An Interview with Craig Bauer

2:10 Luke F. Walton What's good, everybody? Welcome back to Love Music More. I am Scoobert Doobert, and I am joined by Craig Bauer. Welcome to the show.

2:18 Craig Bauer Well, thank you.

2:20 Luke F. Walton I'm so excited to talk about, you know, what it actually looks like to be in the recording studio, what your studio philosophy is, and also what your mixing philosophy is, because you've worked on, I'm sure, a lot of the listeners favorite records.

2:36 Craig Bauer I hope that's the case.

2:37 Luke F. Walton Yes,

2:38 Craig Bauer I

2:38 Luke F. Walton I

2:38 Craig Bauer think there's

2:38 Luke F. Walton do.

2:38 Craig Bauer a possibility.

2:39 Luke F. Walton I think there's a good chance of it. But yeah, I'm so excited to dive into like what it really looks like, because as the show is love music more, the whole goal is to get people walking away. I don't know, with more accurate view of what it actually looks like in the trenches.

2:53 Craig Bauer Cool. I hope I have good answers.

2:57 Luke F. Walton I'm sure you will. I'm sure you will.

2:58 Craig Bauer But we'll find out.

3:00 Luke F. Walton So let's go to 2008, your first Grammy, and then also the record graduation, Kanye West. You were working in Chicago at the time with the recording studio.

3:11 Craig Bauer I

3:11 Luke F. Walton Is that correct?

3:11 Craig Bauer was, and what a lot of people probably don't know is that Kanye's entire career started in my studio in 1990. 93 long

3:19 Luke F. Walton 93.

3:20 Craig Bauer before anyone ever heard of Kanye West so we go back much further than his debut I did the majority of late registration and I did a little bit of graduation but

3:34 Luke F. Walton Both incredible,

3:35 Craig Bauer I know

3:36 Luke F. Walton incredible

3:36 Craig Bauer Kanye probably

3:36 Luke F. Walton records.

3:37 Craig Bauer better than most

3:39 Luke F. Walton Well, I think that's one of the things that people don't recognize how how intense the studio environment and like the collaboration and the just the humanity of being in that without the cameras existing as humans what was that like back then I'm sure that it was very different was

3:55 Craig Bauer Well, when

3:56 Luke F. Walton that world

3:56 Craig Bauer we first met, he was part of a three-man hip-hop slash R&B group that lasted a few months. And so I was introduced to him by his two managers at the time. One of it, which is... Is still his manager,

4:11 Luke F. Walton Really?

4:11 Craig Bauer a guy

4:12 Luke F. Walton Wow.

4:13 Craig Bauer named John Monopoly and so he brought him they came to my office met with me and said that they had this three-man group and that they wanted to work on a record worked on a bunch of that for i don't know maybe a couple months we're going back a long time here

4:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

4:31 Craig Bauer so it's hard to remember but the group split off and then kanye continued on by himself still being managed by john and he would come in multiple times a week for

4:44 Craig Bauer quite some time where he would come into the studio with an MPC and literally program beats on the spot.

4:51 Craig Bauer And I don't know or remember how this ultimately transpired, but at some point he started sending these beats that he would do and program live to Diddy.

5:02 Craig Bauer and you know he'd make a phone call and said we're going to send you you know i'm going to send you this beat and it's 1993 so the internet was a little bit different than it is now i had an ftp server and it would take 40 minutes to upload an mp3 and

5:20 Luke F. Walton Yes.

5:20 Craig Bauer and we would work till three o'clock in the morning multiple nights and this went on for a very long time until ultimately he he he got signed i

5:31 Luke F. Walton Nobody could

5:32 Craig Bauer recorded

5:32 Luke F. Walton be on a telephone while you were uploading MP3.

5:35 Craig Bauer yeah yeah yeah it's so long ago i don't even remember how that worked but yeah very different situation than it is now yeah he got he got signed and lots of what we originally recorded turned into his first album lots of those demos turned into that he moved to la during that i didn't mix any of that first album Uh, and then when he got around to his second album, he called me and I started mixing that.

6:03 Craig Bauer And what's frustrating for me, and I will freely admit, is that if you look at the credits of late registration, they are wildly wrong.

6:10 Luke F. Walton Mm

6:10 Craig Bauer I

6:10 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

6:10 Craig Bauer mixed the vast majority of that record. There were four people. That basically mixed almost all of that record and there would be 50 revisions for every song and I'm assuming there were 50 revisions for every song from each one of the guys that worked on those songs. So there's probably 200 versions of every song. I would have to guess based on what I had to go through.

6:34 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

6:35 Craig Bauer So at some point it was probably just impossible to keep track, but if I had the credits in front of me, I could easily go through them and tell you that I mixed the vast majority of that record and didn't get credited for half of it.

6:48 Luke F. Walton I think

6:48 Craig Bauer I've

6:49 Luke F. Walton that those

6:49 Craig Bauer gotten over at this point.

6:50 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah.

6:51 Craig Bauer Took a minute.

6:52 Luke F. Walton But I think that those are actually two things that a lot of maybe just music fans wouldn't recognize would be the level of revisions that mixers have to go through. And then also the kind of chaos of wait, that got released? Or who mastered that? Or like, where did that go? Or that's that's my mix.

7:12 Craig Bauer Here's

7:12 Luke F. Walton That's out there.

7:13 Craig Bauer a better question. Does anyone else? outside of the music industry care i

7:18 Luke F. Walton I mean, they consume it. People listen to the DVD commentary for all of their favorite movies. Why not their favorite records?

7:25 Craig Bauer would like to think people care like hardcore music fans will care there this happened very recently i don't know if this is kind of information that you are in your audience is interested in but there's a sandwich shop that opened from where i live like two blocks from here and the first time my wife and wife and what I went in there heard him say it was playing over their speaker system and

7:48 Luke F. Walton Yes.

7:48 Craig Bauer this the girl at the register was taking my order was just like rocking out and I'm like I gotta tell you a secret you're gonna like it and I'm like hear that I did that she's like what do you mean you did that I'm like I made that record with Kanye

8:06 Craig Bauer and she completely flipped out just like and now i go in there and it's like you know the the sea parts and it's and like i'm not the artist i just spent a lot of time with them in the studio and it was probably less fun that it that would appear and to repeat the same story there's a like a little shopping center that going the other direction that opened up and this was like a year ago and the same exact story

8:34 Craig Bauer uh this guy is a guy who's working there is just like bopping out to something and i'm like you know and whenever i see that i always ask what they're listening to he's like i'm listening to kick push by this artist this hip-hop artist from chicago and i'm like oh really that's interesting no i had to tell him the same thing and uh so that happens and i i would be lying if i didn't say there's some you know gratification

9:00 Craig Bauer In that it's fun to hear that and get to tell people those kinds of stories.

9:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah. How do you keep yourself sane, though, as you're going through 50 revisions?

9:10 Craig Bauer that's highly unusual that there's not a that's the only time that's ever happened i mean that's seriously extreme and a lot of it is would be you know he lived in la i was still in chicago when he was working that and he'd get a phone call and he'd like it would be you know turn off this one word

9:29 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah,

9:30 Craig Bauer okay

9:30 Luke F. Walton right,

9:31 Craig Bauer i'll turn up that one word it's not like 50 re-dos but

9:36 Luke F. Walton right.

9:36 Craig Bauer by the time you get to revision 50 compared to revision two it's a different song and i would also be lying if i didn't tell you that we would get to revision 50 and revision two would still get put on the record that also happened so

9:51 Craig Bauer just missing the magic yeah you can you can beat something to death and beat the complete and complete life out of it that can certainly happen

9:59 Luke F. Walton I think that points to something though that pretty much every creative person has and every mixer has to be good at this of understanding like when is it done

10:08 Craig Bauer How do you know in your bones like okay, it's time to ship I'm guessing if you've talked to other mixers you've heard this before it's that it's not when it's done it's when you when you all right I could work on this forever and decide that the only one who's going to know the difference is me at that point I was working on something today that's very musically

10:30 Craig Bauer complicated is not the right word but detailed and i could do a hundred versions of it that have slightly different adjustments here and there that musically they all work Which one's the best one? Which one is...

10:44 Craig Bauer But ultimately, like I said, I'm the only one, even the artist at that point, wouldn't know the differences if I highlighted this little string line as opposed to a little guitar line that happened to be playing at the same time. Both of them can be important. It's just a decision of which one should be important, and there's no real answer to that question.

11:04 Craig Bauer It's just a preference, and that preference can change from hour to hour. and that's

11:09 Craig Bauer often does a really well good point how do you how do you help music fans just kind of listen to music kind of as a wall like it all kind of approaches them and then the mixer is kind of helping almost like a like a camera or a you know foreshadow whatever

11:22 Craig Bauer that that's exactly what a good mixer does is it guides the listener into not having to find the things that are important you're telling the listener what is important one of the things i like to describe to I don't want to use the word wannabes, but aspiring mixers is

11:40 Craig Bauer Uh-huh. your job is literally to guide the listener. I like to say that you've got a lead vocal and a track. Clearly, whenever that's there, it's typically the most important thing in the track. And then in between the spaces, what is the thing that is playing the role of the lead vocal needs to be highlighted for the listener so that it's not a wall. Okay, we have a wall.

12:04 Craig Bauer We've got drums and bass and guitar parts and keyboard parts. The vocal in between a phrase drops out for a bar. There's 50 things going on. Something needs to be pushed forward to be the thing that grabs a listener's attention. And that's what a good mixer does is finds those moments and makes something important.

12:27 Craig Bauer Everywhere. There's another interesting thing is that sometimes it's the lack of something important and things dropping out so that there's things pulled back or there's literally a break in silence.

12:42 Craig Bauer And the silence becomes the lead vocal at that point. That's how I think of my job. And I also do things that I think a lot of mixers might be afraid to do. And that's to, and this happens a lot, you'll get to, you'll have a bridge. So you'll get a chorus and the chords leads into a bridge and the bridge is a completely different thing, sonically speaking.

13:02 Craig Bauer And then coming out of the bridge, there's a little, you know. come down that leads into the vamp and in that come down a couple things hang out and there's one little thing kind of piddly doing something and it's actually more effective to literally put a stop time thing and let a reverb trail from the last bar of the chorus be the thing that hangs over and I'm not afraid to make that happen when the artist or producer didn't think of it and 999 times out of a thousand

13:35 Craig Bauer I'll get the call like, oh my God, that's freaking amazing. We never thought of that. Well, it's fresh and new to me and it seemed wildly obvious. I won't mention any names, but. There was one time I did exactly that with a very famous artist who had a very big chip on his shoulder. And I recorded this thing, I recorded this artist's vocal. He asked me to mix it.

13:59 Craig Bauer He was in the studio listening to it. We got to that. I did that exact thing and he had a complete meltdown. And that was the last time I ever saw him.

14:09 Craig Bauer Oh, my God. Hey, risks. Taking risks. Well, like I said, 99, 999 times out of a thousand, that being the only time it didn't work out. And the funny thing is, do you know what it would have taken to put it back to exactly. the way it was? About three seconds.

14:26 Craig Bauer Yep. So that's more about hurting somebody's ego than anything else. Yeah. Well, it is interesting. I do see a lot of mixers.

14:38 Craig Bauer kind of defined their lane very narrowly of like oh that's a production thing versus like what you were saying you're hitting it with fresh ears you're hitting it with all of your wisdom and experience and you come to this and you go this should happen and what if you hold yourself back and then you don't make the song what it could be

14:56 Craig Bauer That's the way I've approached it. I think I've always approached it that way. And if I may, the reason I approach things that way is because I'm a musician first. I became a mixer by default more than setting out to be a mixer. I wanted to be an artist, but I forgot to write songs.

15:15 Craig Bauer So it turns out the knob turning thing ended up being the career, not the songwriting thing, because I literally forgot to write songs. And then I started doing things for other people and then this is what it led to. But I'm a classically trained pianist. Piano player started when I was in fourth grade, major in piano in college. And so I have a very deep musical understanding, probably more so than technical.

15:44 Craig Bauer And then when I was 13, I picked up a guitar. Now all I do is play guitar and almost never touch a keyboard.

15:49 Craig Bauer I actually, this is a me question. How do you prefer micing a piano? Do you like the very like wide stereo fixture? Do you like something a little more narrow, more room, more close mic? What

15:58 Craig Bauer I do you think? mean, it's not stupid wide and not stupid narrow, Yeah. natural sounding is kind of, I did a ton and ton and ton of in my early years, I was known for doing smooth jazz records,

16:16 Craig Bauer Yes. Brian Culbertson being culberson being a very well-known smooth jazz artist and i did his first six records recorded and mixed them so recording piano is something that i did a whole lot of

16:18 Craig Bauer Yep. a very well-known smooth jazz artist,

16:29 Luke F. Walton Smooth jazz is such a sonic palette of like.

16:34 Craig Bauer Well,

16:34 Luke F. Walton Yep.

16:35 Craig Bauer it gets frowned upon because people don't have it, but there's some of the finest musicians on the planet doing that stuff because you have to be extremely well-versed, musically speaking, and great at your instrument. So it shows me I didn't chose it, but because I was a musician, but the list of smooth jazz artists from the first six, seven, eight years of my career is endless, endless.

16:59 Luke F. Walton My dad loves that music and I'm in San Diego it's like San Diego and smooth jazz are tight, you know

17:05 Craig Bauer yes yes so

17:06 Luke F. Walton for sure we got humphreys by the bay with all of the the yachts and sailboats listening to smooth jazz of

17:11 Craig Bauer those brian

17:12 Luke F. Walton course

17:12 Craig Bauer culbertson records and then he the sax player he he used was a guy in chicago who did all the sax parts who ultimately then got a record deal on it on his own whose name is steve cole so i did all of his records and then i got a call from him and it's been forever since i'd done a smooth jazz record and about four months ago i got a call from him to mix a single for his new record.

17:34 Craig Bauer It's the first time I've done that in quite some time. It was actually great. I actually really enjoyed it.

17:41 Luke F. Walton I think that's another fun thing that maybe music fans don't always see is just the especially mixers, mastering engineers, the cross genre acumen and being involved in all of these different sides where you might not initially be like. That's the same mix engineer.

17:58 Craig Bauer um yeah and i probably am one of those that uh takes that to the extreme Exactly. from

18:07 Luke F. Walton You are.

18:07 Craig Bauer uh hip-hop to gospel in chicago and a ton of gospel records from uh i would have if you would ask me the chances of that ever happening i would have said zero but it does these things pick you and it doesn't mean i didn't enjoy doing them i did it was something very different and i did a ton of gospel records and one of them from the biggest one of the clark sisters a huge gospel thing and i won you know that won a grammy and there's a grammy sitting on my shelf and then here's two kanye albums for record for album of the year and neither of those won

18:45 Craig Bauer yeah you don't get to pick oftentimes it picks you the the only thing literally the only genre i don't think i do is i am not known for doing grunge and i am absolutely not known for doing heavy metal and i never ever ever get those calls and i never will

19:06 Luke F. Walton Somebody listening, make it happen. Make it happen.

19:08 Craig Bauer my stuff tends to be a little too pretty for uh For heavy metal I'd be working on the snare to make it sound really clean and pristine and like no, that's not what we're going for

19:20 Luke F. Walton Hey, there's a lot of sub-genres in metal now.

19:23 Craig Bauer Oh, I did a when I had a tracking studio I did a week with the smashing pumpkins that was not the right That was not the right fit. There's endless amusing stories But we'd need a number of hours to go through them all.

19:40 Luke F. Walton So I'm so curious what brought you to Denver and then I'm seeing this board behind you and I know that you work a lot in the box curious about kind of the studio construction your current space what brought you there and then maybe kind of your current workflows yeah

19:53 Craig Bauer Okay, well, let's start with how I got here. I left Chicago in 2014 and then spent seven years in LA and the studio that I was in in LA was a North. Northward Design, Thomas and Jean Yuan.

20:06 Craig Bauer kind of only knows if I'm pronouncing I've known him for a decade at this point and he's designing studios literally all over the world considered the number one studio designer ever and he did all the Sterling mastering rooms in Nashville and then the Sterling mastering rooms in New York and so I was renting a room out of Dave Collins mastering in Pasadena for the time that I was in Denver which were Thomas's rooms and you walk into one of those rooms

20:34 Craig Bauer having built and designed two studios with local guys in Chicago and then ended up in LA and then you walk into this room and you hit play and you go huh

20:45 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

20:46 Craig Bauer it's literally what happens and so I spent I don't know five years in those rooms or five and a half years And once you experience that, there is no going back to anything else,

21:00 Luke F. Walton I

21:00 Craig Bauer I bet. So I ended up in Denver because my wife worked for a very well-known alcohol brand, like one of the biggest in the world, gave

21:08 Luke F. Walton Fair enough.

21:09 Craig Bauer her a promotion and asked her to come to Denver to take over a team here. And it was too good of an opportunity for her.

21:17 Craig Bauer And the reality was that while working in L.A., if I had a client that actually came to a session more than once a quarter it would have been a lot so being where clients didn't come to sessions and yet they almost never do and haven't for well over a decade it's typically just do a mix send it off do a few revisions call it done they don't have to show up so we ended up moving here i called thomas up and i said i can't not work in one of these rooms like it's not going to happen

21:53 Craig Bauer I didn't want to build a space in a rented commercial facility and asked him what are the chances if I found a house that had a lower level with the proper dimensions, would he design a studio that would go in and in? He was, nah, I don't think so. And then kind of worked him into the idea of building a northward control room in my house, which was a very major endeavor. I'm sure digging

22:23 Luke F. Walton How is the decoupling?

22:24 Craig Bauer decoupling

22:24 Luke F. Walton How does that look?

22:26 Craig Bauer the only thing that's common to the rest of the house is the door frame I

22:29 Luke F. Walton Cool. Awesome.

22:31 Craig Bauer had to dig two feet down and like tear up the floor in the basement

22:37 Luke F. Walton In

22:37 Craig Bauer so

22:37 Luke F. Walton the basement.

22:38 Craig Bauer into the dirt yeah two feet and there's nothing above this space so there's two feet down nothing above and the only thing that's common is the door frame

22:48 Luke F. Walton Nice.

22:49 Craig Bauer So if I crank it as loud as I possibly can with a ton of bass, you can be 40 feet away and go, I think I hear it.

23:00 Luke F. Walton Amazing.

23:00 Craig Bauer My wife recently had people from her company come to the house and one of them, you know what's crazy? I'm going to interrupt myself.

23:08 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

23:09 Craig Bauer Is the stuff that happens in this business, these stories, the things that like you couldn't write it. If you tried to write these kinds of stories, no one would believe it. She invites these two people from her company to come here.

23:25 Craig Bauer and they ask what does your husband do because i'm working at home she tells them and they say oh who's your husband and she tells him she and they're like craig bauer seriously and she's and she's like yeah why he goes because we played in a band and we were there from europe and we were in chicago a couple years ago and we tried to find where he was working out of so that we can come in and do a session and

23:53 Luke F. Walton No. No

23:54 Craig Bauer i'm like i'm

23:55 Luke F. Walton way.

23:55 Craig Bauer like come on it's completely random and so they came down and i'm like no let's hear something and the jaw is just on the floor because you've never heard you've never heard anything like it in in the northward room nothing

24:14 Luke F. Walton Incredible.

24:14 Craig Bauer There's a there's a problem with it, though.

24:17 Luke F. Walton What's the problem?

24:17 Craig Bauer The problem is it's so unbelievably detailed that

24:21 Luke F. Walton Okay.

24:22 Craig Bauer it make it can make mixing more difficult because you there's nothing you don't hear,

24:28 Luke F. Walton Cool.

24:28 Craig Bauer which

24:29 Luke F. Walton Yep.

24:29 Craig Bauer means that making something sound perfect takes a lot longer than listening to a pair of speakers with an eight inch woofer and, you know, things like. Things like that. So it's amazing and terrifying at the same time because you know mixes are going to be. Very difficult to get to the last 1%.

24:51 Luke F. Walton Do you have any, I always like to ask this question, any mixes that you listen to yourself or others to orient yourself to a room or to a different set of speakers, like if you were doing a remote session or anything like that?

25:03 Craig Bauer No, should

25:04 Luke F. Walton Cool.

25:04 Craig Bauer I?

25:04 Luke F. Walton I don't know.

25:08 Craig Bauer I probably should. I don't leave this room very often or any room that I'm in. So I guess I. It's never been terribly important. And, you know, every one of us in

25:21 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

25:22 Craig Bauer the music industry, we're all snobs because we all think we have the best taste of anybody on the planet.

25:28 Luke F. Walton Yes.

25:28 Craig Bauer So you can't walk into another room and go, wow, this sounds great. Because nobody's room is as good as our own. And I'm sure you've, I don't

25:38 Luke F. Walton Can't

25:38 Craig Bauer agree about

25:38 Luke F. Walton can't

25:38 Craig Bauer my own.

25:39 Luke F. Walton be the first time you've heard that.

25:40 Craig Bauer No, no, I not have been, but I would probably say your room is better than mine, but you know, it's better than most, but I could walk into any, any Northward room and I'm sure feel. perfectly at home yeah

25:55 Luke F. Walton at home uh finally

25:56 Craig Bauer i

25:56 Luke F. Walton about the uh the the board behind you um as somebody that i at least in previous interviews i've seen you work primarily in the box i'd

26:04 Craig Bauer don't always work primarily in the box

26:06 Luke F. Walton god i'd love to hear more about that i'd love well to hear more

26:08 Craig Bauer i started

26:08 Luke F. Walton about maybe the

26:08 Craig Bauer i

26:08 Luke F. Walton transition and where you're at now cool

26:10 Craig Bauer went through every phase of the transition from when i opened my studio in 93 it was complete analog two inch tape machines although And this is, you know, if we want to talk about this, I bought, and unless your viewers or listeners are on the older side, they're never going to heard of this. I bought the very first euphonics digitally controlled mixing console ever made. And this was in 1993.

26:37 Craig Bauer And the reason I bought that console, so it's an analog console that's digitally controlled.

26:43 Luke F. Walton Okay.

26:44 Craig Bauer So you have a control surface that talks to a large output rack and tells. all the analog components what to do so

26:51 Luke F. Walton That's what everyone in like 2020 at NAMM was like, this is the new thing digitally controlled analog.

26:57 Craig Bauer yeah it wasn't because it was around in 1993 it was so new in 1993 because i was you know you'd be reading mixed magazine and they started advertising in this and when i opened my first studio i didn't have 500 600 000 to go buy an ssl didn't have it

27:16 Craig Bauer and so I kept seeing these ads for this thing and I'm like well maybe this is the tool they had yet to sell one and when I when I called at the company about you know looking into this it was so new that the sales guys tried to talk me out of buying it swear

27:39 Luke F. Walton No!

27:40 Craig Bauer to god uh and one of those guys his name is rich nevins who then ultimately went to work for avid is still in the it's still in the audio industry he

27:50 Luke F. Walton Wow.

27:51 Craig Bauer was one of the sales guys the other guys unfortunately passed away at a very early age he was a phenomenal singer but that's how new that technology was that they literally said it may not be ready yet it was developed by a guy named eddie jones

28:06 Craig Bauer who is on the development side of the Euphonyx console back in 1993 who is the developer of this thing which

28:15 Luke F. Walton No!

28:15 Craig Bauer is an M6 which if you look at a very old Euphonyx console other than the fact that it's gray looks very much exactly like this thing now so and that's not by coincidence this is completely digital and controls Pro Tools The euphonyx was digitally controlled analog. It was all analog back then. So when Pro Tools was first introduced, I was in on the very first version of Pro Tools.

28:44 Craig Bauer The sales guy, they had a couple of guys that went to the various studios in Chicago and showed off this software.

28:52 Craig Bauer And the guy who originally showed off that very first version of that was shown to me by a guy named Jeff Comar, who is still working for Avid and who texted me today.

29:05 Craig Bauer So these relationships go back very far and Jeff Comar is head of the control surface department on the features and sales side and customer support.

29:18 Craig Bauer for the high-end uh avid so yeah these relationships go back forever you can't escape these people no matter how many times you try so

29:26 Luke F. Walton So true. Everyone just loops around.

29:30 Craig Bauer i've had every version of a eddie jones designed control service from nephonics through uh avid icon which was the version of control service before this i had that in chicago and then when i got to la i purchased this and i've had this for i was the very first first person to buy this thing too

29:49 Luke F. Walton Yes.

29:50 Craig Bauer awesome and it's now over well i think 11 years old at this point although i don't think any single part of this is now from the original that i bought but uh yeah it's uh And I've been through every version. At some point I had Pro Tools. I had a product which was called a Radar, which was a 24-track digital box, which was in like a four rack space unit.

30:16 Craig Bauer And I ended up having 48 tracks of that, two of those machines. And then I had a couple of DA88 and an ADAT that I used for people who recorded stuff at home on that just

30:27 Luke F. Walton Oh, yeah.

30:28 Craig Bauer to transfer to my digital machines. And then slowly over time, it went less analog and more into the Pro Tools side. When I moved to LA, it was, I switched from analog on the outboard gear side, and I had summing mixers. So I still went analog out of Pro Tools into an analog compressor, and I had 24 channels of...

30:59 Craig Bauer sub mixing from three analog sub mixers which went stereo out through an analog compressor and printed onto another medium and then finally I decided okay enough with analog and ultimately went completely in the box which I am now and I'm sure you've heard this before man I miss the analog days

31:21 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

31:23 Craig Bauer Yeah.

31:23 Luke F. Walton Sorry to interrupt this very important broadcast. What I'm asking for is for you to rate it five stars, share it with your friends. This is like the most important thing for this podcast to grow. So if you want to do this, you go into the podcast screen, right? You click on the dot, dot, dot on Spotify. Under there, it says rate show and you go and you click it five stars.

31:41 Luke F. Walton If you could do that for me, that's the best way for the algorithms and all this stuff to share it out with the world. I know that it's a lot to ask, but if you could please, please, please just please just hit those. Three dots and a five star would really help us out and helps us, you know, get the get the word out and spread the love of music. So thank you.

31:56 Luke F. Walton If you're listening on YouTube, you know what to do. Like, subscribe, all that good stuff. Thank you so much. And here's the rest of the episode. What is it that you miss about it? Is it the

32:05 Craig Bauer It's

32:06 Luke F. Walton workflow,

32:06 Craig Bauer the illusion that

32:07 Luke F. Walton decision making? Okay, the illusion.

32:09 Craig Bauer there's something better

32:14 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

32:14 Craig Bauer about analog, Okay. whether it's true or not. There's a romance with analog gear in that you will if you've if you've come from that world It will never go away when I say illusion when you're working on a 2 inch 24 track machine

32:31 Craig Bauer There's no forgiveness. There is the point at which recording at too low level has too high of a noise floor, not hitting tape hard enough. Hit it too hard and you're into distortion and there's no undoing that.

32:43 Craig Bauer So finding that sort of sweet spot between getting to zero VU and plus two. which is still safe ground before you get into plus six and find yourself with a lovely piece of distortion on your vocal. So, you know, is it better? I keep dreaming about having it. I don't know. The only thing I can tell you is that I have this part of my website that like has, I've got this whole educational thing that I started long before Instagram was a thing. So this goes way back before that was popular.

33:18 Craig Bauer And I would do these workshops and used to have three to 400 people attend them. Now, now if you get 30, it's a miracle. And I had a, there's a song from Brian Culbertson where I was listening to it Thanksgiving night because my wife just had it playing in the background for whatever reason. And it's just kind of, you know, just off in the background and I'm like listening to this thing and I'm going.

33:42 Craig Bauer man the reverb on that piano is unbelievable and it came from alexicon 960 which was a digital reverb unit but you had to go in analog and come out analog but it was digital processing but i'm listening to this reverb going i don't there's just something special about that and man do i i ended up selling that unit to thomas from northward who took it back to denmark uh and As I'm listening to this, I'm going, man,

34:12 Craig Bauer I should have never sold that thing because nothing will ever sound that good.

34:18 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

34:18 Craig Bauer And then I needed to prove it to myself. So that next day, I opened up this. uh i still had the pro tool session from a record that had been recorded a million years ago it didn't really open properly but it opened enough where i could get to the piano but piano sound by itself and i had the mix of it printed in the session and i'm listening to this piano sound and i'm going all right Can I make Valhalla's vintage verb sound

34:49 Luke F. Walton Cool.

34:50 Craig Bauer as good as at Lexicon 960 and in 15 minutes you couldn't tell the difference?

34:55 Luke F. Walton Wow. And that's a $50 just easy

34:58 Craig Bauer Could not,

34:58 Luke F. Walton plug

34:58 Craig Bauer cannot

34:59 Luke F. Walton -in.

34:59 Craig Bauer tell the difference at all.

35:01 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

35:02 Craig Bauer In 15 minutes. And I was so fascinated with that, that I took that preset, I stuck it on my website, and it's now for sale on my website

35:11 Luke F. Walton I'm going for to buy it.

35:12 Craig Bauer $4.95.

35:14 Luke F. Walton I'm in. Sold. You got a sale.

35:16 Craig Bauer So that's why I say the illusion of analog being better than digital,

35:21 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

35:22 Craig Bauer because I proved it to myself that I can make those two things sound identical, to my own surprise.

35:28 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Well, and I'm so glad that you took that leap too of not just accepting it. And then also that's like a fun challenge, I think. I'm actually really curious, all of the, you know, like the preset, like I'm sure this happens to plug-in companies, I don't even know how this works, but plug-in companies want to have, you know, big names on the preset window.

35:51 Craig Bauer I'm not calling myself a big name, but I've done endless presets

35:54 Luke F. Walton I know you're good.

35:55 Craig Bauer for.

35:56 Luke F. Walton what does

35:56 Craig Bauer plug-in

35:57 Luke F. Walton that companies what

35:57 Craig Bauer yes

35:57 Luke F. Walton does that look like are they are they reaching out to you like is um and then then you get probably an early access and you put it through the paces like how are you deciding

36:05 Craig Bauer i haven't paid for plug-in in years so

36:07 Luke F. Walton sure i'm sure right and that's

36:09 Craig Bauer why you do the presets because you don't want to start paying for plug-ins

36:13 Luke F. Walton exactly what does it look like though do you have like how do you start playing with it and deciding like i'll put my

36:18 Craig Bauer they'll

36:18 Luke F. Walton name on this

36:19 Craig Bauer give me the plug-in i will use it in a mix and then every time i use it Over the course of a couple different mixes, I'll save the preset and deliver them actual. things that i've used

36:31 Craig Bauer cool as opposed to just turning some knobs and giving it some bs name and saying i made you some presets which i'm sure plenty of people have done when i do that they actually come from real mixes but then the names are very specific piano

36:44 Craig Bauer cool uh-huh how so oh reverb nice yeah whereas you know you could take a piano reverb and use it on all kinds of

36:51 Craig Bauer yeah things but yeah unless you well that's something that i i do all the time is like shuffle through some presets especially if it's a new plug-in i'm trying to get to know it or weather it's got some weird interface that i don't know and yeah i'll put the weird thing that is not supposed to be on a snare drum or whatever just to try it out

37:05 Craig Bauer Well, absolutely. I think sticking to preset notions of how anything should work and when recording and mixing music is an unfortunate mistake I think a lot of people make.

37:18 Craig Bauer The history of recording shows that, right? I would think so, Gosh. yes. Probably some of the biggest records ever made happened by mistake. Like drum room mics, there's the, you know.

37:33 Craig Bauer The historical story that it was an accident on Phil Collins in the air tonight, that that huge drum sound was because room mics were accidentally printed. I haven't asked Phil personally, but I don't doubt that's true. I say that as if I know Phil. I don't know Phil, but I would ask him that if I did.

37:53 Craig Bauer I bet you could get his number. Um, but yeah, it's absolutely so it's, you know, a lot of mistakes that turn into cool things like that.

38:01 Craig Bauer or yeah like you're messing with something and like something falls out of phase and you go oh what is that how do i use that rather than like i gotta fix this um oh actually that reminded me of something uh you you use a lot of parallel processing which uh for people that are non-musical you've got the affected thing the non-affected thing running them in parallel Hello. How do you account for phase?

38:24 Craig Bauer How do you account? What's kind of your philosophy there? The answer is pretty simple. Delay compensation in a very powerful computer.

38:32 Craig Bauer Yes. Yes. That's the answer. And I get plenty of people who message me, oh, I tried to do that thing that you talked about, an Instagram page about doing something parallel and it just sounds out of phase and I'm like, well, what computer are you using? And it's like, well, it's a Mac mini from, you know, 2009. Well, that's why.

38:49 Craig Bauer Uh, parallel processing is not in your future until you upgrade your computer to something way more powerful. Even still, I don't want to call it phase. I do a lot of parallel processing. There aren't phase issues, but there are ways to do that kind of processing, obviously, with a wet dry balance on a plugin and do parallel processing within the plugin itself.

39:11 Craig Bauer But I have a very solid philosophy on the difference between wet and dry being the parallel thing. and using a aux send and return and putting parallel processing and it's the difference of what i call additive and subtractive parallel

39:28 Craig Bauer Mm-hmm. processing so anyone who's you know in this world will understand what i'm talking about and if you're just a fan of this it's not going to make any sense whatsoever but if you have a track and you want to put a reverb on the track itself

39:44 Craig Bauer of because i'm using a very basic example here obviously you can't have the reverb 100 wet and no dry or else all you have is a reverb but you can use the wet dry balance to define how much of the dry signal how much of the wet signal and then you use it in the parallel side you use an aux send return so you're using a send from the track Talking about doing this with a reverb is not the best example.

40:07 Craig Bauer Let's talk about using it with a parallel compressor, whereas if you put a compressor on a vocal track and use the wet-dry balance as opposed to putting a compressor completely in parallel, you have now what I call additive as opposed to subtractive, where if you're using the wet-dry balance, then you're turning something down so they can balance in the other thing so the level drops. of the dry signal.

40:34 Craig Bauer If you're doing a completely parallel aux send and return, that level stays here, and then we're adding in additional level here, and then we're balancing these two things a little bit additive by adding this in, as opposed to subtractive by balancing two things. I like the additive nature of getting the sound, loving the sound, doing parallel processing and adding that in to make the sound.

41:01 Craig Bauer Bigger and then just doing a little bit adjustment of the wet and dry with the two faders as opposed to a big Adjustment between the wet and dry. It's a philosophy. I stick by it. I like parallel processing more than wet dry balance

41:16 Craig Bauer Well, I like it a lot. And the way that you described it helped it root in my brain a lot more than some of the other videos that I was watching, just because I thought of it in terms of gain staging, where that was like a big aha moment for me, guitarist, you know, I'm learning about guitar pedals and then trying to apply guitar pedals to mixing and recognizing like what I put in what order and how much.

41:41 Craig Bauer much louder or quieter each of those pedals is making my signal it determines how good it sounds at the end and the order of those things really matter and all that kind of stuff that started to kind of click in my head and now i'm thinking of the parallel processing and thinking of that same lesson of the more i subtract and the more places the worse the sound gets

42:00 Craig Bauer It's true and I've explained this a million times and I have a lot of people who argue with me about it and people who are arguing with me. And with the body usually don't have a computer powerful enough to avoid the phase cancellation, to be honest with you. That that's the big negative. And I avoid that by using tools that don't create phase cancellation.

42:18 Craig Bauer Right. Right. Phase But it counts eight. one. Yes. Yeah. So I have a sickness. It's called having the best gear I possibly can all the time, no matter what the cost. It's

42:31 Craig Bauer You're a not alone. sickness. There's a support group. There should be. I think that's what the union could become.

42:43 Craig Bauer Yeah.

42:43 Luke F. Walton So the show is called Love Music More. Segment is called Love Music Why? Simple question. Craig, why do you love music?

42:51 Craig Bauer Is there a simple answer, though? No. No. Here's how I'll describe it. If you're having a really, really crap day, I only know of one thing that can make you feel better when you're alone without fail all of the time, 100% of the time. You can be driving around in a shit ton of traffic, having a miserable day.

43:20 Craig Bauer A great song comes on that you grew up with that reminds you of something that happened when you were 13 years old and nothing else can make you feel that way. Nothing. So there's a very simplistic answer to something that is very complicated. And as a musician, the thing that is complicated music for me is...

43:46 Craig Bauer As someone who's been doing this now starting my 34th year is only the music I grew up with and listened to as a teenager or young adult, that's the only music I can listen to without dissecting it and tearing it apart and figuring out what happened here, what EQ was used here, how much compression here. I can't listen to music now without...

44:10 Craig Bauer literally pulling it apart and figuring but i can go back to 1975 when i was in seventh grade and listen to a Styx song that i grew up on and not hear a single thing that i need to figure out how it was done and i think those those musical experiences happen when you're a kid or a teenager and nothing will ever change that

44:39 Craig Bauer nothing and i will add this last piece of this story in 1975 a Styx record came out which half of your own audience is going to go i never heard of that uh grand illusion was the name of the record it's the first record i bought with my own money as a seventh grader from mowing lawns or whatever it is i did and i wore that record out 1975 In 1995, my studio had been open for two years. Phone rings.

45:13 Craig Bauer Hi, this is Dennis DeYoung from the band Styx. We're working on a new record, and we've heard you've got a great studio. We'd like to book a week of time, and I thought it was someone playing a trick on me. And they came into the studio, and I sat there scared out of my mind and didn't say a word for a week.

45:31 Craig Bauer I've done everything Dennis DeYoung has done ever since that week so you go from this piece of music that you loved as a kid to working with one of your musical icons and that's happened more than a few times in my career and every time that happens it's just mind-boggling just does not doesn't compute how did this happen can't be real And it's amazing to work with people that were your idols growing up.

46:05 Craig Bauer Now all those people aren't like the greatest people in the world. The experience is still great. Some of them aren't. Some of them aren't.

46:15 Craig Bauer meeting your heroes Yeah, you know what they say about that. Michael McDonald was one of those. I don't know how long your show is, but if you want to hear another crazy story, I'll tell you that one.

46:25 Craig Bauer we got some room we got some room Okay. Got a call to mix a Michael McDonald song for a Dave Koss compilation

46:31 Craig Bauer Perfect. album. Awesome. Huge, huge, huge smooth jazz star. Still is. Doing a compilation album about parents and their children specifically.

46:46 Craig Bauer Okay. And I got a call to mix a Michael McDonald song because he was doing a song on this record and I'm out of my mind.

46:54 Craig Bauer like I completely out of my for those who don't know Michael McDonald was in the Doobie Brothers who's one of the biggest bands of the 70s and 80s and what a fool believes as far as I'm concerned one of those songs that when it comes on the radio it

47:10 Craig Bauer Yep. changes your day so this was a big deal it came with a caveat michael has to approve the mix we need the mix done within two days because michael's going out of town and won't be around to approve the mix can you get it done in two days i will do whatever it takes to make sure that this song gets done in two days no problem mix song in a day and a half send it to michael michael calls me and just which alone is an experience and

47:37 Craig Bauer Yeah, sure. he's got two comments not a big deal make the changes send it to him signs off on it

47:45 Craig Bauer next day he goes out of town the funny thing is is that in three days i was going out of town so i had to get it done anyway i was going to hawaii so on that day that i left for hawaii fly from chicago to maui get off the plane go to hotel drop my bags in the room go down to the pool and mike mcdonald is sitting in the hot tub

48:08 Craig Bauer I know.

48:10 Luke F. Walton What?

48:11 Craig Bauer True story. Did you get in? Totally hot. I walked up to her, I introduced myself. The reaction was... A little bit of I'm on vacation. It was still cool.

48:26 Craig Bauer That's cool. I could go on with endless stories like this, but we'll stop with that one.

48:31 Luke F. Walton Well, where can people get a touch? I'm sure a lot of people want to check out that course and dive deeper. Where would you recommend people reach out or don't

48:41 Craig Bauer Well, you can easily touch? find me on Instagram as Craig Bauer underscore mixer. Or you go to my website, craigbauer.com.

48:49 Craig Bauer Thank you, Craig. Really That's appreciate the conversation. it. We're done. Yeah, we're done. It was great. We close on the Michael McDonald note.

48:55 Craig Bauer Yeah, cool A high note of Michael McDonald.