The Healthier Home Studio Podcast

SpikeAI ain’t Skynet - with Mark Abrams

• Chris Graham • Season 1 • Episode 11

Share episode

Mark Abrams & Chris discuss how they feel about SpikeAI taking over the audio mixing industry.

This episode was recorded in part with binaural mics. Headphones recommended for the maximum “immersive” goofball experience. 🎧

The Instagram post that started this brew-ha:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DAY1_iVPFCV/?igsh=bTh1eWZ5YmllNmNn



Mark:

You ready? Yes. They took our jabs. Yeah, they're down the guard. They took your jab. They took your guy too. They took jail. They took your jab.

Chris:

hey everybody,

Mark:

job.

Chris:

we have some stuff to talk about today. welcome to the show. I'm here, in the barn. We are doing an immersive episode. It's nighttime. the bugs are out. Mark Abrams is here.

Mark:

Cube,

Chris:

We've got the as SMR microphones on, so it feels like you guys are here. This episode will be best listened to, in headphones. this is a special episode. A thing happened in recording studio land this week that's got everybody talking and we stopped the presses. I had a whole episode planned switching course'cause we gotta talk about it. Spike ai. So there was a post on Instagram this week from Mark Spike stint. For those of you who don't know who Mark is, he is like a living legend in, mixer Land. Mark, you probably know much more about Spike than I do, but, spike did a thing and he announced Spike AI brings a great mix to musicians. There are around a hundred top tier mixing engineers in the world, and each of them can only work on approximately 300 songs per year It was like a screenshot of a, of an article in Music connection. we will put a link to that in the show description, but the comments on this, there's 353 comments on this Instagram post and a considerable, number of them, are Shall we say hostile

Stereo:

my

Chris:

mark's, throwing lumber to, a mix.

Stereo:

like a mix.

Chris:

So we, we gotta talk about this. So there are a number of things to, to discuss around this. But first of all, what Mark and I want to do is validate the feelings people are having about Spike ai. This is scary. The prospect of an AI getting everyone that's not in the top 100, out of this field is terrifying. Right? But that's also definitely not what's gonna happen here. I've talked to a lot of people, about this And generally it sounds like people's complaint is in the framing, in the marketing around Spike ai. that seems to have brought up some of these feelings. But Mark, tell me how you're feeling. What do you think of this whole Spike AI thing?

Mark:

I'd like to play devil's advocate and go down the path that the comments of that post have gone and like actually address some of the possible dangers of it. I think that'd be interesting.

Chris:

Yeah, go for it.

Mark:

let's say you have an artist and the artist is always beating you up on price. you're getting sub$1,000 sub$500, sub$300 in a lot of cases, and you're worried that the artist is going to be like, I don't need this mixer off of Fiverr or, you know, whoever's cousin Sticky will mix it in the basement for cheaper. I can just use Spike AI Yeah. there's a quote that I love about AI that was like in order for AI to steal our jobs, clients are gonna have to know exactly what they want. even with prompts, I don't think it would ever get you to a place that a great, you know, yeah. First we'd have to define what a great mix is

Chris:

and make it sound analog,

Mark:

right? Like it's

Chris:

not warmer, maximum warmth,

Mark:

Add more of that tape sound. I wanna smell the tape coming off of it. I don't know. I just, I can't see artists who are like technically inept getting in there and doing something that is gonna produce a result that they're gonna feel confident releasing to the world

Chris:

I like where your head's at and I like, this paradigm that you've brought up like, the really challenging thing about working in audio, whether you're mixing mastery and producing whatever, is when you have a client you are kind of a translator. And in some cases when you get really good, you can tell what the client wants and you do it and they don't ask for revisions. And then that's the end of the day and that's, it happens and it's wonderful, but. A lot of the times, and this is much more coming from my world with mastering, there's two things that you've brought up. Number one is I don't think most clients are gonna have the vocabulary to ask an AI for what they want. Yeah. Number two, I spent more than a decade mastering full-time. And I am just now coming back into that world. And while that's been like super exciting, a lot's changed in the two years that I took off, or year and a half or whatever to focus on advocacy stuff. But as I've been doing that, like I've been having this conversation. with a client. His name's Roy. And one of the things that Roy and I have been talking about, Is that there is this thing that happens right before you release a song. Mm-Hmm. Right. An artist, uh, is kind of like an Instagram model. An Instagram model has a picture of themself. They put it up and they, they are thinking internally, gosh, I just hope people think I'm beautiful and hot and I get dms and follows and likes and whatever else. Musicians. It's a little more intense than that. It's, I'm putting out this record and when I do, I hope that people can appreciate the true beauty of my soul down to my very existence, because that's what a record is. That's, that's intense. Right. often what will happen is an artist will get close to the end there and they'll get something I call master itis, which sounds like it could be inappropriate, but it's purely audio related, I

Mark:

promise Right.

Chris:

But they get this thing called master itis, where they're just

Mark:

like.

Chris:

Uh, I, I, I just need someone to tell me this is gonna be okay if I release it. Yeah. And that no one will say Your soul is hideous. Yeah. You have been found wanting Spotify. No. No. Right. And, and so I think a lot of the most important part of making records with people for a living is having the conversation with a client of like, it's ready, dude, this is awesome. Yeah. This sounds phenomenal. You should be proud of this. I think it's time. let's move forward and AI is not going to help with that.

Mark:

I obviously I work a lot in the education space with pure mix and, the one downside that I could say is what does this do to engineers who are starting out that might not learn the, the actual techniques and the, the process of making a great record. what if they can slap a AI plugin on something and it makes it sound great and they never had to learn how to properly EQ or compress something they never learned about, why resonance can be bad when it gets outta control or how to dial in a great sounding reverb that works with the groove of the song and all of those things. I could see the placement for conversation on that. So what do you think?

Chris:

Well, uh, we are in my barn right now and over there is my workshop and I got my 3D printers and my tools and stuff and my soldering iron. And so to me what it means to be an engineer means that you can solder in the way I was brought up, you had to be able to solder to actually graduate from school where I went and. To me, an engineer is, is somebody who is like taking amps apart and fixing them and all that channel's bad. And I'm fixing it and I'm, I'm experimenting and I'm building things and I'm, I'm putting a pickup, a pazo pickup in a block of wood and this guy's gonna stomp on it. And I'm, that's experimentation to me. That's what an engineer is. Yeah. Not anymore. you don't need to be able to solder to be a world class engineer anymore. But you did up until fairly recently, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. And our industry is constantly changing and we are constantly redefining what it means to be somebody who makes records for a living. Mm-Hmm. And. You know, if we rewind even further, was it Bob Horn that was the first mix engineer? Or was it Clearwater? Uh, clear Mountain. clear Mountain. yeah. Clear Mountain. Sorry, Bob. So one of the bobs, so Bob Clear Mountain, I love this story, but so the legend goes he was working at some studio and the band would record, and then they would do a mix, and then they would go record again. And it was this kind of cyclical process. And Bob had had this idea and he is gimme the tapes. We've got studio B with the same tape machine. I'll go do the rough mix over there while you guys keep recording. Mm-Hmm. And the band would come in the studio B or whatever it was, and listen to Bob's mix and be like, yeah, that sounds pretty great actually. I think I can, we can, I like Bob's mix. Can we release it like that? And all of a sudden there's a mix engineer job, a brand new role at the studio was created. And I think what AI is gonna do

Mark:

in the context of that being his sole role.

Chris:

right, right, right. I think what AI is gonna do is it is going to create opportunities for new roles in the studio. And I've mentioned this in the podcast before, but my personal hope is that there, becomes this new role of finisher. Mm-Hmm. this band's been recording into their laptop for months. They've got some pretty solid. Something between a demo and a final product, and they're having a hard time to use a football analogy. They're on like the two yard line and it's fourth down and they just have not been able to get over the finish line. They've got master itis. They're going back and forth. they've turned the snare up one DB and then back down one DB on five subsequent mixes. All their files say, song one final. Final. Really The final. Absolutely the final. Last one. Final, final, final, final. Right. They've got mais, if you've got the word final in your files more than once you've got Mais. Okay. Okay. where I want to see our industry go is more finishers. People that are. You know, this, this kind of culmination of mix engineer, mastering engineer, producer. And what we've seen over the past couple years is everybody's niche down. People have gone from a generalist to, I did this. I went from all singing, all dancing producer, I'll play all your tracks. I'll mix all your tracks. I'll master our track. I'll do it all to, I will only master your record. And it wasn't until I did that that I actually had any idea what my business was doing. And I think what we're gonna see in the future, is that there is gonna be so much more room for people who are great at helping people across the finish line. And so I had this awesome conversation with Roy, who I'm mastering a record for right now. And he said, the way I see you, I'm reminded of this famous video and I'll link it below of, a runner running a marathon and they're literally like 50 feet from the finish line and all of a sudden they're just sort of like falling all over the place. They can't walk anymore. And some random runner behind them comes up behind them, puts their arm around them and helps them across the finish line, and then pushes them over the finish line first And this picture of what it looks like to help somebody finish a marathon, AI ain't taking that job, man. Yeah. That's my position on the issue. And so as I think about, we're bitching and moaning about AI and de dur and all that stuff. How many songs are 80% done on Planet Earth and have sat on a hard drive for more than a month?

Stereo:

Hmm. Right.

Chris:

Master. Mm-Hmm. They didn't finish

Stereo:

it. Yeah.

Chris:

That's relevant. And so the way that, spike or Spike's team or whoever it was positioned this on the post is this idea that there's, the top 100 mixed engineers can only do about 300 tracks a year.

Mark:

Mm-Hmm. Um,

Chris:

okay. Wouldn't it be great if everybody was not held back by the scarcity of a great mix engineer? That's his position here. you brought up a really interesting point earlier let's say I'm 22 years old and I've decided I wanna make records for a living

Mark:

Mm-Hmm.

Chris:

until I can mix better than an ai. I am kind of in a weird spot that gap between what's the wor, what's the, the worst, uh, that I'm gonna do, and what's the best that an AI is gonna do, and is my worst better than an AI's best? Yeah. when we think about that, it is gonna make coming up different. And I think that one of the things that's so important to acknowledge about our industry is that since the invention of recording. It has been difficult to get a professional sounding one. Mm-Hmm. It's something of, of like, oh, I've wrote a song. I want to get a really great recording of it. That's sounds good. And it sounds professional and it moves people. That's elusive. But what technology has done is that it's lowered the bar and it's made it easier. I was a, am a professional mastering engineer and. The way I was able to be a professional at Mastering engineer was I bought a MacBook Mm-Hmm. That was, that was, it was a 13 inch MacBook, and I maxed out my credit card as like a 23-year-old or whatever, and I got the MacBook and I got digital performer and it had stock plugins, and all of a sudden I had a studio and I had bought an interface too. But that accessibility was new. even at that moment. I bought one of the first portable interfaces that you could plug into a laptop, and that meant that I could have a studio without owning a building. I could travel, I could go to people's houses and produce in their spare bedroom, and I could find a whole different type of client because I had a studio in a box, right? let's say Spike AI is phenomenal. Let's say it's like the most mind blowing product that's ever come out. It's even better than Bounce Butler,

Mark:

Mm-hmm. Right?

Chris:

right? So let's say it's absolutely phenomenal. it will create access where there was not access

Mark:

before. Mm-Hmm.

Chris:

And that's a good thing. That's an exciting thing. Yes, it will change some parts of our industry, but guys, we've been adapting Mm-Hmm. Constantly since the gramophone was invented. I don't

Mark:

no Relation. there,

Chris:

Yeah, no relation. That

Mark:

I'm aware of. I think it was his middle name,

Chris:

but you know, Alexander Graham Bell made a recording device. I don't even, I don't, we should know. It feels like if you're an engineer, you should

Mark:

should probably

Chris:

yeah. when was the Mary had a little lamb recording, made or whatever it was. or was it. Was it Alexander Graham Bell? Or was It was Alexander Graham Bell. No, it was Edison. What the hell am I talking about? Edison made the, first record player, I think it was Graham Bell made, made the first telephone. I don't know what I'm talking about. We're not gonna edit this. We're gonna leave it in. So you know how dumb I am in real life.

Mark:

Either way. He took musicians job. You need live musicians around here. The play records, play records, instead of having live musicians on

Chris:

the man. it gets worse, man. Not only did they start recording our, our musicians and taking our jars, then they started putting'em on the radio for free. Dear Dur

Stereo:

They're

Chris:

dirt.

Mark:

Didn't even have to go to the record

Chris:

anymore. Unreal.

Stereo:

I was selling records.

Chris:

Dirt. Dur. Dirt. So our point though, is that if you go back. Throughout the history of our industry, we've done this before,

Mark:

right?

Chris:

many, many, we did this with Beats Auto Tune.

Stereo:

Dear, you

Chris:

even have to sing anymore.

Mark:

they're there. Victor,

Chris:

we've done this so many times and here's the, let me skip to the end of the story guys. We're gonna keep doing it right over and over and over. And so in a moment like this, when we see something scary like Spike ai, that might change our industry kind of fast or it might not, like, let's be clear, we haven't seen it yet. It is not to market.

Mark:

It's what we call vaporware

Chris:

It's va right, right. When it shows up, if it does change everything, we'll just change again we'll, we'll adapt again. So I. Mark. I sometimes, like to watch Star Trek, I think that any kind of sci-fi that's like, this is what the future of humanity could look like. that's probably a healthy thing to be thinking through that.

Mark:

Just have to go to a theater and watch real actors do

Chris:

happen

Mark:

But fine. Watch it on your tv.

Chris:

tv. They're gonna put movie theaters. Never.

Mark:

I, I, I do wanna say one thing. I, I'm interrupting your thought here. Fine. You're fine. I hear the person in the back and I am there with you like, did autotune really make music better? No. Did the laptop being accessible to everybody make music as a whole better? Yes,

Stereo:

I would.

Mark:

I would. I would go with, yes. I think the, Like accessibility. There's, this is a, decades old argument at this point, but there's, so many people who are like, should the Barbie lower? Should more people have access? Does having lower quality of music in mass quantity, is that a good thing? And to that, I would say, if you're thinking from commerce for large labels or something like that, like upper echelon of artists, no, it's not a good thing for you. But when you're thinking about humanity, the ability for people to make art and express themselves is 100%. To me, all that matters. Yeah,

Stereo:

dude.

Chris:

Fuck yeah, dude. Yeah. So Star

Mark:

Trek. Star

Chris:

Trek, they are flying through space. they find this derelict ship floating through space and they're, they, they go up next to it and they're like, wow. It's 300 years old captain. There's life signs on that ship and they go on board and there's all these Cryogenically frozen super rich people from 300 years ago who were like, we're gonna get cryogenically frozen in space for some reason, and then they'll wake us up later and like, all of our investments will be enormous and we'll be filthy rich. That'll just keep, you know, they'll keep reinvesting my dividends forever. It'll be great. I'll be a gazillionaire 300 years from now. So they wake everybody up and there's this really aggressive businessman who was one of the richest people on earth, And he was like, I need to speak to my lawyer and my banker immediately. And picard's like, yeah, um, it's all gone. We don't do that anymore. There's no such thing as money anymore. And he's like, uh, I assure you, sir, I was someone of. Of great note in my day. I assure you it was the largest bank in the world. I assure you it's still there. And Picard has this amazing dialogue with him where he says, sir, you see that little hole in the wall behind you that's called a replicator. And so if you turn around and you say, I'd like a gold top 1959 Gibson Les Paul, please. it'll make you a perfect 1959 gold top Gibson Les Paul this guy starts to realize oh shit, supply and demand. Right is over, right? whatever I want. If I wanna make, a gourmet coffee with the world's finest beans that were pooped out of some cat in, the middle of nowhere, I can do that. I have, there's d Duran, there's no separation between me and anything I want. And in that future, what's the purpose of

Stereo:

money?

Chris:

And so finally this rich guy gets it and he says, what do people do now? And he's really high and his worst. And John Luke Picard freaking lays down the most beautiful vision. And he says, since supply and demand doesn't exist anymore, we're all free to pursue our passions. For some of us it might be art for others music. And for people like me, it's exploration. And he casts this vision of the future We we're in Ohio right now we're in Granville, Ohio, which is about 30 minutes outside of downtown Columbus. There is a house in Columbus right now being 3D printed a whole goddamn house that is being 3D printed by a giant 3D printer. That's amazing. That's totally amazing.

Stereo:

Maybe

Chris:

we'll see that a lot more. They're dirt or dirt. They're, they gave us houses. They took our jobs and they gave us houses like, oh my God. So the future is gonna look a whole lot different than the present. this is assured. so I think it's important and it's beautiful to think about what, what's happening right now. Accessibility. And not just accessibility, but the ability for people to spend more of their time making art, making records. People who are gonna get mastitis, who need help over that finish line to release their record, they abound. And there will be many, many, many more of them. Who, some of them, sure. They're gonna pull up. and here's the thing. It's not gonna be Spike ai, it'll be

Mark:

be Apple. Yeah.

Chris:

We won't even be Pro Tools. It'll be Apple. Yeah.

Stereo:

Like

Chris:

Logic 11 already has an auto mastering feature in it. And I tried it and it's not awful. It didn't ruin anything, which was saying, which is pretty impressive. Yeah. Like it didn't make it sound like

Mark:

crap. Yeah.

Chris:

Yeah. So we are eventually like Spike ai. Great. But when you open Logic three years from now, logic will do everything Spike ai. is they're saying it will do. guys, this is coming and what we need to do is not throw people under the bus, like has been happening with Spike. What we need to do is take a deep breath and take a step back and realize Spike is not betraying anybody by making this ai.

Mark:

Right.

Chris:

I think the more important question is how long will it be before we all have our own AI version of ourselves, But it's fascinating'cause it got me thinking about like Spike has made an AI to emulate his ability to mix, apparently. Mm-Hmm. when I started, the six Figure M studio with Brian, it was mastering full time. I was doing an average of about 190, clients a month and lots of throughput. it was not an abnormal day to do 30 songs, in a single day. And the only way I was able to do that is I had made myself a bunch of tiny little ai. there was an AI that would set up my sessions for me and that would give me each session in the order of its importance. So what's due today? Do that one first. So it knew all that it would hand me all of these things. And I hard coded all this myself in like 2010. I had another app that when I was done with my sessions for the day, it hit send and it would go through and it would find all the files that hadn't been sent to clients, figure out what their email was, compose an email, and send it as the ai, like it wasn't pretending to be me. I, I think that's, that's dicey if you're using an AI and it's pretending to be you. I don't think that's ethical. Not a fan of that. But one of the apps that I had was Bounce Butler. And Bounce Butler, I, I told, started telling these stories back on the last podcast and a bunch of people reached out and were like, Hey, I want, an AI that bounces all my mixes at the end of the day and all my stems, and then text me when he is done, just like you've got. And so I spent the better part of a year building that, and then had a mental breakdown

Mark:

Yes.

Chris:

and covid hit. It was quite an adventure, but then I started changing laws and stuff. It was great. But Bounce Butler, was one of these like little ais where I had, I had read this book by Henry Ford. It was this autobiography, and he said that when there's anything in your work that is monotonous and repetitive, that could be automated. If you don't automate it, every time you do that task, you will pay a tax, an inefficiency tax in time, money, or energy. And when I read that, that got into my brain and reprogrammed me and I got fanatical about trying to, I, my autism came out, and I got hyper-focused on systemization. And that systemization allowed me to work a hell of a lot faster, but it allowed me to work a hell of a lot faster because it got me to the moment of creativity, which for me is I wanna hear the loudest part of this song right now. First thing I wanna hear loudest part of the song. I wanna make sure that my signal chain is not overly compressing. Mm-Hmm. So long as it's not overly over compressing, it's the loudest part of the song, then everything else starts to get pretty easy and I can start to make small, gentle moves. And I had built this AI that got me to that point where it didn't master the song for me, but it was like 90% of the way there, 80, 90% of the way there, which was great because when I started on a project, it meant I could be creative from the drop. It wasn't just like, oh, I'm dragging my files into my doll and I'm arranging my files and, oh crap, I don't have the track listing. I need to call the client. Which one is track three? He re, he changed the titles. I wish they drew This job sucks.

Mark:

just gonna reiterate the thing said a second ago. It got into the moment of creativity faster. Yes.

Chris:

But to me, that's the purpose of AI automation is get to the point where you're doing the creative thing Yeah. And you're making the decision and you feel it in your bones that this song needs a vera mu along,

Mark:

Yeah.

Chris:

first and foremost. And it needs to be 50% wet and 50% dry. And it needs to be just a little tappi. Tap, tap. Just a little dance on that needle. Ooh. Yeah. That's nice. That's better. I'm being creative and I, I love when I'm in a situation, Rick it, to make those decisions that are getting something over the line. And so for me, you know, I'm kind of in a weird spot. Like I, I, I used to master, like I said, for 190 some people a month. I never ever wanna do that ever again. I'd like to. Work on a couple albums a month. Yeah, that would be ideal. Just enough. Just enough that I am getting that, that high. And lucky for me, I've got Bounce Butler and I've got business coaching, and so I'm not completely dependent on mastering the way I was before, back in the old days. Yeah. I had a six figure home studio only with mastering. And that in itself was really stressful. Yeah. And I, I don't miss that. I wanna be diversified moving forward. These ais are not bad. They are an opportunity, and those of us that figure out how to leverage them as opportunities and those of us who are not just locked in the studio, like if your dream is, I just wanna wake up every morning and there's three mixes waiting for me. I don't want to talk to the client. I don't even want to know the client. I definitely don't want revisions. I want to do my thing. I want them to release it. I want them to give me compliments that help me compensate for my unresolved trauma issues. And then, I wanna be paid upfront. I don't want talk to the client. I don't want any revision requests whatsoever. I just want to be honored for the audio God that I am. If that's your dream. Good luck with that, right? That's not gonna go well. The people that are gonna be successful moving forward are the people that are gonna be aware of all the tools that are coming out, that are having these conversations publicly, and that we as a community are working through, okay, there's gonna be some transitions coming up here, there's gonna be some changes. And one of the things that really bummed me out, not to, I'm not gonna call out anybody in the comments specifically on this, but one of the things that bummed me out was there were people that seemed to communicate. I always dreamed to be like, you Spike, I wanted a career like yours. But now you've come out with this AI and you're saying, sorry, I'm slamming the door behind

Stereo:

me.

Chris:

That's

Stereo:

rough.

Chris:

Yeah. And for the people that have shared that sentiment, like I, yeah, that's, that fucking stinks. That's

Mark:

rough.

Chris:

but I gotta play devil's advocate a little bit here. When Spike was coming up, he was coming up in a different era. Mm-Hmm. And all of us are coming up in a totally different

Mark:

era.

Chris:

Spike 20 years ago cannot exist today. That career, that the career path, the way he climbed from where he started to where he is, nobody will ever walk that same path ever again. And what makes people like Spike or any, any trailblazers exciting is just that they are trail. Blazers. So when you look at your hero, what you should look at and what you should get excited about is that they're trailblazing and if you want to emulate them, go out and trailblaze

Mark:

a new one. Yeah.

Chris:

Yeah. We have so much opportunity with AI to do that. There are so many things that you can do with AI right now that are absolutely incredible. Yeah. I write songs in my free time and, that used to be my full time job years in when I was in my twenties, and I would've to get at a rhyming dictionary. As I'm, what rhymes with, orange, go through and I have to find the page.

Stereo:

Yeah.

Chris:

And go through and figure out, oh, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. It was very time consuming. Now I say to chat, GPT, here's my first verse. Write five more just like it give,

Mark:

You took Webster's

Stereo:

character.

Mark:

Ger.

Chris:

There are people, there are rhyming dictionary authors. That are wiping in

Stereo:

streets.

Chris:

Their children are eating sawdust,

Mark:

they're dirt dog trees, died trees.

Chris:

there's so many possibilities that we are just beginning to understand. And like you, you look at right now, it's September of 2024, end of September, 2024. right now the current model for chat GPT is chat GT four O That version is so much better than chat GT three. It's ridiculous. Yeah. It is a, a wildly more intelligent, wildly more intuitive, thing than the last thing was. And so when we imagine, Like I don't mean this as any of an insult to spike at all. And if anything, I support that he's trying to create something new. I think that's fucking rad. Yeah. And I wish everybody was doing that, was trying to find a way to make something new. But here's the thing, like Spike, while he is a God in our industry, is a little tiny speck on Apple's radar. Mm-Hmm. these big giant companies with money to burn and they already have tons of market share. they're, who's gonna pull this off over the long run? Sure. AI is, a game of how much access to compute do you have? what's the raw processing horsepower to make it intelligent. These big giant companies, these big giant companies are, have quite an advantage in that.

Mark:

yeah, I have a, yeah. one thing I don't wanna come across as is I don't want to do an okay boomer thing, for sure.'cause I don't feel that way. for example, the rhyming dictionary, there is somebody, probably even listening that is like, I want to pick up a paper rhyming dictionary and put it in my hands. That is part of the visceral experience for me. And nobody is saying to stop that. And I think that's important. Nobody is telling you to mix a record differently or to use ai, whatever. Do it or don't do it. The danger is the race to the bottom, which has been happening for, a couple decades since, people could mix on a laptop. It became. I'll do it for 300 bucks. I'll do it for 150 bucks. fiverr.com, you know? Yeah. that is not a good thing. The race to the bottom is not a good thing. You've talked about it so much in the past, too. I think what is important here we talked about this a little bit before. we've always been using automation, right? we talked about it in relation to compressors. Nobody jumped on Eric Valentine and Jesse Ray Ster last week when they put out an unfair child plugin, because it's compressing my job for, I used to, and I turn it down. If I wanted distortion, I'd drag it up

Stereo:

hard. But

Mark:

Eric Valentine,

Chris:

you make a great point, and we talked about this as we were planning this episode, that we've already been using AI for 88 years. Yeah. A compressor. Purely from my standpoint, as somebody who's built ais an AI. Is, in my opinion, there's a lot of different, a lot of discussions about what an AI is. But in my opinion, an AI at its absolute most basic is some sort of logic engine that can navigate a certain scenario successfully. A compressor is an if then statement. If the audio goes above X volume, then reduce it by Y amount, which is actually a ratio, at this speed for this long else. If the audio is not above the threshold, do

Mark:

nothing.

Chris:

That's, that. In its absolute most basic term is an ai and I don't, I don't think anybody that was pushing faders at the time was like they're,

Stereo:

they're d

Chris:

I was pushing, I was turning the vocal up and down really, really

Mark:

fast. They actually, I have heard stories about assistants that used to have to be in on the session and helping to ride the faders. And they were upset. I ha, I actually have heard stories of that where they were like, the assistant will just, sit by the tape machine now'cause they don't get to ride

Chris:

the faders. So that brings up a really great story. So I'm gonna teach you guys a word, that are listening to this episode, and I think this word is gonna be

Mark:

helpful.

Chris:

And the word is Luddite. L-U-D-D-I-T-E. And a Luddite was a weaver a long time ago. I believe it was in

Mark:

Ireland. Mm.

Chris:

there was this huge weaving industry in this particular town These things came out. it was like this automated loom with this shuttle cock that would fly back and forth and would automate the weaving process. it's a funny name, shuttle cock. I don't like

Mark:

it.

Chris:

Drk a dirt. And so what happened was the, weavers of the time formed like a mob slash cult. They called themselves Luddites. And they would go around and they'd smash these looms. They'd break into, like businesses at night and smash their automation dur, dur, hardcore to dur or dirt, right? this is pitchforks, pitch pitchforks and stuff. And so now there's a term for people who reject new technology and that term is ludite. And so here is a hard truth that I think we all need to take a deep breath and

Stereo:

embrace.

Chris:

There is nothing we can do to stop change. We're gonna move forward, we're gonna progress. New tools are gonna come out like crazy and we're gonna have to

Mark:

adapt.

Chris:

That doesn't mean, I don't think it means that some AI is gonna come out and all of us lowly, not top 100 engineers are gonna lose our

Stereo:

jobs.

Chris:

But one of the things I have said on this podcast before is that I think if you can find a way to add a creative aspect creative as in your

Mark:

additive,

Chris:

somebody sends you a song and they want you to mix it and you take the initiative and say, this song is good, but it needs a shaker. And you send it back with that buried in the mix and they're like, wow, that's great. Awesome. I think there's gonna be plenty of room. For that and this whole sort of sacred cow that we've had in the past

Mark:

of

Chris:

you put a shaker in the mix,

Mark:

what?

Chris:

You better stay in your lane. You son of a biscuit. You are on a creative, you are on the wrong side

Mark:

the glass like that.

Chris:

I think we should move beyond that. I think we should move beyond that with mastering too. One of the things I would love to be doing, when I'm mastering an album is for someone to say, ah, you have the freedom to also do sound design and make a giant Gapless album where all

Mark:

of

Chris:

songs meld into the next one. And, you can be the finishing producer on this record, which is mastering, which is some sound design, which is, probably a little bit of mixing as well. I think there are really exciting opportunities to find ways to help people get over the finish line. Mm-Hmm. To help people. Beat master Isis. Yeah. Beat master Isis. That does, You know what I mean? But, so anyways, mark, I I, I think it's important that we as an industry, and by industry I mean people who want to make records for the rest of their lives. That's who I'm talking to. This is me. I wanna make records for the rest of my life. Will

Mark:

I

Chris:

still be operating

Mark:

a limiter

Chris:

as I'm mastering a record two years from now?

Mark:

I don't know.

Chris:

Yeah. But I'll

Stereo:

be making records.

Chris:

That much is, it's, that's in my blood

Mark:

and

Chris:

I. There's gonna be all kinds of new and exciting ways to do that. And guys, we get to be at the forefront, at the bleeding edge of the time when there's the most change ever. Not just in the arts, not just in studios, but ever across like This is, an amazing time to be alive and there are only two possible scenarios. One is

Mark:

Terminator, and

Chris:

and If, if it's Terminator, if Skynet goes

Mark:

online,

Chris:

online, party isn't my place guys because we don't have any chance. Like the last thing all of us will see is a very small drone flying right at us. Boom, the end, right? So if that's gonna happen, drink and be merry for tomorrow.

Stereo:

We

Mark:

die. Thanks Spike.

Chris:

Spike. Thanks Spike for, blowing up the world. It's probably spike's

Mark:

killed us. Got it.

Chris:

They went since he ain't and

Stereo:

killed our

Mark:

AI did. It's

Chris:

Thank God I had chickens. I survived for 13 more days than the rest of humanity out here in my, barn. But, so this is the first op, the first option is AI comes. It's not nice. We die. The end or the other possibility. I don't think there's a middle road here. The other possibility is that the AI is nice. And if it's nice, it's gonna help us in all kinds of ways. Perfect story I read in the news not so long ago that there was a mother who had a child who was very sick and they went to doctor after doctor, specialist after

Stereo:

specialist.

Chris:

And each doctor was like, ah, I think it's this. And they tried to treat it and

Mark:

nothing.

Chris:

And one day the mom at the end of her rope, just super frustrated, opened up her phone, pulled up chat, GPT, and just typed in every symptom she could think of and chat. GPT came back with a really rare disorder. And so they went to the doctor, they tested for the disorder chat. GPT

Mark:

was right. Ooh,

Chris:

Ooh, yeah, That's good. And this child's quality of life, maybe the child's life was saved. We are at an amazing point right now of we're talking about Spike, but let's talk about somebody else in our field. I don't know if you guys know this, fortune 500 companies and all that, they all look to one man to tell them what's the future gonna look like? And his name is Ray Kurzweil. Ray Kurzweil of Kurzweil Keyboards. If, if you know anything about keyboards, you're familiar with K Wild keyboards. So Ray's a giant in our industry, but he's also a futurist. And what he has predicted. It's particularly a lot of things. One of these things is called a singularity. This idea that, once the AI can teach itself how to get smarter, there will be just a single moment in time where all of a sudden it will cross a threshold and it will be 1 billion times smarter than it was a second ago. And then the next second it'll be a trillion times smarter. And then it will just, all

Stereo:

a

Mark:

a sudden

Chris:

everything will change.

Mark:

I don't like it. Shoot it.

Chris:

That it will dirk all the DURs at that point, but we won't need'em anymore. Like it, it will potentially, if it's nice, optimize so many things. Diagnosing, um, man, like if I had had an AI. 15 years ago that was just sort of like hanging out with me. It would've noticed it would've been

Stereo:

like, Chris,

Chris:

you need some therapy. you have every single possible indicator of ridiculous child trauma that you've repressed. We've checked all these boxes and we've delivered this message to you in a way that we know that you'll be down with. Yeah. We want you to go to therapy with a human. But, one of the things that Ray has

Mark:

predicted

Chris:

that's so exciting is he said that we are coming to a year in the not so distant future where these sorts of medical advancements that are being created by AI will begin to raise the average lifespan of

Stereo:

a

Mark:

human.

Chris:

And at a certain point, the technology that's continuing to develop faster and

Mark:

faster.

Chris:

Will within the span of one year increase the average lifespan of a human by more than

Mark:

one year. Hold on. I think somebody's coming in that back door

Stereo:

there. Hold on a second. yeah.

Mark:

Big bird over here.

Chris:

What'd you

Mark:

guys say about the

Chris:

man?

Mark:

you? got picture.

Chris:

all the doctors are like, oh, dear. Like the,

Mark:

so like

Chris:

the ais are coming and it's not just for audio engineer stuff, it's for doctors and stuff. But here's what's so exciting about this Ray

Mark:

Kurzweil thing.

Chris:

If we have a year in the reasonably near future where the advances in AI extend the average length of a human life by more than a year, the year after that, if technology continues to advance, it'll extend our human life expectancy by more

Mark:

than a year

Chris:

and all of a sudden. Life expectancy goes up by more than a year for every year that you live

Mark:

right

Chris:

there. Obviously there's a ceiling, right? We're probably not gonna live to be a thousand probably,

Mark:

Yeah.

Chris:

but

Mark:

in our non AI

Chris:

in our non-AI Exactly. In our non AI form. as we approach this, like there are so many unbelievable shifts coming We can complain about it and we can Dirk aur all we want. and we should have these dialogues. We should discuss, we should figure out what's ethical and what's not.'cause you look at, Piper Payne She did the AI mastering thing

Mark:

with waves. Mm-Hmm.

Chris:

Was there this kind of response

Stereo:

to

Mark:

that? but no, to answer it, and Jesse Ray Ter didn't get lit on fire like he should have for teaching people. They can download a plugin and turn their vocals down. And Eric Valentine, you're not safe either. On Fairchild's. Right

Chris:

the Fair. I haven't tried it yet. I love a Fairchild. I don't think I've ever done a master without some kind of fair child

Mark:

I don't want to get nerdy, but it's

Chris:

really good. It's

Mark:

Really good. It's really good. I can't wait. Yeah. Um, I have maybe two closing thoughts. I don't know, if I can, it should just say him and then can edit'em out if you want. Yeah. okay, so this is, when I think about what makes a record great and I've learned this, admittedly from, all of my time with Pure Mix and from getting to be around my absolute heroes, the one word that would come up on every single Kila q and a question interview thing that we would do, live stream, whatever comes up in the videos all the time. The one word that would always come up as intention. Why do you do something? What is your intention behind that? When I'm on a video sheet with them, they hear the word, why 2,500 times a day? Why do that? Why did you do that? What was your intention behind that? When you think about great records, the ones that really, really stand out to you, if you think about, was this an artist that was

Chris:

And

Mark:

just picking up their guitar and seeing what would happen? Not that there haven't been good records made by that. I don't wanna overgeneralize, but it's usually somebody with a vision, right? What is your intention behind this Jack White, perfect example? Hmm. There's no mistakes on that record. It's distorted as hell, right? Mm-Hmm. Because he wanted it to be, or whatever the style of it. The whole thing from beginning to end, there's a vision in that person's mind. Billie Eilish, that record that, completely blew up with bad guy on it. That thing is dark as hell. Like, I mean, tonally. Yeah, it is dark, right? You put on an Ariana Grande record right after that and it'll clean your teeth, right? Like it's so bright. one of those are right or wrong, and they were meant to be that way. If you look at the artwork for both of those, while you're listening, it fits perfectly and you don't think, wow, Billie Eilish sounds way too dark. I'd never EQ it that way. At least I don't. That was their intention. It fit the aesthetic of the artist that was Ariana Grande's intention to make it bright and sound like it is a diamond shining in your face, because that's her thing, right? It looks expensive, it sounds expensive, So when we're thinking about ai, I don't think we have to worry about that being changed anytime soon. Sure, there'll be prompt things in all of that, but there has to be somebody on the other side that says, this is a dark, moody piece. That should be, matching this picture of Billie Eilish, who's hunched over in a horror pose with her arms. wretched and all of that stuff, right? That is what good art is to me. the last part of that is many mixed engineers that I talk to, they are so busy, that they basically spend most of their day. they, let's say you start your day at 9:00 AM you're doing cleanup work, you're trying to figure out balanced stuff. You're trying to match rough mixes, whatever that happens to be, you're spending a big portion of your day doing that sometimes. And by the time you get the mix to the point where you can be creative, you have a hard deadline because you have to move on to the next project. And you only have a tiny window where you can actually do the things that somebody hired you to do. Anything that gets somebody from being a mouse monkey or whatever you wanna call it, and having to do things like decl vocals and worry about over huge resonances and all of that stuff. If you can get them to the point where they can be an artist and create art, I don't see. Any downside to an AI thing?

Stereo:

I

Mark:

completely agree.

Chris:

I completely agree. what will happen is that people will gravitate towards where they can provide the greatest service to

Mark:

humanity.

Chris:

Because capitalism is finding a, a way to provide value to other people for money. That's how you do a small business, right? Is you find a way to create value, not to live out your dream, to be just like your hero. Mm-Hmm. Which is hard. That's how I got in this industry. Yeah. Ed Cash was his name. He was a producer slash singer-songwriter, and Christian land. And, I just became aware of his existence and, tried to become him and,

Mark:

uh. take his ger

Chris:

What's that? Yeah. I tried to deur him. I was like the cheap ed cash there for a little bit,

Mark:

and

Chris:

like this hero worship doesn't

Mark:

work. Yeah.

Chris:

But on the flip side

Mark:

of the coin,

Chris:

There's obstacles, and so the idea here is as you remove obstacles, people self-actualize, they grow, they get better. they have the opportunity to do the very best work that they can, that helps the most people they can, the most that they can, which is, that's my personal motto, help the most people you can, the most that you can. To me, AI is an opportunity to help more people if you wield it

Mark:

properly. Mm-Hmm.

Chris:

I am so excited about all the changes that are coming and I hope that for anyone that's listening to this episode that some of that enthusiasm and optimism about, I think the future's gonna be awesome. I think we are entering the golden age of producers.

Mark:

Mm-Hmm.

Chris:

for those of us that just, wanna do the engineer thing and not talk to people at all, I would say, Get out there, and start going to venues, start going to shows. I know for a lot of us that work in this industry, once business picks up and it gets pretty good, you start to isolate in a lot of ways. I know I definitely did that for long chapters in my life. Honestly. Six Figure M Studio is what brought me outta that. I was just like, I'll be in the basement, like by myself doing audio shit so I'm excited and I hope that as people listen to us, they're excited. But the conversation's not over. And I would love to hear, from some heavy

Mark:

hitting

Chris:

pros

Mark:

that wrote

Chris:

some comments quite against, not just what Spike did, but Spike himself. And I would love to have conversations with people That have every perspective on this. people that are completely anti ai, people that are completely pro ai people that, are futurists because that's what we need right now is things are changing and we need to have our eyes forward. We need to think about how can we make the most of this? How can we leverage these sorts of things? Perfect example. it's not that

Mark:

difficult

Chris:

to build an AI from chat GPT, that when you get an email in your inbox, it triggers

Mark:

a zap and

Chris:

composes a draft email back to the person, the client that has, oh God, I wish I had this years and years ago when I was. Working for

Mark:

a billion

Chris:

people that would've drafted the email in my voice using my FAQ and every other email I've ever written in my entire life to a customer to compose the perfect email, which I don't fucking want to do. Yeah. Time consuming. Yeah. this is exciting stuff and I have great confidence that in an era of incredible change, that the people that are gonna do the best in that era are the creatives, are the people that have this balance of creativity and technical ability. That's us guys. We, as an

Stereo:

industry

Chris:

are in a position, I think, to benefit more than almost any other industry.'cause we can wield these things, if you figured out, signal flow and compression and EQ and all

Mark:

that,

Chris:

you're gonna be just fine. Yeah. But you'll have to

Stereo:

keep learning.

Chris:

Yeah.

Mark:

one thing I would say to the people who did make negative comments on that post, and, not to call anybody out, but if you've ever used, Specter, it's like one of those side chain things, side chain, two things to each other and it'll eq'em together.

Chris:

ozone,

Mark:

soothe, smooth Operator. There's so many of these tools that are out there. Those are all AI things. Signature series plugins. CLA. If you look at CLA vocals, it literally has its chains in there. You turn the knob up until you get the desired amount. You could argue it's gonna be pretty similar to what Spike AI is gonna do here.

Chris:

It's a different kinda

Mark:

shortcut. It's a different kinda shortcut. if you've used a mixing template, I know who you are. I'm just

Chris:

If you've released a mixing template,

Mark:

Yeah. If you've released a mixing template,

Chris:

I mean through pure mix.com with Mark,

Mark:

Yes. what's the difference? People download these things and I can tell you too from experience that, you can download the Brow Eyes template, but if you don't think like Michael Brower, it doesn't matter. And Spike AI is not going to be Spike stent to a hundred percent degree in every single scenario. I don't think that's possible. so I would just say because there were so many negative comments on that post and it sucks to see the community acting that way. maybe. Stop down, take a breath like Chris said, and just think about your own processes and everything. And if you've ever tried these tools or been curious, there's not a lot that's different that's going on here. There's a lot of things that you can strap across your bus that look at other channels on the bus and do a similar thing. spike will not be the last one. He's the first one to drop some controversy about this. I would say stay tuned because you're gonna see a lot and to whoever wants to become a millionaire, make the thing that makes a personalized AI for everybody. will take an AI of myself. I don't want to take out residences from acoustic

Chris:

guitarists. Yeah.

Stereo:

Yeah.

Chris:

it's exciting. And Mark, I appreciate this. This episode came together at the last minute. you live right down the road if you like this show and you wanna hear more, we're gonna be talking a lot more about ai, in the recording studio world. but also mental health. mark, I appreciate you coming out tonight. It's, fairly late. It's 11 o'clock on a school night, we decided to do this episode because we saw. a collective shudder, uh, sweep through our industry, in response to this Spike AI thing. And, there are a lot of opinions on it. there are people who are furious. There are people who, basically said, spike, you used to be my hero. Now you're

Mark:

a villain.

Chris:

go jump in a lake, basically. And I feel terrible for Spike, and my hope is that he'll come on the show and clarify some things and talk about, what it is that he's building. a ES is next week, so it'll be interesting to see, how the story evolves. there's a lot of audio engineers coming together to discuss this, and there will be some gab, I imagine,

Mark:

be the topic of 2024. True, I'm sure.

Chris:

But I would encourage all of us, to just

Stereo:

take a

Mark:

breath.

Chris:

I don't think anyone is gonna take anyone's jobs. I think it will be slow, these transitions that are happening. But for those of us who like to learn new things and who like to improve and are who investing

Mark:

in growth, it's

Chris:

it's a great

Mark:

time to be alive.

Chris:

It's gonna be really exciting. my kinda last 2 cents is I would encourage people to be kind and to not, descend to personal attacks, in the comment threads on this it just felt like people were dehumanizing spike That they wanted to hurt

Stereo:

him.

Chris:

And I didn't like that. And I don't think that is helpful, in our industry because everybody else that's thinking about building tools to help us have easier lives and to help us be more effective and to help us take some of the time that we're spending doing these annoying, monotonous technician chores and transition them to more exciting, more creative, more impactful things that resonate with who we are as humans. So I, I would say just let's be friendly, everybody. Let's just take a deep breath and there's gonna be a lot of change coming quick, and let's not focus our fear about that change on spike, which is kind of what I feel like happened. So thank you guys for tuning in. Please subscribe. if you like this show, please write a review. one of the goals that I've got right now is I want to get a hundred reviews. on Spotify and a hundred reviews on Apple Podcasts, because the hope is to be able to reach out to, you mentioned like Billy Eilish. I'd love to have Phineas on the show. Yeah. Like I, I want to hear what, what does

Stereo:

he think

Chris:

is the healthiest home studio you can possibly have, and what are some things that have helped him navigate, hi, his own process and his relationship with his sister and his, just, I want to have people like that, that are incredible on the show, but nobody wants to come on the show with less than 105 star reviews. if you guys would please write that review. and stay tuned. We've got more conversations like this coming at you in

Stereo:

the future.