is just trying to extend the artists vision without putting my own stamp on it um if i can you know and sometimes people want my stamp and that's why they're hiring me and i'm happy to do that um but you know there are a lot of producers and mixers that have their sound and and you know they kind of do that and i i really want to try take whatever it is the artist is trying to craft with their song and and help them take it across the finish line so um i guess if i like probably more surreal nowadays just you know like if i'm doing a rock thing it's usually like a larger than life rock thing you know where the drums smack harder than they ever possibly could in a room and you know the guitars are bigger and
wider and deeper you know than than any you know message boogie ever would sound it's in the real room right um and same with you know the hip-hop and and pop stuff you know that's all about trying to uh push things beyond the realm of reality you know but that's i think that's the way a lot of people enjoy their media nowadays you know is whether it's tv shows or movies or you know all the superhero films or whatever like there is that that surrealism um you know and there still is a huge place for a person in a room playing their guitar and just having it sound like that but a lot of that isn't getting onto records nowadays a lot of that is on youtube or on tik tok or on twitch or you know like people are like the whole live record or the the acoustic record or things that used to be so prominent back in the days aren't aren't you know that's not the presentation that they're going for with the album or with the the release you know because all that
stuff is coming on on youtube series or or or instagram stories or you know different places where they're able to to have that more realistic version of the of the song right what are you currently obsessed with monitors i'm on a i've i've been on a monitor hunt for the last uh couple months and i've i've locked in what i want and i'm just waiting for the covid back order stuff to stop being such a problem um but uh yeah i've been obsessed with with monitors because uh just you know talking about our work workflow thing you know me prioritizing working on a laptop because of the access and the mobility it gives me to to work with my clients and respond to my clients properly um i've kind of been streaming back on lots of things i've kind of gotten rid of most of my analog
out of the box stuff um and so having a good computer uh with a really good set of monitors in a well treated room is kind of all that i want and all that i need and um you know so i was i was on a big hunt pmcs atc's you know really some some really nice speakers so i'm excited to finally get the ones that i decided on uh shout out pmc if you want to um be a be a what do you call it when people support podcasts if pmc wanted to give me free monitors is what i'm saying i would take an endorsement from pmc any day of the week either of us maybe both of us uh which monitors did you go uh i went with some atc's so i'm going uh either the the 45s or the 25s with one of their subs is where i land um i'm a big big mid-range guy i i i love me some mid-range i've been working on ns10s for
ever and you know people hum and haul and complain about the ns10s all day and i i like them i they i like the wasting sound on them i listen to them uh in in my spare time and enjoy the sound of it so i'm totally fine i've never heard anybody say that i know i love it yeah and uh yeah like right now i have my uh ns10s and a pair of really nice genelecs uh right beside them and i never you know my genelecs sometimes i flip over to them when i'm doing a mix to try and get a different perspective and i go oh that doesn't make any sense to me at all and i flip back to the s10s and oh there's everything i know exactly what i need to do you know i hear everything in the mid-range that i need to tackle and and uh the atc's do that but just more and better um that's kind of good maybe the genelecs are keeping you on it though right they're just you know but those are going to get swapped out with some pmcs too down the road so atc's and pmcs are kind of where i've where i've landed that's really cool um i love how absolutely obsessed you
are about music and music production you're the kind of guy that i could ask so what do you think the most important history or important uh uh invention of all time is and you'd be like probably the microphone you know it all comes back to music production right well it's just to me it's like i've i've been involved in in lots of different you know art forms uh in terms of of playing music and singing and performing and drama and dancing and you know all these different things that i've done and music to me is just seems to be the most pure uh representation of of the emotional idea that that a creative person has you know like whether someone has a script that they want to you know write and have some actors perform and have some people capture it and document it and turn it into a movie or whatever like that is a awesome piece of art form and i love
movies and i loved but there's something more visceral and more like like uh direct about music and the actual you know um any any filmmaker will tell you that that the soul of their uh movie is in in the music it's the music that is that instant emotional connection um right and yeah i could i could play music all day me too it's it's sound and vibrations too i think it's a lot more important than we give it uh even credit for i think it's yeah okay so last question i'm gonna say what is a piece of advice that you would give to the listeners if they were wanting to get into mixing or if they were wanting to get into producing music on any level maybe even being an artist
what would you tell them so this is somebody who's just sort of like i think i want to get into this but it looks like there's a whole bunch of stuff to learn what would you tell them well the the easiest thing is to just just start just start doing it um and you know if you want to be an artist uh start documenting your ideas um you know even if it's on voice memos um and just just start working through songs start taking the songs that you like and start dissecting them and and understanding you know what are the chords they're actually playing here what are the instruments how do the instruments come in and out um if you want to get into production then then start recording yourself or start recording your your friends that you are around and and i think i think people struggle with with the the work um and they see
the the success that people have or they see the gear that they have or they see [Music] that you know they think that what it takes there's so many aspects to to being able to do it um but everything can be done simply and it just it just needs to start um by by just starting to do it and even if everything that you do sucks for the first you know two years that's we all did that everyone did that you did that i did that iron did that you know tom did that everybody has has gotten to a point where they just say i have to do this so i guess i'm just gonna start um and and not know where where it takes them um and then once you start down that journey just follow it where it takes you you know and try and take opportunities where you can and and try and use your network um if you can if you if you know some people that are doing it then then
ask if you can tag along or you know ask if you can be a part of it somehow um and and uh yeah just just i think people that to be honest that was my thing with youtube you know i looked at you know i was such a youtube consumer that you look at people like casey neistat or peter mckinnon or whatever and you think oh i have to have you know a sony x whatever for my camera and i can't do this without lights and and you kind of forget it's like well we you know you got this there's this camera right there you know just just start making it and the first couple videos you make are gonna suck and you know i think i'm pretty cringy in the first couple one of my videos but you get more comfortable with it and you start to figure things out and then same with audio engineering as you get into it you run into a little road bump and then you start to go down a deep dive and okay like like how come you know i can't get my voice to sound that way like what what's is it my microphone is it is it the way that i'm recording it is it you know what what is
a preamp do i need a preamp like maybe i should get a preamp and you start to do this deep dive and you go down and and you know as little things pop up you you kind of figure them out and that's that's half the journey and it never stops you know it never stops never stops um you know my whole journey with with what i would call you know high-end professional monitors has just been this whole thing where i want the more i get into mixing the more i want a clear image into the music that i'm working on you know i want to be able to just close my eyes and i want to be able to see exactly everything in there and exactly so having the clearest window that i can into that music you know and the ns10s are not a clear window they're a they're a old shower you know glass uh foggy glass from the the 70s uh kind of window so having a really kind of clear picture that helps me you know i want to hear what's on my hard drive i i i want to know exactly what is in the
files that i've been given and exactly how to treat them and so that pursuit of trying to find a window that makes sense to me that i can see through properly has has been a really fun journey and and just auditioning all these different speakers and trying to find um that's and and you know when i got that started who knows what the next journey is going to be to you know why there are some new plugins or you know this whole thing with atmos mixing might be something you know depending on how how significant that becomes and if my clients start asking if that's something that's possible well it could be you know i'm gonna have to watch a bunch of youtube videos to figure out how to do it but that's uh you know that's that's the journey you have to enjoy the journey you have to enjoy the rabbit holes you have to enjoy the process all of the the mistakes and the walls that you're going to run into you just have to at some point enjoy it or even like you know i always joke that i sell all my gear on ebay and then buy it back again
two years later for twice the price it's true but i have to enjoy that because i learn from buying gear that i that sits on my desk for a year and i never touch and then i sell on ebay i learn what i don't use and what my workflow isn't and um you just have to enjoy it because if you don't enjoy it you'll just curl up in a ball and start crying and say why did i spend all that money and it didn't mean anything yeah well and and you and i have been doing this for long enough now that you know there's hundreds of examples of people that that wanted to start it but they didn't they didn't love it they didn't want to to you know it wasn't something that they needed to do per se and especially in the education system you know i know you were involved in lots of different schools and you can see right away uh you know the kids that are there uh because you know they had to go to post-secondary and while i kind of like music whatever i guess i'll maybe just
do that and the kids are like you know i you know i've been trying to learn this stuff myself for the past two years just you know i i need to to know how to get my ideas down on on onto tape or or get you know you know i want to understand how this thing works and and just that drive to to kind of always be learning and always be so yeah you it it's to me that's the most important thing to see in in not only music but any creat you know whether you want to be a photographer or a videographer or a writer or anything creative you you it has to be something that you you you have to do you just you would you know you would be doing it anyway even if you kept your day job and you were still you would still be doing it on weekends and and evenings you know i've always uh whenever my my wife has a has a girls night with her sister or her friends or something she's kind of like you know you can and any guy would be like oh yeah maybe
i'll just you know watch hang out with the guys or go watch some sports or play some video games or i've got a night to myself it's like no i'm just going to stay at a studio longer you're all ready and you're happy exactly that's so cool it's it's really important to do something you love that's that's so awesome i'm so i'm so happy for you that you're doing what you're doing um where can our our listeners your and i listeners uh find out more about you like should they go to your instagram maybe your youtube channel to watch some of those videos i mean the the websites then i i try and keep it up to date so it's just evanmorganproductions.com i think evanmorganmixing.com works too i think i got both of those oh it goes to the same page and you know there's there's just some samples of recent stuff i've worked on and i'm always kind of poking with it it has links to my instagram and and youtube but for social media youtube's probably the best i i i don't i try and do instagram every now and again but i just i don't know i just it's it's hard for me to post things all the time just
but uh yeah youtube is i think it's just evan morgan um the the user handle anyway and uh i i have been trying to post videos on a regular schedule but the thing uh i always forget is i actually you know i'm working and i have records that i need to mix and and you know clients are are waiting for mixes and i can't be uh making youtube videos all the time so so i try and post things uh pretty regularly um but you know it's usually like once a month i'll post a video about a specific song i'm working on or a mix idea that i've you know kind of want to analyze a little bit could you make it part of your process could you say i'm going to always do a video when i'm 10 minutes from finishing this mix and i'm just going to walk everybody through what i did or something or is it too is it too intrusive i would struggle with that it would be a little intrusive um but it could be
something that i scheduled you know um to do because once it got to be a habit then it it'd probably be easy right you've already done the videos you've already done mixing now you're just trying to get them to schedule together right yeah well and that's it's that's you know everything that i do is is scheduled and is a habit so if i could just implement that and make it a habit then but yeah it's just something that you know my main thing is always going to be mixing music and you know the idea of doing more podcasts or or doing youtube videos is is something that again i i also don't really want it to become a job either i don't want it to be something that i like have to do right yeah it has to be something you love doing that you would be doing anyway i think yeah and so the the youtube thing actually right now is kind of like the hobby thing for me it's something that i get to you know just get outside of music for a minute and just chat about which is which is really fun um but uh yeah you know i
whether or not it becomes something that i could do super regularly and super scheduled is still kind of yet to be seen i suppose evan do you have any hobbies outside of mixing yeah i do youtube videos about how i've done my mix you're obsessed dude i love it um okay uh any last thing you want to say to the listeners that was great that was like two hours maybe more yeah yeah no it's it's been a great conversation um nothing nothing specific but uh yeah you know check out the website um check out the youtube channel and uh it's it's been really great catching up with you man it's so cute man it's it's been a long time and it's been a long time yeah we were young men the last time we saw each other right we were we were yeah we're still weird isn't it yeah it is it's weird it's inevitable thank you so much ladies and gentlemen
evan morgan
