Shownotes
Travis shares how mixing and recording knowledge is shared today versus when he started and explains why the abundance of information can be both empowering and limiting.
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Credits:
Guest: N/A
Host: Travis Ference
Editor: Travis Ference
Theme Music: inter.ference
Transcripts
I'm just going to say it. You don't need any more mixtapes. Nobody needs any
Speaker:more mixtapes. Don't. Cl. Don't. Hey, do not click that mixtape.
Speaker:What's up, y'all? Welcome back to Progressions. My name is Travis Farance. I'm an engineer
Speaker:and mixer based here in Los angeles with nearly 20 years of experience. Got
Speaker:some Grammy noms and number ones and all that accolade bs. But what's important to
Speaker:know for this video is I'm kind of old, like almost pre
Speaker:Internet old. And why that's important is that I learned to
Speaker:do this job before mixtape, YouTube and before social
Speaker:media. The access to information that is available today is
Speaker:amazing and should be empowering to all of us to learn
Speaker:basically everything. But there's one problem, actually,
Speaker:let's not call it a problem, let's call it a feature. There's one feature of
Speaker:this current era and I think we all need to be aware of so that
Speaker:it doesn't hold us back. So when I came to LA, it was 2006. I
Speaker:still bought CDs. The Internet was for shreds videos and
Speaker:social media was in its infancy. I think you still needed a college email to
Speaker:be on Facebook. So if you wanted to be a recording engineer, you basically had
Speaker:two choices. Go get a job in a studio or go to an audio
Speaker:school and then go get a job in a studio where you relearn everything you
Speaker:just paid to learn. So outside of some industry magazines like Sound
Speaker:on Sound, Mix or Tape, up there just wasn't a lot of access
Speaker:to knowledge about the craft without working in a studio and learning it from a
Speaker:person who learned it from another person who learned it from another person. I was
Speaker:fortunate in that I started my career at the legendary Capitol Studios in Hollywood. The
Speaker:people that I was learning from were some of the best that ever sat behind
Speaker:a recording console. I'll never forget the first time I walked into Studio A while
Speaker:a session was going. It blew my mind what it sounded like. It
Speaker:sounded like what I thought was a final mix, but it was just the
Speaker:band live off the floor during tracking and watching those
Speaker:guys and listening to what they were doing. Those were my mix tips.
Speaker:It's not actually that different from watching some tutorials on YouTube. I would just be
Speaker:off in the corner watching how the session went down, the same way that you're
Speaker:watching a video right now. The difference was that there was no voiceover describing
Speaker:the process or, you know, zoom ins on the computer screen or anything like that.
Speaker:But in some ways it was better, right, because you had to listen to try
Speaker:to understand why people were making the choices that they were making. Then after
Speaker:the session, if it felt appropriate, you could ask a few questions to the engineer,
Speaker:producer, look at the racks to see what kind of compression was going on, check
Speaker:out the EQ on the console, go in the live room, see where the mics
Speaker:ended up, and then you go home. And it's what happened when you got
Speaker:home. That's the big difference between when I started and today.
Speaker:Once I got home, there was no content to watch. Sure,
Speaker:there were some blogs and books, but really what you did when you went home
Speaker:was you opened up whatever daw you had and you just messed
Speaker:around, which wasn't always that exciting if you didn't have anything fun
Speaker:to play with, right? So we just never went home. We'd stay at the
Speaker:studio and play with gear all night. Everybody I knew
Speaker:in town who worked at a studio was always at that studio, whether
Speaker:you were getting paid or not. Because if you weren't at the studio,
Speaker:you probably weren't learning anything new. So you'd just
Speaker:always be there because you knew one day you would get thrown
Speaker:into the hot seat and have to put into practice everything that you'd just been
Speaker:watching up until that point. There's a great story about Jimmy Iovine, who is probably
Speaker:best known at this point as the Interscope Records label head who started
Speaker:Beats with Dr. Dre, which they ultimately sold to Apple
Speaker:for $3 billion. But in the 1970s, he was just a young
Speaker:assistant engineer at Record Plant in New York, and he got a huge
Speaker:break when he was called in last minute on Easter Sunday to
Speaker:engineer because nobody else was available. He showed up at
Speaker:the studio to find out that the artist he was recording was John Lennon.
Speaker:And successfully making it through that session while also leaving an impression on
Speaker:John, would set him on the course to work with everybody from Springsteen to
Speaker:U2. And that's a super common story on how so many engineers and
Speaker:producers got their start. They were suddenly thrust into a
Speaker:situation that mattered and had to go from observing and
Speaker:learning to doing. And usually at a very
Speaker:high level. Studio managers generally have a great read on who's
Speaker:ready and who isn't. And the good ones, they'll push
Speaker:those into a situation where they know that they can grow. So if you're asking
Speaker:yourself what this has to do with mixtapes, that's fair.
Speaker:There's been a lot of setup here. The point I'm getting to is that
Speaker:today there is so much information that it's actually
Speaker:overwhelming how much you can learn. You can go deep down the
Speaker:rabbit hole and learn about how this person mixes vocals versus how that person
Speaker:mixes vocals. How this plugin compares to that plugin compares
Speaker:to the analog version. You can go on and on
Speaker:constantly learning, but never doing. And that's the
Speaker:stark difference between the pre Internet era and today.
Speaker:Twenty plus years ago, there was a ceiling to how much you could learn
Speaker:without doing it. Now you can learn
Speaker:infinitely. But learning is not the same as doing.
Speaker:Earlier, I made a subtle comment about going to audio school and then
Speaker:relearning everything when you started in the studio. I believe that
Speaker:education, formal or not, is teaching you the foundational
Speaker:skills you need to go out into the real world and follow what
Speaker:is being done. You learn the basics so you can see a session in
Speaker:real life or on a video and digest why people are
Speaker:making choices. Not ask what are they doing?
Speaker:Mixtape. YouTube is giving you the what and the how, which
Speaker:is important. But the why is going to be
Speaker:unique to each of us. And the only way to really learn that
Speaker:is to do it yourself. Example, slamming the input to a piece
Speaker:of equipment to distort it. That's the what you're doing and how
Speaker:you're doing it. But why you're doing it is your choice. Maybe
Speaker:it's because you like the tone of it. Maybe it's because it brings out an
Speaker:emotion in the part. Now let's go back to that assistant thrown into a
Speaker:session situation. There's an important thing that happens when you're pushed beyond
Speaker:your comfort zone and you pass the test. Confidence.
Speaker:And this is something that the Internet cannot give you. In fact, this is where
Speaker:the access to information actually works against us. Think about this.
Speaker:How many times have you been working on music and thought, I wonder how
Speaker:insert hit producer name here does this? And don't
Speaker:say that you haven't. I have. I've been doing this for 20 years and I
Speaker:will stop mid mix to check out how some great engineer does the same thing
Speaker:that I'm doing. And it's because knowing that we can makes us want
Speaker:to validate what we're doing. We don't always have total confidence in the things that
Speaker:we're doing inside our vacuum. Most of us are working alone.
Speaker:This wasn't the case 30, 40 or 50 years ago. Engineers did things and everybody
Speaker:in the room liked it or they didn't. There was immediate
Speaker:feedback to whether you were on the right path. And the more positive feedback you
Speaker:got, the more Confident you became in your skills. A lot of us don't have
Speaker:that anymore. So many people are writing, recording and mixing their own music, which
Speaker:is amazing. But the more isolated you are in that
Speaker:process, the more likely you are to turn to the Internet to see
Speaker:whether you're doing the right thing, completely ignoring the fact that there
Speaker:is no right thing. This is why it's important to find your version of assistant
Speaker:thrown into a session. Right? You have got to balance the ability to constantly learn
Speaker:and better yourself with taking action. Nothing will make you
Speaker:better than doing the thing. So to go all the way
Speaker:back to the beginning, this feature of mixtape YouTube that I
Speaker:mentioned earlier that we need to be aware of so that it doesn't hold us
Speaker:back. It's the same feature that makes it amazing,
Speaker:the free and essentially unlimited amount of it. Now, it's
Speaker:hard to think that learning as much as you can about something isn't a
Speaker:good idea. But if you are using that learning to avoid doing because
Speaker:of a fear of failure or a lack of confidence, then in
Speaker:fact learning is actually holding you back. No amount of
Speaker:learning will take away your fear. The only way to do that is to dive
Speaker:in and put yourself in situations to test yourself. This is a
Speaker:disadvantage of the Internet information age. It doesn't force you to test
Speaker:yourself the way that that older apprenticeship or mentorship model
Speaker:would. Which is why it's super important to recognize when you are
Speaker:avoiding taking a step outside your comfort zone. And I tell you this because
Speaker:I am fully guilty of this myself. I am no better than anyone else at
Speaker:these things. I may not do this in my audio career anymore. When it comes
Speaker:to the podcast or YouTube, the creator side of my life, I have done
Speaker:this way too many times. The things I am doing right now are the things
Speaker:I should have done three years ago. So I encourage you
Speaker:to take a look at your life and see if there is anywhere that you
Speaker:are using learning to avoid doing. So if I've convinced
Speaker:you to step away from Mixtape YouTube for a bit and you want some rapid
Speaker:fire non technical advice, check out this episode where
Speaker:I share everything I've learned over the last 18 years about how to build a
Speaker:successful career in the recording industry.
