Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: I'm still Tom.
You again? Yeah, he's still Alan. Bob Clearmountain, ladies and gentlemen.
The Dolby Atmos version of Adolon is just buddha for eighties kids to hear it in Dolby Atmos. It was gorgeous. And Bob, actually, can you start with the story you told the podfest group that you were so kind to host last night? How the singer at the end of the piece was discovered. I love that story.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. When we were recording this or mixed, I was mixing it upstairs in power station and.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: 82.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: 83. Around 82, I think. And so there was a.
We're on the edge of feedback here a little.
What, do I have something wrong? But there was a haitian group recording in studio a and power station. You come into at the time. You come into the lobby and you're behind studio b. And Brian Ferry came in for a session and he hears this angelic voice echoing through the hallways and coming from the lounge in studio a. So he follows this beautiful sound and finds this little haitian girl who was warming up for her session that was in studio a. And he goes up to her and says, who are you? Would you sing on my record? And she couldn't really speak English, so they got somebody to translate and she. Well, sure, yeah, I'll sing on your record. What do you want me to do? And that's how he found that singer that was in your left rear speaker at the end there.
[00:01:49] Speaker C: What was her name again?
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Yannick Etienne.
[00:01:52] Speaker C: Right.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:53] Speaker C: Whoa.
I was 5000 times before I ever met him.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: And she ended up touring with him.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: Right, touring. She's a little round haitian girl and just a lovely person. And just obviously an incredible, incredible singer and kind of gone down in history.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: There telling us the history of your time at power station. And actually the mixing console that's at Apogee Studio and David Bowie. Let's dance. And off the top of your head, just a couple other tracks that I'm sure this group will be familiar with.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Yeah, let's see. Well, Brian Adams. A bunch of Brian Adams things. Rolling Stones, Springsteen. Springsteen recorded the river on the console. Yeah. Now. And let's see. You know, just Roxy music, of course. And I know there's a bunch of.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Others that I don't remember for a gear nerd. And just a musical history like me. I was gobsmacked. That was fun to hear about. Alan, tell us about your history. Like you're mostly doing film sound these days or music for films. But tell me, going back into your musical history.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: First of all, when he was doing all that. I was doing Cadillac commercials.
Yeah, I bet you did. I bet you. But that was how you started those. I started. Well, I started at Brooklyn College, but my professional career started doing commercials and as an assistant engineer. It was funny the first time, I was a very bad. I like to call myself a trumpet owner because I certainly wasn't a player. And so once I hit college and I realized that every plan I had in the world was shot.
And I'm walking down the hallway smoking a joy, and I hear music, and I walk to it, I go, what's this? And it was the sound studio, Brooklyn College. So I got an internship, and then I got this job and doing commercials, and I got it. You know, it was one of those things. It's sort of. I don't know if you had the same experience, but you stare at what's going on. You watch the session going, oh, that's how he's getting to there. And, oh, that's how they're getting their headphones and stuff. I didn't look at it and go, oh, my God, what is all that? I sort of got it.
I never looked back, you know, from that day on, I was going to spend my life in a recording studio. So I did that for a while. I had some success. I ended up getting into the record business through a commercial producer and started doing dance records. I worked at a studio called Shakedown with this guy, Arthur Baker, and did. I was sort of in that first wave of dance music that came to New York, Chicago house and stuff like that. A very minor player, but as a mixer and sort of got my chops doing that. And then I actually got. Because I did one of those. I got an introduction to Brian ferry and mixed this album called Bete Noir, which sucked, because I had to listen to that and then figure out, how am I going to. What am I going to do? But at some point, you just do it. You stop thinking and you do it. And it came out okay. Right.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: I just did, at most mixes for that.
[00:05:04] Speaker C: I thought you were going to call me for that. Did you do them already?
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, you know, I had to make them sound as good as your mixes. It was not easy, did that.
[00:05:16] Speaker C: And I had a career going, but I never felt at home, you know, I just. I was a classical trumpet player. Bob, he was a bass player in a punk band that belongs in the studio making records. What I was doing, I own a bass, too. Well, that was a bass owner. But I was, you know, I played second trumpet in the second orchestra. But I loved it, and I loved that. I loved the orchestral feeling. You know, what. What he was talking about before, like, the orchestral music sort of, it takes you somewhere and that, and it took me somewhere. So when I started in the nineties and I started getting very frustrated with the world became. It became hip hop, and I. I wasn't comfortable doing that. And then I had a room at Larrabee Studios that I had booked for, like, two years, and then all of a sudden, they kicked me out because Doctor Dre was coming in to do the first Snoop Dogg album, and I'm like, okay, I might be done with this. And I got an application to chiropractic college, and I'm going to skip the next nine levels of the story and just say, somehow or other, I met Hans. And the people that worked at remote control ended up doing a session with him, and he called me back the next day. I thought I had screwed up with Penny Marshall, who was this New York Brooklyn Italian, and I'm a New York Brooklyn Jew. And we just communicated at a very subconscious level.
And he says, what are you doing for the next three months? And that was 94. I'm still doing it. I don't just work with Hans anymore. His career is shifted. He lives in London. He's touring. So, you know, I've had the opportunity to build my career based on that and gotten to work with everyone. Elfman, Howard, John Powell, Howard, Gregson Williams. You know, it's been just an incredible ride. And I get to sit next to him.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: We have being musicians in our salad days in common. I was a saxophone owner, and people say, what kind of band were you in? I was like, marching.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: No one, no girl wants to meet the guy playing trumpet.
Marching. In my one career, nobody cares about the bass players. Oh, that's not true. Believe me, more bass players got girls than trumpet players did. But my one band I was in, oh, my God, I can't believe I'm saying this out loud, was called the Orian's, and we were disco band, and we played at. If any of you have seen the movie Saturday Night Fever, we played at that club. It was called 2001 Space Odyssey. And I had to wear my orange polyester outfit with the big, you know, and with all the little stud, no shoulder pads. But, I mean, we sucked. I mean, it was just incredible how bad we were. But somehow or other, we got gigs, and I got out of that pretty fast. It wasn't for me.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: So let's fast forward up to, you know, transitioning from stereo mixing to the dolly. Atmos days, I think. I think in the very, very early days of Atmos music, people were like, ah, geez, here we go again. Because they saw dvd audio and super audio cd that basically bashed each other to death, and neither one was successful. With Atmos, we kind of have a unified format that people are kind of in agreement with and the tools are there and it does help. Tell me about your early days of starting to mix for atmos and learning the technology and initial impressions of, hey, where's this going?
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Well, for me, it was, you know, somebody called, I had done the first three albums for the group, the band. I'd remixed them in five one and stereo. And then the fourth one came up, the Cahoots album. And they called up, they said, oh, can you deliver an atmos mix this time? And I was like, yike, yeah, I can do that. And looking around my room, okay, what do I have to do? And so I figured it out over the next couple weeks, stuck some speakers in the ceiling and whatever, got a. Luckily I had some extra bm 15 as sitting around and put them on the sides, and I did it. I'm actually still pretty happy with that record. And Robbie Robertson kind of let me do what I wanted on that one, which is great, but that's what happened.
I'm still learning about what to do. And I want to make one little comment, and I'm a little scared to do this, but I've just been going through a list. I've been making a playlist of spatial audio songs because at apogee we're doing this little art show next week and we wanted some background music and we've just redone our studio space as an immersive listening area. And so I wanted to do this, and I was going through a whole bunch of stuff on Apple Music, and there's some really great sounding things, you know, but I've noticed that very few people use the center speaker very much. And I just don't understand it because you walk into a mix room with these speakers like you're sitting there. The thing right in front of you is the center speaker. And what do people say? They go, well, I'm not using it.
Yeah, I know. Staring me in the face, but I don't want to know. Maybe a little bass, you know? And so it just surprises me. And it's so funny going through the playlist and every time one comes up, they do use the center speaker and things are, it's like, oh, whoa. Now the singer and the drums are in the room with me and it just sounds. It immediately sounds so much better. And I'm just shocked that so few mixes are done that way. I mean, I can understand it for movies when I've done some score stuff, just for some minor, minor stuff. Yeah, and some few other things. I did something for my daughter who did a documentary, and I don't put anything in the center because, of course, that's where the dialogue is. Just keep it open. But with music, that's where the main thing is.
[00:11:15] Speaker C: Advocate on that, if you want.
I think that a lot of the mentality of that, or at least my mentality of that, I do something different. I put equal amounts of those things in all three speakers. So no matter where you sit, the vocals in the center, the bass is in the center and stuff like that. But, you know, I'm always afraid that a home atmos system, that the center speaker is going to be someone's tv when they have, like, real speakers left and right, and there's going to be no subwoofers. So I'm afraid that if I put something primarily in the center speaker, that there are going to be people that are going to hear an instrumental version of it. That's the thing that scares me.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: But these sound bars, there's no doubt.
[00:11:56] Speaker C: But that's where my mentality of it came.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: But there's something else that if you're standing there, it sounds. Doesn't matter whether there's something in the center speaker or not. But once you walk over here, all of a sudden the whole picture collapses and you're hearing everything out of this speaker. But if you have a center speaker, then the picture stays the same. You know, the focus.
[00:12:23] Speaker C: If I put the bass and the vocal equal volume through all speakers, I get that same phenomenon, same thing happened.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that's why she kind of focused it more in the center. I'm not saying you should do it that way. I'm just saying it's just my opinion. Just totally, totally my opinion about it.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: Is a religion thing. In Dolby Amos, music mixing, or multi channel mixing in general, is do you actually put voices in the center or phantom it out? That's one thing I love about your Huey Lewis in the news remixes, is his growl coming out of the center channel speaker. You appreciate the vocal performance, and I'm sure a lot of artists really don't want you walking right up to the center, sticking your head up to it, but I love it. It's one thing about rediscovering some of my favorite albums and tracks. That's really, really fun.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, go through and if you have a system to listen on, luckily I can, you know, I have this loopback thing and I can listen to apple music through my system at home. And it's just striking to me. But anyway, enough of that. Let's move on.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: You mentioned your experience with the band and that kind of being your aha. Moment. Alan, what would you say you're. One of your earliest, like, yeah. Moments was with a.
[00:13:34] Speaker C: When I saw the movie pie and I heard that score, which was mixed by a guy named Brad Hainal, but then giving off to, as I taught, as all of you heard me wax on about before, Ron Bartlett, who made it. It was the first Atmos mix I had ever heard. It was an Ang Lee movie. And I was just like, wow, this is how it's supposed to be, you know. And so from. I always had that in the back of my head. And then when. And then it was quite a few years before I needed to do that. And I remember, I think it was Lion King was really the first one, the new Lion King, where I mixed it in native atmos. I had experimented with native atmos since then.
Dolby had put a render in my studio and I put up some height speakers, but I didn't know what I was doing. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, by the way. Sometimes not knowing what you're doing is how you're going to make the best arth because you're not limited by what you think is right.
But Lion King was the first one that I did, and it came out really, really good.
Flawed, but good.
And then I was. I just finished it. And Ang Lee was actually in the building about to do this movie, Gemini man, and with a friend of mine. And I told him the story. I said, you know, I fell in love with atmos because of PI. And he's like, really? So he asked what I was doing. I said, I just mixed Lion King and atmos. So he came into my room and he listened to one of the cues from Lion King, and he turned and he goes, I want you to mix the music in my movie. So he actually. But he wanted me in New York. So they gave me a dubbing stage in New York at the studio called Soundtrack, and it was a film stage. And I did it there because he wanted to come every night at 09:00 he would come over after he was done dubbing, because we were dubbing and mixing at the same time because they had thrown out a score and he would come at 09:00 and listen to my mixes. The composer wasn't even listening because he was busy writing. So it was like one of those. It was like Team America. The score was written, mixed and recorded in eleven days. So it was insane.
Who doesn't stop writing and you just don't stop mixing.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: For new content, we talked about catalog remixing and so forth, but for new content, do you approach a project that's going to be in Dolby Atmos differently in terms of recording and tracking, or do you still use your same or similar practices? You talked a little bit about having a modified deku tree for some of the recordings you make.
[00:16:16] Speaker C: When I record orchestral stuff, I have a.
I've sort of built. And when I say me, I didn't invent this. This is me applying some things that I had learned from some very smart people and making an investment in these DPA 4041 microphones.
And I built an 11.0 tree, left center, right side, left side, right, surround us around, like quad top and with all matching mics. That was the trick. And it changed my life. I mean, I didn't even realize that there was another dimension available because you mixed my whole life on decor trees. I got pretty good at it, my mix of sounding good. And then all of a sudden you push up this fader that has the mics on it. It's like, oh, my God. It's like we just filled in all the holes in the sound, and then you take it out and it sounds wrong. I'll play it for you. I'll play some of that.
That was an eye opener for me with it. So everything I do now is ready for an atmos mix. But when it comes to mixing, when I mix for a film in atmos, I do a very limited thing. It's just whatever I recorded, if I had height speakers, they go in the height. But I'm not getting into, like, getting super creative with all the other stuff because you're not hearing the dialogue, you're not hearing the sound effect. You are hearing the dialogue in the sound effects, but you're hearing a version that's a, you know, five versions ago and you're really not sure. So I'm a little conservative. But when I like, for example, I just did Gladiator and the new Gladiator, and I did a very nice surround mix. But when I did the Atmos soundtrack album, it was like, you know, the chains were removed, I could do whatever I wanted, and it was just so much fun. So I have a different technique for doing film, which is very limited, and the one I use for soundtrack albums is much more involved.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: Do you make significant changes between the soundtrack that's on the album versus or, excuse me, the soundtrack that's on the film versus the soundtrack album?
[00:18:22] Speaker C: Are there a lot of us, imaging wise? Yes, sonically, I try to. If the request is for me to keep it, sometimes they won't. They say, do something, we don't care. But I, sonically, if it's meant to, I'm constantly referencing my original mix and then making sure I don't screw up.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: Gotcha. All right.
[00:18:41] Speaker C: We just had to do interstellar, and I mixed the original ten years ago, and so this was like, oh, my God, if I get this wrong, he's just gonna kill me.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: Bob, how would you say your techniques have evolved over the years from, like, that first band album to what you're doing today? Are there notable. I'm gonna do it this way now. Kind of changed that you've made in your style or philosophy?
[00:19:07] Speaker B: I think I try something a little different each time, maybe, you know, or I try to. Anyway.
I tend to walk around the room a lot more because I'm more and more conscious of. I don't want people to have to sit in a sweet spot. I mean, you know, most people listen on headphones to what I do anyway, so that probably doesn't really matter. But I think it will matter someday because I think more and more people will get systems where they can hear this stuff on speakers in the future. I know that Sonos is an amazing system that I have set up in my studio lounge, and it's pretty damn close to what's going on in my mix room. It's incredible. Just off of Apple music that's happening, I'm mixing more for that, even though I check on headphones just to make sure that my neural sounds okay. I get a little confused when I switch to Apple music because that changes things in an odd way for me. But basically, I am checking. But the main thing is, because the speakers are never going to change, that format is here to stay. The binaural and the spatial audio, they're constantly improving. That going to end up being different.
But, yeah, I kind of, you know, I try to refine the effects. I really like to kind of make things bigger and smaller. Like, I use the atmos for the dynamics in lots of ways where something will start out just in the center with a voice and then expand. And at the chorus, just having it having it explode, you know, so let's.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Talk about that, actually. What is kind of generally the philosophy on what stays upfront? What can you put, like, even dry in the back, you know, what, immersion versus distraction. Where do you kind of draw that line? Or is every project different, or what's kind of your. To both of you? What kind of are your philosophies?
[00:21:12] Speaker C: It's a creative thing. For Dune, it's one thing. For gladiator, it's another thing. For Moby, it's another thing, depending on what you're doing. I don't think that there's one necessary rule. If there was a rule, I guess the percussion elements have to feel pretty solid in the front.
And if you want to use percussion in the size, just make sure it's balanced left and right or left. Atmos, which could be left and right, like that thing that we played before, it's got stuff going on in the top that's kind of crazy, but you don't really notice it. It just feels full, you know? For me, I think that's probably the.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Only rule, is keep the song in mind, the piece of music and what's trying to be conveyed in the music, and to listen to the lyric and listen to what it's about and get a feel for what the artist is trying to get across. And if anything is, you know, if you're looking over there for something and it's while the story's being told, then that's not right. It shouldn't distract, but you can do things like on that thing when we played Roxy music, you hear a sax solo in the back, but those things aren't really conflicting with. With the song. In fact, they're kind of. You kind of want to turn. Oh, who's that over there?
[00:22:47] Speaker A: It's a fine line. The thing I love about hearing Atmos remixes of albums that I've been in love with for literally decades is, oh, my God, I never noticed that horn part, that backup vocal. And to be able to shine a spotlight on some of those elements again without breaking the mix or distracting from the holistic sonic image is kind of magical to me.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I kind of also want to be sitting. Feel like you're sitting in the middle of the recording studio during the recording session.
[00:23:14] Speaker C: And another phenomenon I had is, like, avalon is. You know, I think I've listened to Avalon as many times as I listened to Steely Dan's Asia, you know, and.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: Most mix of that.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, right. With you.
Although I did. I want you to do that dvd audio, some of Fagan solo cds. That's my retirement plan.
[00:23:38] Speaker C: Let me, let me. Oh, I'm sorry.
Let me just finish my thought for a second.
So when I. Bob invited me over to listen to it, it is in his studio, and every single moment in that record has significance to me. So, like, I waited, like, at one point in the middle chorus, he has the focus. They go, Avalon, Avalon on the stereo album. So I'm like, waiting, you know, it's like, how is he gonna do this? It's like, oh, fuck me. It's okay. Yeah, it was for me because I had such a relationship with the record, I was already sucked in. So I started on like five and I just went up to eleven.
Like the slave to love. I don't even know if you did, if you know you did this, but the snare reverb pans from the left to the right. It goes slave to love.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: Oh, did I do that?
[00:24:41] Speaker C: You did do that.
I remember, I think I told you that, like 20.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:47] Speaker C: Did I do that?
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a Sevis did it on the.
[00:24:51] Speaker C: I haven't heard that one yet.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not out yet. The Atmos version. I did it, though.
Okay. You don't come over and listen to.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: This last night, I'll give you another run up on it. To be blessed with having done the original stereo version and then doing the Dolby Atmos version and cracking open your multitrack tapes, what do you typically find you have or what do you wish you had? It's like, ah, geez, why didn't I have the original dry recordings versus the printed tracks with the eqs and the compression, so forth? Like, what is, what do you, what do you usually have? What do you wish you had? What do you kind of use to build your immersive version compared to what you started out with in the stereo version?
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Well, I basically had the same thing that I had when I had the stereo. The only thing I don't have is power station had a 75 foot stairway that was chamber one, and it was just magnificent. And unfortunately, I don't have that anymore. And it got kind of destroyed before anyone got a chance to do any impulse responses. But, you know, there's a lot of things out there. There's a lot of, you know, Alta verb has a bunch of some amazing environments that they've done impulse responses for. So I was able to get pretty.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Close, I think, forensic work to kind.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: Of recreate million different reverbs and things like that to try, you know, just try stuff. Yeah, I mean, so often I'll just sit there and go through, like, you know, 15 different reverbs and then different delays and different delay times. You know, if something calls for delays, you know, for.
[00:26:24] Speaker C: Because now, without a verb aid, it switches almost instantly. So you could just, like. Like, if I'm looking for a hall, I can just audition every hall they have until one hits the width and the size and the low end that.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: I want plug in called. I don't know where they came up with this thing. It's clear mountains domain.
And there's lots of little fun things you can do in there.
[00:26:45] Speaker C: There is? Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: So getting in the nuts and bolts, a little bit of it. We talk about using audio objects to actually fly things around. The spaceship or the jet fighter or what have you. Do you find yourself mixing music primarily in beds? Do you like to use objects and either objects in motion or static objects just to find more point sources around the room? What's your philosophy on beds versus objects for music, both of you?
[00:27:11] Speaker C: Well, like I said, so I don't tend to automate objects that much. My objects are static, and there's basically five levels. There's the bed, and then there's the ground level.
That's the same as the bed, which I won't have to do anymore because now there is 714. But so I could have a 714 bed, and then there's the next level up, which is 20% up, then 20% up and 10% back, then 20% up and 10% back, and then ceiling.
So. And I just have them all on auxes. So I play everything at the flat level, and I just start thinking about, well, what would sound like if the guitars were up a little bit higher? That doesn't work. Okay, well, let's turn it back down to that, and let's try the shakers. You know, when I just play, I just beard stroke until I find something that I like, but there's no rules, so that's the way I do it, because I can, and it's what I'm used to. And I know it's getting easier to not do that now, but I think that this is where we differ, because you have a simpler system.
Simple mind. Beats the city.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I've been doing that, too, lately, but, yeah, I basically used the bed, and then I have four stationary objects for the.
The height speakers, and then I have, like, four. But, I mean, I'm mixing on an analog desk and an old SSL, 30 year old SLG series, and so I have a limited number of outputs. And the last eight is where there's only 32 bus or there's 24 buses, because the last eight are auxin. And so I have four. If I want to move something around, I have four buses. And then I just record those in separate tracks. And then after I mix it, I go in and fly things around. But I don't. Yeah, most of the stuff's stationary. I mean, a lot of mixes that I do. Nothing moves, you know.
[00:29:11] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't move around. I'm not really into moving around stuck. I subtly move around stuck. There's a great plug in is Tony here made by this company, sound particles. And it's an energy panner.
And I use that. But I have this theory, and I know you prescribe, most mixers prescribe to this, is that when everything sits static with nothing going on, the ear gets lazy and tired and a tiny bit bored. So I like having little panettes going on and just a tiny little bit of movement on a bunch of different things. So I use these panners to do that. It's, it's a, it's a, it's an anything to anything panner. So I can go out to full 916 if I want to. Or I could just do a quad panner and I'll just do a tiny bit of panning and then just blend. It's great now because everything has a blend on it. So I could do this wicked crazy panning and then just add 3% of it and it just creates this sort of, you know, I do it a lot in, on albums with, with pads. Like when pads are just sitting there. So I'll put whatever the tempo is. I'll put a 16th note panning delay on Echo boy and just turn the density down to four so you don't even really hear it panning, but your ear stays engaged.
My stuff is really dense.
I need to work with space in a slightly different way because there's so much. My average mix has 1000 tracks. Right, Larry?
[00:30:49] Speaker B: More, more.
[00:30:51] Speaker C: And so I'm constantly looking for ways to keep clarity and depth, and imaging and width. And I'll tell you, the one thing that it isn't is reverb. You know, reverb is great, but you can eliminate it or lessen it. The more you do that, the more clarity you can get. A.
So those types of tricks. And that's sort of my meat and potatoes of it.
To create things that you really don't hear, but you sense very, very dry reverbs. I use actually post production reverbs, like the outdoor spaces on guitars and stuff, so you don't even know it's on there until you turn it off. Hidel even tied their plug in. The SP 2016 is great for that because you could just push something back, like that much.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Quad impulse response of our apogee studio, actually, for the height speakers, it's nice and you don't notice it until you turn it off. And then, oh, what happened?
[00:31:54] Speaker C: Matt, the finished mix. I don't want you to go, wow, I'm listening to an Atmos mix. Isn't this fucking awesome? I want you to just listen and go, this sounds great. And then if you switch to the stereo, you're like, oh, my God, that's a lot. You know, so that's my goal. There are different people like the. I always use the, and with all due respect, and I love them, but Eagles health flies over technique of mixing where there's a voice in each, you know, and nothing.
It's just, you know, that's not me. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's just not me. You know, it's not what I wanted. I don't want you to notice that there's shit flying around and all that. I want you to just feel like you're sitting in a chair, but you're slightly elevated in that chair and you're sort of being drawn into it. That's the way I think about it.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: Very briefly, give them your advice for folks just starting out in mixing music in Dolby Atmos, producers, mixers. What one liner advice do you both have for everyone?
[00:32:59] Speaker B: Well, my advice would be to, before you print your mix, just walk around the room listening to it. And if you have a room where you can, it's even better if you can get behind the speakers. Like, a room like this is great because you actually walk behind. So there's a lot of rooms where they're built into the wall, so you can't do that. But still, so don't just sit there in the sweet spot. That's my advice.
Apogee. Use an apogee symphony mark two interface. I don't mean to knock the.
[00:33:35] Speaker C: First. I don't really know the answer to that because it's always different all the time. My whole advice for mixing is I like to work fast and get it almost ready and then put it away and then come back and spend as much time as I want. And that last level, so where I'm really just being creative and I'm no longer thinking technically I don't have to worry about busing. I don't have to worry about frequency notches and any of that. I'm just listening to music, and that's my most successful thing. But for someone who's just starting out in Dolby, start slow.
Don't put everything in the. If everything's in the height of.
All you're doing is making mono. You're just making mono up there, you know? So start slow. You might even want to just start in stereo and then slowly go, what would that sound like if the guitars were up there? Oh, well, that's cool. Okay, well, let's do that. And. Okay, now space is opened up, and the minute you open up one thing, you start opening up the pandora's box. So it's just. I think it's. Mixing is starting slow. You know, it's like, even the skill of mixing is starting slow. It's just, you know, like, when I was mixing a lot of records, I'd get a balance as fast as I could, and I just start from there, you know, stay.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: Because I do most of my mix in stereo. I mean, I'll mix in stereo and get it to sound like a record as much as I can before I even assign anything to the other channels to, you know, break it down.
[00:35:08] Speaker C: It's much easier to do that. And especially if. Because if you're just starting out, you might be in headphones and you might be sort of early in your journey. And with all mixing, the thing you have to do is learn how to manage low end. So spend some time doing that. Listen to great records mixed by great mixers.
Unless you're doing film score, then listen to someone else.
I have to stop doing that. My mixers sound pretty good.
I had a girl once say to me that, you know, that self deprecating thing you do comes across, like loathing.
I didn't ask for her number, though.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: Good. I think.
Yeah, me, too. All right.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: I check out every couple of days. Okay. What's new in the spatial audio category? And sitting here and realizing that so much of that music that I'm really, really enjoying has come from the two of you has been an absolute thrill. Ladies and gentlemen, Alan Meyerson and Bob Claremont.
[00:36:14] Speaker D: Thanks for watching broadcast. To post, please make sure to subscribe to the podcast to receive future episodes, follow key code Media on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram to receive news on additional av broadcast and post production technology content. See you next time, folks.
