My first career was as a musician and certainly I was a player. I was playing four nights a week when I was still in high school. So I have lots and lots and lots of stage time. And I did that until I was about 40 and decided that that wasn’t as much fun because by that time I was touring and touring. Just, you know, after you hit 25 or so, it’s like, wow, this is really work. It’s not, not as much fun anymore. So then I, I was already working a lot in the studio and then I just dedic to being a producer and a mixer and an engineer and did that for a lot of years. How I get into writing, that was career two, actually. How I get into writing was still as. I was a player. I was on a tour bus and the bass player came on one day and said, I just got a job, a job writing for the Music Paper. The Music Paper was a weekly paper out of New York that had everything about music, all the clubs. It was oriented more towards musicians and artists, but it was also consumer facing. So this is one of these things where you went to a supermarket and it was there for free. You just pick it up. It was a big deal at the time. And he came on and said, I just got a job writing for the music paper. And I thought, you know, if he could do that, so can I. So I started to put feelers out to various audio magazines. And sure enough, I, I got a gig writing first of all for Mix Magazine. It was my very first article. And then it kind of exploded from there where next thing I know I was writing for 12 or 14 different industry magazines. Billboard, Grammy Magazine, Variety, Recording Engineer, Producer, eq, all those. And that was kind of fun. And I met a lot of people doing it. I did a lot of interviews. So as a result I, I knew a lot of people that I didn’t run into prior, you know, in the studio. I was still working in the studio, but then that kind of opened some doors for me. And then what happened was I was a pretty good engineer, but I was not a good mixing engineer. And this is pointed out to me over and over by clients and A and R people and stuff, which is no fun, and knew I had to get good at it or else. And the thing about it is I knew all the best mixers. I knew them either from just running into them in the studio. Or through interviewing them for one of these magazines. So I thought, well, let me go ask them what they do and how they do it. And I interviewed 25 across the world and across different genres, and I thought, you know, if I want to know this, I bet a lot of other people do, too. And that became the basis for my first book, the Mixing Engineer’s Handbook, which is still my biggest seller at the time. People said, you can’t write a book on mixing. It’s too subjective. And I thought, well, there’s none out there, so let me try. And it turned out that there was a voracious appetite for that. So it was immediately picked up by colleges all over the world, and it’s still used in production, music production programs in colleges all over the world as a textbook. But. And then what usually happens, you write a book and you go. And you know this. You go, well, I’m never going to do that again.

I have not done it again. I was. It’s a big deal, you know.

Yeah. But since the first book had sold so well, the publisher was on me to write a second one, which became the Recording Engineer’s Handbook. And then a third one and a fourth, and it got easier. And by the time I hit the 20th book or so, it was fairly easy and fun. So in total, I’ve gone through the process 50 sometimes, because I’m in the fifth edition in some books and the fourth edition and other books, which is like writing a new book every time you do it. And I think I have 27 different titles out there right now. Not all in the music business, but most of them are in the music business. And then I sort of hit a ceiling because I thought to myself, you know, I can write another book. I don’t know that I’m going to make that much more money doing so. And it’s going to. A lot of brain cells are going to die in the process. Let me see if there’s something else. And lo and behold, I was asked to audition for Lynda.com and Linda.com is now LinkedIn learning because they sold out a few years ago. But I auditioned twice, once on camera and once just doing voiceovers. And I kept on saying, yeah, I. I have millions of views on YouTube for stuff like this. I said, no, no, no, you still got to do this. But anyway, that turned out to be, I don’t know, 20 some courses for them. And after a while it was like, well, I can pretty much do this myself. And that became career number four and something I’M I’m in now. So between writing books and, and doing online courses, that takes up a lot of my time these days, in a nutshell.

Wow, that’s crazy. I mean, and I think the mixing thing, I’m glad you didn’t like, agree with them and say, yeah, it’s too subjective, because it is subjective, but you have to have some kind of concrete things to start from. And that’s why the book is so helpful, I’m sure.

Well, it turns out that’s one of the things. Pardon me. It’s one of the things I’m good at. That I didn’t realize it was good until I started to do this. But it’s taking obtuse subjects and making them easier to understand and putting them in a step by step basis. So that turned out to be, again, it’s something I never expected that I could do. And it’s a superpower in a way. So that that’s helped me sustain a career.

That’s cool. And, and I’m sure that’s why you decided to write on AI because that’s one of those things too. That’s like super confusing and elusive and that kind of thing. And we’ll get into that in a second. But I just wanted to stay on the mixing a little bit longer because you’re here and you’re such an expert in this. You know, what are those kind of major mixing mistakes or things that people who are starting to learn how to mix really struggle with?

Well, there’s a number of them and the biggest one is paying attention to equipment more than the space that you’re mixing in. So. Which is critical because you can’t mix it if you can’t hear it. So that’s the, the number one thing. And if you can’t do anything with your space, there are now really good programs that simulate mixing spaces with headphones. The Slate VSX is very good. Waves has Abbey Road Studio 3. So you can use any kind of headphones with that. That works really well. So spend a little money on that and, and that will really take you a long way. The next thing is not learning how to not listening either loud enough or soft enough. And what I mean by that is, and this is a trick I learned early on, if you don’t mix loud enough, then you can’t hear really what’s going on with the low end, the bass. So usually if you’re mixing too quietly, you’ll end up getting wrong balances down there. You don’t have to do this for Long. A couple minutes is enough. But you have to move some air if you’re doing it on speakers in order to hear what’s happening. So that’s the first thing. And then the very last thing is. And it’s a trick I learned again from, you know, talking to all these great mixers. And it’s to turn the level down as low as it will go so you’re at whisper level or below as the final step in your mix. And things will jump out at you that you’ll go, oh, wow, that’s too loud. Or you’ll go, oh, I can’t hear something. And it will allow you to get the very last balances together. And this will allow your mixes to translate across other playback systems as well. So it’s just such a simple trick technique, but it makes a huge difference. So those are a couple of things right off.