Shownotes
Travis talks about the year he spent NOT buying plug-ins and how the recording studio culture fuels the audio tech industry into trying to sell engineers everything.
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Credits:
Guest: N/A
Host: Travis Ference
Editor: Travis Ference
Theme Music: inter.ference
Transcripts
What demo expired? Yeah, I'll buy it.
Speaker:This is me back at my old ways of buying almost any plugin
Speaker:that pops up in my instagram feed. I wasn't always like this. Well,
Speaker:actually, no. Yes, I've always been like this. Except for the one year I
Speaker:committed to not buying a single plugin. And despite what I learned from that
Speaker:experience, here I am, right back at it.
Speaker:Welcome back to the show. My name is Travis Farence. I'm a recording engineer and
Speaker:mixer with a Grammy nom, a few number ones, and a huge plugin problem.
Speaker:I have so many plugins I even forget some of the ones that I couldn't
Speaker:live without. Now, don't get me wrong, I think it's important to have quality tools
Speaker:to get the job done. But I think a lot of us are
Speaker:taking it a bit over the top, and I'm not sure that the audio companies
Speaker:are helping us out here. Are they scamming us out of money and giving us
Speaker:a product that doesn't work? No. But are there some
Speaker:snake oil sales tactics going on? Definitely. So now
Speaker:that I've eliminated every company in the industry from being a potential sponsor of the
Speaker:show, please consider hitting the subscribe button to support the channel. And
Speaker:while you do that, I'm going to get into why I didn't buy a plugin
Speaker:for a year back in 2022. I had just finished building this studio and
Speaker:was still carrying some of the debt from that project. So the logical
Speaker:decision at that time was to obviously cut unnecessary
Speaker:business expenses and to pay that debt down as fast as possible. Among
Speaker:those expenses were plugins, obviously. But there
Speaker:was also a part of me that felt that I had invested so heavily in
Speaker:giving myself a tool, this room, to hear
Speaker:properly that I had to use it to its fullest potential.
Speaker:No more searching for new plugins to give me a specific sound. I
Speaker:had enough plugins. I should be able to make any sound I want at this
Speaker:point, especially now that I could hear such small moves with such
Speaker:great detail. And so I went a full year without buying a single
Speaker:plugin. Now, I'll be honest, I did get a couple of
Speaker:endorphin hits off of the plugin alliance subscription, right? They always add a few throughout
Speaker:the year that are already included. But other than that, I was off the
Speaker:new plugin train. No demos, no nfrs, nothing. So what was
Speaker:the result? Obviously, I saved money, but I also got so much more than
Speaker:just that out of it. First off, I learned the tools I had better than
Speaker:ever. I was digging into stuff the way I should have when I first got
Speaker:it. It's almost embarrassing how basic and surface level
Speaker:I was with some of the tools that I already had. Take something like Saturn
Speaker:two from fabfilter. I was using maybe 25% of the power of that
Speaker:plugin. Now it's become one of my go to saturators. I also ended
Speaker:up doing a lot more plugin comparisons without the option of searching the Internet for,
Speaker:I don't know, the vibeiest tube plugin I could find. I now had to take
Speaker:the ones I already owned and compare them, hear the difference between them, and
Speaker:decide what I liked about each and where I could use them. You
Speaker:know, listening. What a novel concept. Right now you might be
Speaker:thinking, wow, this guy sounds super lazy. I can't believe he's never done
Speaker:that. But as you do this job longer and longer, you find that you end
Speaker:up collecting plugins that come in on sessions or are part of a bundle
Speaker:or a subscription and use them, like one time. And I definitely fell
Speaker:victim to that, because having more tools than you need in your arsenal has just
Speaker:become the way of the studio. You find yourself buying
Speaker:plugins just to have them. Like, what if somebody comes to the studio and wants
Speaker:to use contact? I better pick that up. But it's more cost effective
Speaker:if I buy complete. So I'll just do that. Yeah, do that.
Speaker:Spend $800 just in case. Great idea. So where
Speaker:does this mindset come from? It comes from the fact that it's been here since
Speaker:the beginning. Recording studio culture has always been very
Speaker:much about the gear, especially if you spent a lot of time in
Speaker:some of the big studios like I have. I came up through Capitol, and I
Speaker:spent countless hours in a lot of the LA Staples places, like
Speaker:Henson, east, west, Westlake, or wherever. I've been to pretty much all of
Speaker:them at least once. And in those rooms, the tools of the trade
Speaker:are like characters of the story. Look at the sound city documentary. It's
Speaker:basically a love story about a Neve console at capital. We had the
Speaker:Frank Sinatra U 48. Was it Frank's personal mic?
Speaker:No. Did he sing into it? Yes, but he also sang into half the
Speaker:mics in the mic locker. But that one. That one was called
Speaker:Frank. So, coming up in that gear centric culture, you just had this
Speaker:attitude that whatever you needed to make the record, you just had to
Speaker:get it. Engineers would come into capital and need to rent things.
Speaker:How outlandish does that sound? You're in one of the best studios
Speaker:in the world. The M omni wouldn't work for your string
Speaker:rooms. You had to rent the M 50s or you needed to have a
Speaker:Telefunken 251. None of the other mics in the mic locker would work for your
Speaker:vocal. Now, obviously, if you've used these mics and you've got a trained deer, then
Speaker:you understand why somebody would be making those requests.
Speaker:But still, the fact that that is part of the culture, I think,
Speaker:feeds into the way the audio industry targets engineers and producers like you and
Speaker:I. They know how idolized the tools are, and they
Speaker:want to play into that to convince us that we need them.
Speaker:All of them. Oh, the artist wants a vintagey Motown vibe for this
Speaker:one. Well, let me just grab that Ua hitsville stuff that'll be perfect for this
Speaker:record. Once again, if you want that sound and your ears are trained, I
Speaker:get it. But really, you can't make that record without buying a
Speaker:plugin. Nothing else in your plugin list will do that job.
Speaker:Which brings me to what are we really searching for
Speaker:here? And to be honest, we're searching for
Speaker:shortcuts. And I'm not going to leave myself out of this one. I have
Speaker:bought more plugins looking for a sound than I care
Speaker:to admit to. And that sound, it was
Speaker:already in my daw. And now that I've spent a year not buying
Speaker:plugins, I know that. And I'm not just talking about shortcuts to find a
Speaker:sound. It's shortcuts to inspire creativity as well. This applies to sample
Speaker:packs, soft synths, guitar pedals, analog synthesizers,
Speaker:outboard gear, everything. We are all guilty of buying something at
Speaker:least once because we were bored. The interesting part is that the
Speaker:old school engineers that many of us aspire to be like, they weren't buying or
Speaker:renting gear to find shortcuts. The reason that gear is such a
Speaker:character in the recording studio story is because they knew it so
Speaker:well. Those engineers knew the tones of pretty much every
Speaker:tool they had access to. That's why they were so specific in having
Speaker:everything they wanted and working at particular studios for certain projects.
Speaker:Now, I'm not trying to imply that the newer generation of engineers doesn't know their
Speaker:tools, but I do think we collect them for different reasons.
Speaker:We have so many options at our fingertips. How could we
Speaker:possibly know them the way the previous generation did? Have you ever
Speaker:sat down, be honest with your four SSL channel strip
Speaker:plugins, or your 511 76 plugins, and picked your favorite? Have you?
Speaker:Have you really done that? Also, it's possible you've never even worked on an
Speaker:SSL. So how do you know which one is the best other than
Speaker:from what the marketing tells you? So don't buy
Speaker:shortcuts. Put a couple different versions up and test them
Speaker:out. Pick the one that you like, regardless of whether it sounds like the
Speaker:real thing or not. This is how you develop your unique taste,
Speaker:your sonic identity. That's what people did in studios for decades when they
Speaker:were learning, and I feel like the emphasis on that has faded. There
Speaker:are so many options now that I think it becomes overwhelming, and we're inclined to
Speaker:just watch a YouTube video on which one is the best and then take that
Speaker:person's word for it. But their opinion is based on their taste.
Speaker:You want your opinion to be based on your taste. So this brings me back
Speaker:full circle to my no plugin experiment. That's what I really took
Speaker:away from this full year of not buying plugins. I
Speaker:finally started to pick my favorites and develop my taste
Speaker:even further, and I learned that you can make any sound you want
Speaker:with any tool you want if you put the work in to train your
Speaker:ears. So if you're watching this and you can't afford all the tools
Speaker:that some of the other engineers around you have at their disposal, don't
Speaker:be defeated by that. I think you'll actually discover your own
Speaker:sound faster because of those limitations. So I hope this
Speaker:makes you question why you're collecting the tools you're collecting and
Speaker:encourages you to really master the gear and software you have
Speaker:before buying anymore. And I want to be clear, I'm definitely
Speaker:not anti options. I love having options, but I think it's important
Speaker:that we all add to our options for the right reasons. Doing
Speaker:this video has actually made me question the plugin I bought in the intro. But
Speaker:hey, got you to watch this far. So if you are still here and you
Speaker:think I'm wrong and you want to buy all the gear in the world, but
Speaker:you don't know how to afford it, check out this video on how to set
Speaker:your rates as a freelancer.
