Producer's Chair
Producer’s Chair exists to showcase underground music producers and hobbyists from around the world who have passion for their craft.
Join me as I talk with them about DAWs, plugins, instruments, recording techniques, samplers, synths, inspiration, writers-block and anything else that's part of the process.
We get to discover these amazing people, listen to their art and learn all about their creative process. We also joke around and have a lot of fun during the interviews.
New episodes are released every other Wednesday morning.
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Producer's Chair
Newer Doesn't Always Mean Better - Interview with Jayme Vari
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Had a great conversation with Jayme Vari and we talk about his band The Imperial Mission!
For info on sponsoring or being a guest on the show send a message to swishermedia@gmail.com
I almost had something that you would have had.
SPEAKER_01I can edit it. I can edit out whatever.
SPEAKER_04Hey Dad, what's the case?
SPEAKER_01Uh this is not a show for children. Welcome to the producer chair. Thank you for listening. I'm your host, the Switcher. On this show, we interview people making music in their bedrooms, basements, and home studios. We're going to talk about hardware, software, tips and tricks, everything that goes into their creative process. Our special guest today is Jamie Very, who produces music under his own name and with his band, The Imperial Mission. So right now we're going to check out his song 1978, and then we'll jump into an interview with Jamie. Well, we just heard 1978 by Jamie Very, and I have Jamie with us today to talk about his production process. Jamie, how you doing? I am great. How are you? I'm doing great, man. I appreciate you joining me today. This is this is fun. Cool. Uh Jamie Very, that's a kind of a stage name that you use for your music and production stuff. Uh, how'd you come up with that?
SPEAKER_04Um, it happened years ago. Like I was doing an album with a guy, and on the credits it had his name doing like keyboards, and then my name was doing guitars, drums, bass, production, engineering, mixing. So he's like, Yeah, you know, you have to you have to split that. So I had to make up a fake name to split the credits, basically, and it's stuck.
SPEAKER_01So Okay, nice. You have an impressive resume of artists you've worked with, bands, uh, and and your own material, you know, for over a lot of years, it looks like. You know, how how long have you been producing? When did you get started? About 1985 or 86 was the first time I started going to studios and stuff.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01When I would have been a baby. I was born in eighty-five, so you've been doing this a while. I am ancient. Like a dinosaur. Well, that that's great. That's uh a good source of wisdom. Yeah. What made you first want to start creating music instead of just listening to it?
SPEAKER_04Uh I've always been intrigued by the whole process of it. I've been intrigued by just the looks of instruments. I think it's a really sexy process, if that makes sense. Um I don't know. It's just kind of an irresistible attraction to making a mess in a audio style, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Sure. And you're kind of a one-man band. You play you play a little bit of everything. Yeah. Not good. Well what was the first instrument you picked up and started to learn?
SPEAKER_04Uh the first thing I picked up was like a guitar.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_04Back when I was seven. Then I started drums about fourteen years old, I think. And drums were kind of kind of the primary instrument for a long time.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Yeah, I I can play a six-string guitar. I'm I've never been able to play drums. That my my hands doing different rhythms at the same time is just not doesn't work out at all.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. It's different skill set. It's like I would love to be able to play piano, and it to me, piano is you know, backwards. If you're a guitar player, it's it's peep you know, backwards or seems backwards. So I don't know. I think we all struggle in some way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What kind of music were you listening to when you started playing guitar at seven? What kind of stuff was you were you listening to back then that was your inspiration?
SPEAKER_04Oh, uh really intense stuff like Tom T. Hall, Sneaky Snake, you know, that kind of kid stuff. Uh I think one of my favorite albums back in those kind of years was like Convoy by C.W. McCall. I mean, nothing really substantial in a musical sense. It was all just kind of cornball stuff, you know?
SPEAKER_01Sure. I really like that 1978 track. And one of the things I really like about your music is that you I think you captured kind of a an older sound that you know I would relate to bands like Pink Floyd, the get you know, the tones of the guitar, the reverb and stuff on the vocals. Do you use vintage equipment to get those sounds?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we use a lot of outboard type stuff. We go th we still go through a council, big council. Yeah. I still like I still like twiddling knobs and doing kind of the, you know, performing the mix, I guess they would call it. Absolutely. How long did it take you to make that track? That song is actually close to eight years old or longer, because it started in a different location altogether with the acoustic guitars, and then uh we came back to it and just kind of fixed it as good as it gets.
SPEAKER_00Sure.
SPEAKER_04It's almost a tragedy, because I didn't think it'd be savable as far as the sound of it, but it works.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. I think it works great. I really like it. I think you've really captured kind of a time era with your music here. Yeah, we could call a lot of our stuff gets kind of pink Floyd comparisons, which is cool. Yeah, absolutely. What genre uh would you say most most of the stuff you're doing falls into? That's a good question.
SPEAKER_04Because I'm not really sure. You know. We have really uh ambiance stuff, we have really poppy things. I'm talking as a band since as the Imperial Mission uh band. Yeah. We have another song that's very Beach Boys, like prime time nineteen sixties Beach Boys. So we're kinda all over the map. I I just think it's kind of whatever feels cool at the moment.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Yeah, and there's you know, there's really no reason to put labels on things unless you're trying to post it to a website and then they make you choose like, you know, between a couple different tags or something to you know for a style. Yeah, it's pretty I don't see trying opera or anything crazy. You never know. You never know. Yeah, you never know. Not counting it out. Yeah, yeah, you might get inspired, you know, go to an opera at some point and get really inspired to make something. Yep. When you do get that inspiration to make something, how does that normally start? With a you know, a rhythm on guitar with some chords or uh a melody in your head? Where where does that idea have come from?
SPEAKER_04Uh everywhere. Yeah, I can get I can get melodies in my head when I'm driving and then get home and try to, you know, suss it out on the guitar or whatever. Uh sometimes I'll just be playing a loop on uh like a innovation loop or uh a Kai loop or something like that. All of a sudden it triggers a whole thing in my head. It's real organic, you know.
SPEAKER_00Sure.
SPEAKER_04Some songs take forever, some songs take two hours to spend on what flies out really.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I get it. The inspiration can come from anywhere. That's awesome. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Even better when you're not in a box, you know, you're not like, alright, I'm a country star, I can only write country songs or whatever. It's like just let it happen. Let it figure itself out, basically.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, you're not stuck stuck working in a certain style or anything. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. You do some in the box, but you have also do a lot of outboard. What percentage would you say you are being hybrid?
SPEAKER_04Uh, we always go through the board no matter what. So a hundred percent of our drum tracks have board EQ, uh, especially in the bass drum and snare um area. I am always using outboard reverbs on the snares and ancillary stuff. It's usually always the same kind of settings all the time. I don't variate, you know. I I don't move around a lot. Leave the mixer settings as they are for yeah yeah, the reverbs too. Yeah. And then I know exactly you know, I have like basically one long reverb and one shorter reverb, and I know exactly what it sounds like and I know exactly what it is, so not searching.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that saves a lot of time.
SPEAKER_04It's lazy, obviously.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean it's a it's no different than you know having presets saved in a DAW. Right. Yeah. It's nice to have those settings ready to go, and you know, you don't have to spend a lot of time just changing back to the settings that you know you like every time you're ready to lay something down. Right. CC for my workflow. Yeah. What kind of mic is it you use to get the vocal tone you're getting?
SPEAKER_04Uh on 1978. On that we use uh Audio Technica 4033. Okay, nice. And we also had another microphone up in the air about ten feet, but I don't remember what it was, just to get kind of a weird sound.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_04Weird rookie sound.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, pick up some room tone.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, because the the acoustic guitars were recorded at a warehouse like years ago.
SPEAKER_00Oh, cool.
SPEAKER_04So you you had all this warehouse type sound. So I'm like, all right, we'll try to I tried to match everything to the sound that the acoustics had, basically, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So you were run through the board, but then you do record into a DAW, correct? Yeah, we go into Logic. Okay. That's what I use as well. Yeah. Love that program.
SPEAKER_04Up to a few years ago, we were using the uh HD24s, the Elisus, those 24 tracks of right to hard drive and stuff, but with the price of you know, the new Macs nowadays, and what do you get with Logic? It's kind of kind of a no-brainer to be hybrid like that.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. How many tracks can you run into Logic at one time? What kind of interface is supporting that?
SPEAKER_04Uh we use the ferrowfish stuff, and I'm not sure how many it can take at one time, but I don't think I've ever tracked more than like sixteen, sixteen or eighteen microphone inputs at a time in my life. So and that was back in the dumb days of you know 14 microphones at a drum set.
SPEAKER_01So how many do you typically typically use now?
SPEAKER_04Uh rate about nine. Nine or ten. Okay. Which is still could be excessive sometimes.
SPEAKER_01What kind of mics are you using for most of you the most of the drum kit?
SPEAKER_04You got SM57s or SM57 on air top, yeah, yeah, all the time. And we found we found these microphones called the uh cobalt microphones. Okay. I I think they're made by Eevee or something. And for some reason they really match up really well, like 57, but the price is about one-third. So we have like a plethora of those. Cool. Yeah, they've been working out pretty cool. Yeah, I'll I'll have to look that look those up. I don't remember the specific model number offhand off the top of my head, it might come to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, so it sounds like you got a got a lot of outboard gear that you guys have set up over there. Yeah. Is there any dream piece of hardware that you don't have yet?
SPEAKER_04Uh uh my dream piece of hardware is one that's basically broken in my closet. I would like to get it fixed and back. It's called the Ensonic DP Pro. And it's such a as far as outboard gear goes, uh you don't see them very often, but it's got some really cool sounds in it. But a couple years ago it just said, eh, yeah, I'm not working anymore. I've had it enough.
SPEAKER_01Is that a rack mount sound module?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay. I'm I'm familiar with the InSonic keyboards. I don't know if I've seen that rack mount module though.
SPEAKER_04I've I've never seen one like in my natural life until I accidentally got one in a sale. It has like really great like built-in gates, and but yeah, all of a sudden it's just like it gave up the ghost. So someday we'll get that back.
SPEAKER_01Maybe we could find somebody that can open that up and figure out what's going on with it. Yeah. Something expensive, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. It probably, especially when it's older stuff and be hard to replace some of the chips in there or whatever.
SPEAKER_04That's also that's another problem. Using older years, eventually you have to be aware that it's not gonna be there anymore. So and they get harder to find or harder to fix as time goes on. Sure.
SPEAKER_01So what hardware or software do you think is is underrated in the recording studio environment?
SPEAKER_04Probably the most underappreciated thing in a studio is the headphone mixing capabilities.
SPEAKER_01Um be able to send a dedicated mix to everyone in there recording. Yeah, or just something that's as loud as needed.
SPEAKER_04I I think that might be the weakest point. I'm not real s I think that I think I'd stick with that answer and be comfortable with it. Because everybody's making such good copies of everything nowadays. I mean, it's like if you need if you need a la two A, you could you could find a copy of an LA2A and you don't need to go broke. Or whatever. But I think people don't pay attention to dumb things like direct boxes and headphone things, quality guitar cables.
SPEAKER_00Sure.
SPEAKER_04Or whatever. Even cheapen out on a microphone stand as its drawbacks, you know.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Yeah, I know in my studio I have mostly the the $25 or $30 off of Amazon stands.
SPEAKER_04With a little round tightener that never holds up anything that's you know, anything over a pound. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, my my dad has a drill press, and I actually had him drill some holes in in a couple of them so I can put a longer screw all the way in there so there's no sliding back and forth because sometimes those screws will wear out and fall out, and then your your boom is gone. Yeah, they're built like tanks now.
SPEAKER_04But we but we all stayed 40 bucks at the on you know at the onset, so it's all good. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um what's a piece of hardware that you bought and then sold again because you didn't gel with it or a buyer's regret type of thing?
SPEAKER_04Um I bought a sectory guitar with a sustainer pickup in it.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_04And it was cool, but I'm used to playing an Evo a lot, but having a whole sustainer for all six strings at once was kind of a little bit not my scene, I guess. Sure. So I really didn't gel with it at all for some reason.
SPEAKER_01Do you think it was just more the style of music you're doing that it just wasn't working with?
SPEAKER_04I think I just approach doing like long sustained notes, uh single string, more single strings than I was six at once. Sure. Because I think about it differently. I think about how stuff layers differently if they're played separate. Yeah. So yeah, it was really it was interesting because I'm like, wow, this is confusing when it shouldn't be, but whatever. So that was interesting. That one didn't gel at all.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Let's go ahead and give a listen to your second track here called Blue Mundane, and then we'll jump back into the interview.
SPEAKER_04That was created because we started having issues with um recording and playback on logic. So I was trying to make a song and see if I can figure out what the problem was by you know putting in plugins in and plugins in, and uh I call it a thr a throwaway song. And then uh when Ron heard it, he's like, Oh, I have I have lyrics for that. So all of a sudden all of a sudden we had a song. But basically I was trying to get Logic wrote it crash.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I love I love that story. He's like, Oh yeah, I've I already got something that works for that. Did you ever figure out what was going on with Logic? I think we just had kind of conflicting plugins.
SPEAKER_04Like sometimes if you forget to put in your subscription number or something like that, it'll kind of flake out. So you have to kinda take out plugins one by one until you find out who the offending party is and ground, you know, ground it for a couple weeks. Sure. Or never use it again or whatever.
SPEAKER_01What are some of your go-to plugins in Logic?
SPEAKER_04Uh one of my favorites lately that I'll probably hate in the year is the Galaxy Tape Echo by UAD.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_04I've been I've been kind of sprinkling that on many vocals. And I like the um tape wave by Wave Alchemy, which is cool. Okay. Cool. It does cool things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I love effects plugins, and especially ones that just have, you know, you can dig it real deep and change a whole lot of settings and come up with all kinds of crazy stuff. Or just totally change like a guitar.
SPEAKER_04All of a sudden it's not a guitar anymore. I'm here for that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. Which is great. Absolutely. There's a lot of that stuff you you can't really do outside of the box, you know, unless you're stringing together a whole bunch of crazy guitar pedals or something. Yeah. We have the best of everything right now. Absolutely. What's the hardest thing you think about producing from home?
SPEAKER_04Uh well, it's different if you're doing it for friends or you're doing it for clients. Because I don't really do client-based recording anymore. So I used to worry more about people I didn't know coming here to my home.
SPEAKER_03Sure.
SPEAKER_04Uh nowadays it's if I know you, you know, it's fine, it's cool. I don't really go out of my way to produce people and stuff.
SPEAKER_01So Yeah, that that would be tough trying to run it as a business out of your home. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I had some, you know, the last few I did out of here were were not pleasant experiences. So it's kinda like, yeah, this isn't fun anymore. Yeah. And I like it to be fun. If it's not fun, then, you know, what's the point? Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. We we spend, you know, all of our um extra income and hours and everything, uh, all of our time, you know, in into this. And if you're not loving it, then why why are you doing it? And then you have
SPEAKER_04Somebody come over to your home and they disrespect your time and your space and you're like, Yeah, this isn't so cool anymore.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. That's not good at all. Yeah. What's a skill you're trying to improve right now? All of them at all times. Sure. For real. Yeah, that's a great answer. Constantly learning and getting better at everything.
SPEAKER_04I still feel pretty hacky on all fronts. Um, you know, pretty hacky as a drummer, hacky as a guitar player, as a producer, as an engineer. It's you know, I feel like I'm learning.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Did you have any formal education in the audio engineering area or you just picked up stuff as you went?
SPEAKER_04Oh, I probably I learned all the bad things to do. I I keep the tradition going. Just keep the bad stuff going. I have a handle on some things sometimes, but it could all be better in every aspect.
SPEAKER_01Sure, there's yeah, there's always always room for improvement, but I think what you're doing is working. You got a real good sound. I I really enjoy your music. Thank you, thank you. That's cool. Yeah, is is there a goal you and the band or you personally are are currently chasing for your music?
SPEAKER_04No, not really. We just kind of have a good time on Saturdays. That's about it. Very cool.
SPEAKER_01Do you guys do some live performances as well?
SPEAKER_04No, we haven't talked about that in a long time. Okay. Long time. I there was interest there pre-plague days, pre-COVID days, but I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Make stuff, post it online for fun, and go work on new stuff.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's how all that's how it all is for me anyway, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a great place to be. A lot of the people I talk to, their goal is to put out an album or something at you know, at a certain point, or put on an album on a certain label and something like that. So no, it's totally fine to not have anything that you're chasing like that. You're just making music for yourself and for whoever else feels like clicking on it and enjoying it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and then all of a sudden you have close to 50 songs out there. Yeah. You know, or whatever it is at the moment. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. What's your favorite part about the creation process?
SPEAKER_04All of it.
SPEAKER_01All of it is cool. Okay. I love all of it. Do you have one thing you look forward to more than the others? I'm not really sure.
SPEAKER_04I'm never a fan of setting up stuff in particular. Uh I like to have it all ready to go, but no, as soon as something starts flowing, I'm pretty much I'm cool. I'm cool. Awesome, man. And then on the flip side there's stuff I'll record and I'll forget about for a long time and then find it later and be like, oh, neat.
SPEAKER_01Or I for I forgot all about this. Yeah. School. You said you're on your reverbs and things like that, you're able to maintain your settings and on your mixer. So is most of your stuff able to stay set up in your studio space? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Yeah. I haven't moved my drums in probably two years now.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Well, there you go. You know, your least favorite part is avoided by doing being able to do that.
SPEAKER_04I mean, I don't mind it, but I it's more fun to have just it's ready to go. You can walk out there right now and start recording.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's awesome. I agree. I I want everything plugged in and and ready, so all I have to do is sit down, push a couple things, and you know, I'm I'm making music right away. Yeah, too. Yeah. What's a mistake you made that taught you the most?
SPEAKER_04Not backing up files.
unknownOoh.
SPEAKER_04So I lost an entire recording project that somebody was doing here a long, long time ago. But we lost pretty much a whole album of, you know, these guys coming over and setting up their stuff and doing all their tunes and getting them perfect, and then the hard hard drive takes the shit on you and everything's gone, you know?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I still have some hard drive in in the hopes that someday it could be resurrected. Oh yeah, that'll that'll teach you some stuff, especially if you're doing client-based uh projects. Man, you've got to be meticulous about your backups and how it's written down, you know, how you how you store it and how it's how you write it down.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. That's devastating when a project gets corrupted or a hard drive fails like that. That I've experienced that as well, and you know, lost countless projects from that. Just wasn't wasn't in a good habit of backing up to an external hard drive and lost months worth of stuff.
SPEAKER_04You're never like you don't have that as a habit until it happens and and then you have a new habit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, for anyone listening, start backing up your stuff. Oh, yeah. Do it you know daily or or every other day, you know, whenever you've made some substantial changes or uh put a lot of work into a project, back that stuff up.
SPEAKER_04Because it's hard to recreate, man. It's hard to recreate the vibe of the original.
SPEAKER_01Oh, exactly. Yeah. Especially when you're talking about live instruments, and you know, you can't recreate those performances.
SPEAKER_04Oh, if it's other people, then they're coming back and then they're recording angry.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean you have a new feel. Well, maybe maybe if you told the FBI there was something that they'd be interested that's on the hard drive, they could restore it for you. Yeah, right. Yeah, I don't I don't know if that would work or not. Probably just get you in trouble.
SPEAKER_04You're missing somebody's conga tracks from 1997. This is important stuff, man.
SPEAKER_01See if they can get in there for you. Like, all right, while you're in here, I actually need these session files. What's a production skill that took longer to learn than you expected?
SPEAKER_04I think compression is still something I struggle with all the time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Thank god you can just like open a compressor and just find a setting.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_04And it gets you in the game. But man, dealing with like rack-mounted compress compression is just like uh god.
SPEAKER_01Uh dirt. Yeah, dialing the right settings can can take a while. Yeah. Yeah, that's something I can get hung up on too. Try not to, just you know, I'm getting frustrated with it. Try to find something else in the session to work on and come back to that. Or what's something that you wish someone would have told you early on in your producing career? You'll never make any money. There you go. Uh, that's a no, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Were you able to at least pay off some of the gear?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. What happens with gear is you pay it off, then you sell it off, then you get more, then you sell it off, then you get more, then you sell it off. It's it's a it's a vicious circle. That's what it is.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever regretted selling anything or or bought the same thing more than once because you regretted selling it?
SPEAKER_04I regretted selling two guitars and one snare drum out of everything. Okay. But that's alright. Because there's always more snare drums, and technically I've found stuff that sounds a lot better. You know, I I think I I just miss it for the, you know, whatever. The I don't know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Something or just pieces of wood. Sure. They all have their own character though. Yeah. I'm kind of in a never sell anything stage that I've already done that where I've sold something, regretted it. A couple times I've bought the same thing back because I was like, yeah, I I shouldn't have ever sold that in the first place. And and now I'm just too leery to, you know, of having to go through that again to even sell anything. So if I start thinking about it, I usually unplug it, box it up, put it in a cabinet for several months. And if I haven't thought about it and haven't used it, and I'll even tempt myself by going to watch, you know, and see what other people are doing with it on YouTube, you know, cool stuff. And if that doesn't make me want to break it back out, then maybe it's okay to sell it. But yeah, otherwise nothing nothing moves. I dump stuff all the time.
SPEAKER_04I have a I have a problem and I get like a little bit too many guitars going on in here. It's like, all right, some of these gotta go. I get bogged down with decisions, so I don't I don't want to have too many things, basically.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Yeah, there's only so much space in a home studio as well.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I mean I I have the room, but I don't have the room in my head, you know. It's like, all right, do I go with the bare knuckle pickups today or do I go with the DiMarzio PAFs? You know, oh my god. Sure. I don't care. Grab the guitar that's close as plug it in, and there you go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What specific thing do you think you spend the most time on when you're creating a track?
SPEAKER_04I really try to get my guitar takes as clean as possible as far as like how I'm picking it or strumming it. I'm real picky about that. I'm not picky about where the mic is pointed in the cone of the speaker, but I'm I could be real picky about how every string is ringing, whatever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You're spending a lot of time just practicing before you even hit the record button.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, especially if I'm I have to play a solo or something, because I am not a solo player, so I'll I'll figure out what I'm doing so I can repeat it five hundred times until I can get it right. Everything else though, no, I don't I don't screw around too much. Sure.
SPEAKER_01I think that's becoming something of a lost art almost because of the tools we have now, and it's so easy to replace things and change things afterwards that people don't spend the time practicing and you know getting their performance correct before they're like, oh, you know, just get it and we'll we can fix it in post.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it wasn't too long ago where we're still recording on those uh 24-track hard discs, so I was still doing takes, you know. I'd I try to make it through the song all the way. Yeah. I played bass on a song for a guy and I was so focused on playing it. You know, I don't have I'm not, you know, Jocko Pastorious when it comes to playing bass. I'm lucky I could play a root note, make it through to the damn thing. But for some reason I had this really difficult in my head that I wanted to play. And I know for a fact I took a hundred and seventy-two takes on that song. Oh wow, trying to play that stupid bass part, you know. And I'm like, you know, you don't have to kill yourself. Nowada nowadays I'll I'll allow myself to, you know, alright, I I can punch that in. That's all right. Sure. Or fix a note, you know, play it all the way through and just fix a note because I really, you know, because you really notice a B flat.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What's your go-to tool for fixing notes like that on a guitar?
SPEAKER_04I will just chop the thing out and slide a new note in its place.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Yeah, so yeah, I d I didn't know if you were using something like Melodyne or or Logic's pitch correction or something.
SPEAKER_04No, I had to I had to fix a a pitch on a we imported a cassette tape some guy gave me and we had to fix the pitch on the guy, and I used an old school um emotide harmonizer. Oh yeah, you know, just to notch it up a couple, you know, a couple clicks on the harmonizer. I mean you you could do auto-tune on it, but I'm like, you know, it works the same going old school if you just notch it up a little or you need it, and that worked out great. I'm like, cool, there you go. Old school wins again, even though it's a plug-in now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they have a whole lot of different plugins that offer those tools. Do you have any secret tricks uh that you use to get your sound?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I still use a lot of old techniques. Like Blue Main Mundane has the uh reverse y vocal effect thing, which is kind of an old school trick that I love and I overuse, you know, but that's okay. Uh yeah, I use a lot of old old tricks. I like running things through amplifiers like snare drums and re-micing, you know, that sound or kicking an amplifier for the spring reverb sound, you know, it's all kinds of stupid junk like that.
SPEAKER_01I love it. Yeah, that's that's awesome. Noise. Absolutely. That's the kind of stuff I love as an audio engineer, just experimenting with mic placements and just doing weird things. What is the weirdest thing that you think you've ever done that made it into a recording?
SPEAKER_04Uh we put microphones and uh the big water jug bottles, empty ones, and use that sound, or we put them through PVC pipes.
SPEAKER_01Okay, for like for percussive stuff?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, all kinds of weird stuff. I think some of the vocal stuff we're doing appears weird, because we're you know, putting it in the mic the hallway and we're recording with one mic really high up, you know, probably ten feet up in the air. I think that's weird stuff. Sure. Always trying something.
SPEAKER_01It's never right, you know. That's fun to experiment with stuff like that though. And if it's working to get the sound you want, it doesn't matter if people think it's weird.
SPEAKER_04Or it might not even be this sound you w you want at all, but it's an experimentation. I mean, we recorded stuff, we put the drums in the bathroom and we've recorded it, and later on we're like, yeah, that that kind of sounds bad. You know, so we do we do give up on ideas every now every now and then. But we do try stuff. I mean, you can't always just walk into a studio and be like, all right, we're putting 421s on the toms, the seven on the smear, and the d6 in the bass or whatever. All right, try something else. You know, because it's getting boring.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome they could experiment like that. Might as well. Everybody could do perfect. Well, they they can try, they can make it a good attempt at it. Yeah. Did you get writer's block? And if so, how do you get past it?
SPEAKER_04I really don't get writer's block because I don't if I had to write lyrics, I would get writer's block, but I don't have any problems with coming up with doodads to riff over. But I'm also a person who's happy to, you know, play one chord and hang with that for seven or eight minutes. I'm cool. Sure. I don't I don't have to be the baldy or whatever. I could I could riff out on a C. Yeah, that's cool. I don't really get writer's block. I just have time block or um when you get older you get more of a life block where your head is just not in a creative places at all. So you get that kind of block.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Is that something that you have to do anything specific to get past, or you just wait it out and wait till you some creativity sparks again?
SPEAKER_04My whole thing is just read when I'm relaxed, I'm I can create. But if I'm like stressed out about stupid shit, then I'm there's no way I could really be happy playing, you know, G major or whatever. So it's just where I am in my ad space, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Do you struggle to call a project finished and be done with it and post it? Not really, no.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Nah, I fly right through. Yeah, that's awesome. I know myself and there's a lot of other people that I get very bogged down mixing and things like that. You think, okay, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna post this, and then as soon as I am about to post it, like I hear something else that I want to go change a little bit and just, you know, keep coming back to the thing and really have a problem calling calling anything finished and just putting it out there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I know I know a lot of people who um you know they'd get like my drum tracks and then they'd sit at home and they'd like be EQing my bass drum for a month and a half or whatever. Which is fine. It's cool and that's great. But I'd rather just like kind of get you know, walk out in the studio and have an idea, get the drums done, play some guitar, do the bass, and maybe have it done that day and mix, you know, and possibly do a video that day and have it basically out in one day and stuff. Is it gonna be an EMI style mix? Probably not. Yeah, I figure if somebody likes one of your tunes, even if it's a crappy mix. I mean, a lot of the early who stuff isn't really great mixes, in my opinion. But if somebody really likes your stuff, they're just kinda gonna like it anyway.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And also I figure it's something that is really, really liked and somebody wants to do something with it, then you know, maybe you call in the higher guns who can take care of mixing it a little bit better than what you could do or have a different opinion. I don't think I'm the be-all end-all of what my music should be mixed or how it should sound. It just is what it is, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I like that approach. Just, you know, let it let it stand and don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about it. Mixing's so subjective too, you know. It's it's just what sounds good to your ears. Yeah. And different audio engineers can have something completely different that sounds really good to them.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I like a mix when I'm done with the mix, but I don't really go back to it and be like, oh, this is the best mix I ever did in my life. Holy crap, you know, how come I'm not, you know, getting a Grammy for this? Yeah. It's like I in my head, I think they're all kind of they're alright. That'll do, you know. But if I had to do something where I was like, all right, this is this song that deserves a little bit more, then you know, I'm gonna go get somebody who knows what the hell they're doing for sure. Just to check and see if I'm alright, you know.
SPEAKER_01Sure, yeah. If someone was wanting to use a song in a movie or something coming out.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, because I I don't know if I'd be comfortable with, you know, here's my mix of that, because you know, I have no high end in my so whatever. Yep. I've been standing in front of a loud guitar amps for 20 years.
SPEAKER_03You think I have any high-end in there?
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah. Uh that's that's a good way to look at it though, I think. What's the best feedback you've ever received?
SPEAKER_04I just like when people have interesting comments about stuff. Like, I don't know how you guys come up with that, or how did you get that weird sound, or I like that weird sound, or I think that kind of gets me off more than feedback.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_04I don't know if I really take feedback well anyway. Sure. That's fair. I love your guitar sound. How dare you. Uh, what's the worst advice you've ever been given? Okay. The worst advice, the one I have the most disdain for was don't burn your bridges. And and this was in regard to a recording studio situation. That one I had complete disdain for. So that's gonna be my my choice. Because I think the burning bridges thing goes both ways. Not just me burning a bridge, I think somebody else could be burning a bridge as well.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, there's yeah, they're on the other side of the other side of the thing, burning their end of it.
SPEAKER_04So Yeah, I took I took that one real personally at the time, so I'm gonna go with that one. Okay, yeah, that's good. Obviously, I still take it personally only 20 years later.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's all right. Yeah, we all harbor some resentments in there sometimes. Oh, yeah. What's your biggest distraction in the studio?
SPEAKER_04Right now, the biggest distraction seems to be Dairy Queen ice cream, but that's okay. We're letting that go.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Just mid mid-song. Do you have somebody stopping and saying they're ready for an ice cream run?
SPEAKER_04Some nights, you know, we're just not we're not feeling the magic of the Imperial mission songwriting ability. So we're all like, all right, a couple scoops of chocolate ice cream is gonna fix all that. Yeah, oh that's awesome. That we come back and we're so bloated that we don't get anything done in the first place.
SPEAKER_01Perfect. Okay, I love that. That's uh that's my favorite answer so far to that question. Ice cream. There you go. Okay. You talked about getting in the habit of backing up your hard drives, things like that. What habit has improved your music the most? Practicing.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_04Even practicing uh signal paths or practicing getting sounds, all that stuff helps. Like, I think a a really good exercise is like picking a cover song and like trying to get it close, trying to get your sounds as close as possible to it. Even if you fail, you know, it's it's a successful failure. But it it I think that kind of stuff teaches you a lot. Oh, absolutely. It's like how do you get that 1970s ass drum sound, you know? How do you how do you do this? And you can watch a bunch of people on YouTube and sure they can show you that. Usually they're showing you with, you know, here's twenty thousand dollars on microphones. But you know, how do you do it with what you have? That's cool stuff. I think all that stuff is cool. I mean, I I practice all the time. I press I practice guitar playing and all everything, you know. I I feel like I have to, so whatever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, that that's a great habit to have to practice and and trying to replicate other people's music to figure out what they did and how to achieve those sounds. That's awesome. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah. What's a habit that hurts your creativity the most?
SPEAKER_04I think what hurts creativity the most is expecting the biggest production possible when you might not necessarily have access to it. Where it's like, okay, I want a 50-piece choir, and I want, you know, six guitar players, and I want three drummers, and you have all this stuff in your head, and it gets so overbearing that you can't even start a song. Sure. Yeah, I think you just need to start, even if it's a click track. As long as you have the beats per minute, you know. But some people get in their head about music so bad that they will never record a song, period, because it's it's already a production in their head. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know. That's good advice for life in general. That there's a lot of things that you know you start blowing up real big into your head and it becomes this overwhelming project, and you know, there's just there's it's hard to find a starting point for it, and you gotta break those things down and start doing little pieces at a time, and eventually the you know that you start seeing the bigger picture of it, but you gotta start small, one one little thing at a time, basically.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I know a lot of people who just they have such huge ideas for music that it's impossible to start. Yeah. It's kind of a waste, you know.
SPEAKER_01Sure. If music is your main thing, what's number two? Do you have another hobby? I like doing so much weird stuff.
SPEAKER_04I like building things, I like fixing guitars, it's still cool, even though it's music, doesn't count. Uh this year I've been into uh just doing a lot of yard work because I have an excess of yard that I ignore constantly. Okay. Yeah, man, I'm pretty boring. No, that's all right. I like feeding birds and watching birds. Oh, yeah. This is what old guys do. This is what old guys do.
SPEAKER_01We watch birds. Yeah, bird birds are awesome. Do you have any of those new feeders they have that have, you know, the 4K camera inside? No. No, I'm not that cool. Yeah, those those things are awesome. I have a neighbor that has one. You can, you know, watch the bird come in there and start bringing stuff in to build a little nest. And yeah, it's pretty amazing. Uh now we found our sweet spot, your new podcast, the birding channel. Uh to your future now. Yeah, there we go. What advice do you have for someone just starting out in the production world?
SPEAKER_04Uh, don't pay attention to people. People on Reddit. Okay. Just no man. Follow follow your own path. Don't listen too much to the outside distractions of all the perfect people in the world. That's my advice. Sure. Somebody's gonna tell you that a squire guitar sucks, and a squire guitar does not suck. It's a guitar, and you play it and you make music, and everything is good.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. There are some guitars where the neck is too flexible and they just can't stay in tune because they're too cheaply made. But otherwise, yeah.
SPEAKER_04You know, trying to be cool on the internet, just do your thing. Be cool to yourself, I think, you know.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So you started playing guitar at the age of seven. If you could travel back in time and tell something to yourself at that age, what would it be?
SPEAKER_04Uh, how about practice and not just, you know, hit notes? It would it would have been it would have been better if I practiced instead of just hitting a guitar because it I didn't get serious about it until much, much, much, much later.
SPEAKER_01Okay. What's the most unusual place that you've made music?
SPEAKER_04Back in the 80s, there used to be a lot of really sketchy warehouse type things going on. And you would always like show up and people would be running it like a you know, two-track reel to reel and stuff. Sure. This is stuff that would disappear and you would never hear again and stuff. But yeah, there's there was some weird crap like that going on, but nothing cool like you know, recording drums in a nuclear facility or something cool. Sure. What excites you most about the future of music production? I like the ease of entry. I think that's still cool. Absolutely. Because everything is simple now, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. A kid with a laptop and and a couple hundred bucks to buy Logic can start making music, you know, at a at a high quality.
SPEAKER_04And the little bastard has more views and likes than me. Son of a bitch.
SPEAKER_01They're immediately posting their first beat like 30 seconds after they made it. And you know, and then following up on the comments, and there's a lot better at using social media than us old guys are.
SPEAKER_04That's all cool to me. That's cool. Yeah. We didn't have any of this stuff back in the 80s. Yeah. All that. Yeah, on one hand it's cool, on the other hand, it's maybe not so cool. There's some good stuff out there, man. There's there's some really cool stuff. Absolutely. I mean, I just I just downloaded a thing. I think it's a guy on whatever Instagram or TikTok, and he comes up with these stupid ass songs that man talk about something that was stuck in my head for a month. I'm like, all right, all right, you you earn the dollar, my man. So yeah, there's there's stuff out there. That's cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's awesome. Um, what's a musical opinion that gets you into trouble?
SPEAKER_04I hate the word producer. The modern the modern use of the word producer annoys me. Okay. What what about it? I don't know. I think it's just stacking the well, I I sound like a guy yelling at clouds and shit. But a producer in the old days would arrange the studio, would arrange the players, he might change the you know, the tune a little bit, might move the verse around or whatever. Nowadays a guy calls himself a producer if he's like making a couple beats in his bedroom and stuff like that. Which is cool, and I understand. But I'm always like, man, why don't you come over here and pick up my drum set and just show me how good you are. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's a me thing. I understand. It's a me thing. Yeah. It also goes the other way too, though. You know, you you're watching a movie and there's you know a bunch of producer credits, and like that person just has their name on there. Like, they didn't have anything to do with this movie. Yeah, this guy brought coffee. Yeah, we know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I'm okay with the word, you know, and if if you're making beats on a laptop in your bedroom, if you're producing a product, then I'll call you a producer.
SPEAKER_04I think it's more I have problems with some of the people who use it. Sure. Also, I'm old school, so you know, I have that going for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's all right. If someone made a movie about your producer journey, what would the title be? Hectopia 2, Electric Boogaloo.
SPEAKER_04Um That's good. Or something like we we almost made it. Or it'd also be called That'll Do. That'd be the the third release. That'll do. Or uh it all ended at Dairy Queen or something like that, maybe.
SPEAKER_01It ended at Dairy Queen with a full stomach. Oh, that's great. What's an underrated skill that every producer should develop?
SPEAKER_04People skills. People skills, how to be gentle with people, how to know when to be gentle with people, and how to know when to not be gentle at all with people really helps. It it really helps to get under people's skin sometimes if you want to get something out of them.
SPEAKER_01You want to want a hardcore drum performance and piss them off.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It does it does work. It does work. And I'm talking if you're in a context of working with outside sources, you know?
SPEAKER_00Sure.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Your friends are easier to annoy. But yeah, people's skills. Yeah, that's a that's a great answer.
SPEAKER_01What's something that you're trying to get better at outside of music? I'm trying to get better with my lack of financial sets.
SPEAKER_04I mean I'm s you know, someday I'll learn. Okay. But yeah, I'm trying to make life smooth. That's all. You're spending too much money on gear? No, I don't really buy anything, man. I once I'm set with stuff, I'm pretty I'm pretty set. I don't move stuff around. I do a lot of stupid panic crap. You know, I'll panic trying to fix problems, doing doing panic things, you know. I'm getting out of that and stuff like that. It's just becoming mellower about a lot of crap, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What else would you like people to know about your art?
SPEAKER_04I don't consider myself like really good at it. I just kind of chug along. So if someone else likes it, that's absolutely cool. But I don't I don't really, you know, it's nothing too hardcore, I don't think.
SPEAKER_01Sure. If you could have a creative session with any other producer in the world, who would it be?
SPEAKER_04I you know, that's the one I thought about because that's when that was included in your little packet, I think. That's one of them that you brought up. Thank God. Uh after a time I realized the person that I liked hearing songs from would it was like Trevor Horn.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_04And I wasn't aware of like any of that stuff back in the day. You know, he's doing like the buggles and Frankie goes to Hollywood, ABC and the D S album and all these little songs. All right, all right. Art of Noise. You know. Sure. Um so he he's a really interesting cat to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it'd be something someone you could learn some stuff from.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, just the way he goes about it. Because I don't think he's really precious about any of this stuff either, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What would you say is the single most important thing in your life right now? Cats. Cats. How many do you have?
SPEAKER_04I have three that are inside, and I take care of uh two or three strays on the outside, depending on who's hanging out.
SPEAKER_01Are the cats allowed in the studio space? Uh yeah, I don't care if they go out there, sure.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01They never mess anything up, jumping on a symbol or anything. No, not weird. Okay. Very cool. Well, the show's called Producer's Chair. So I gotta ask, do you have a special chair you sit in when you're doing your mixing and everything?
SPEAKER_04We do have chairs out there, and I had to look it up. The chairs that we use out in the studio are called the boss drafting stools.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Stool, does it have a back on it?
SPEAKER_04Uh they have backs on them, yeah. But it's a stool with a round ring, so you can put your foot on there. I had to look it up today. I knew you'd be asking me that. I knew that'd be the hardest question of the whole show.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. All right. When I think of stool, I typically think no back. But yeah, I mean, they I guess at some bars and stuff, they do have backs on them all the time, stuff. Yeah, it's kind of like like a bar stool. Okay.
SPEAKER_04The official name is a drafting stool.
SPEAKER_01Oh, nice. Very cool.
SPEAKER_04The more you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Where can our listeners connect with you online and hear more more of your music?
SPEAKER_04We are on the Imperial Mission session on YouTuber. Uh, we have the Imperial Mission.com. We are on Amazon Music. Very cool.
SPEAKER_01Hit like, subscribe. Yeah, and I'll get the links posted up. So anytime uh anywhere people are listening to this podcast, the links will be below there. And just be able to click on that. Follow this podcast. We demand it. Yeah. I I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today, Jamie. It's been fun to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and uh talk about your production process. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Very interesting. Absolutely. That's our episode for today. I appreciate all of you who joined us, and we'll be back in two weeks with another great episode for you. Until next time, I'm Steve Switcher, and you've been listening to the producer's chair.
