An Interview with Kyle Pulley

0:31 Luke F. Walton What's good, everybody? Welcome back to Love Music More. Really excited for you to hear this conversation with my guest, Kyle Pulley. Kyle's a music producer, audio engineer, and bassist based in Philadelphia. We had a great conversation about being like two hours away from the music hub, me in San Diego, him in Philadelphia with New York, and also just kind of everything that goes into...

0:50 Luke F. Walton Riding the wave of being a musician, really interesting life from a 7,000 square foot warehouse in his youth to building a studio, getting kicked out of the studio, building another studio, developing these great relationships with community around him and business partners,

1:09 Luke F. Walton and then also his strategies for mixing and really great tips for younger bands or bands that are trying to figure out how to get into recording. This is a great episode for you to check out. Before we get into that, I'd like to introduce our title sponsor, DistroKid. DistroKid makes music distribution fun and easy with unlimited uploads and artists get to keep 100% of royalties and earnings.

1:31 Luke F. Walton And I use it because that's true. I get to keep 100%. You can also get in on this deal for 30% off, throwing a lot of percentages out there, but 30% off with our special code at Go to distrokid.com slash VIP slash love music more and get started today. A million plus artists rely upon DistroKid to get their music onto Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, TikTok, Tidal, Instagram, and all of the major streaming services.

1:59 Luke F. Walton One of the reasons why I love it is I'm able to do all of this on an app. I can upload music even on the app if I want to. I can cash out to my bank account all of that 100% royalties that I'm able to maintain.

2:10 Luke F. Walton People to maintain on there so definitely check that out at districid.com slash vip slash love music more and enjoy this episode with kyle what's good everybody welcome back to love music more i am Scoobert Doobert and i am joined with kyle pulley kyle welcome to the show dude

2:38 Kyle Pulley What's up, Scuba? Glad to be here.

2:41 Luke F. Walton i we were just having a great conversation so we got to just jump right back into it

2:44 Kyle Pulley That's

2:45 Luke F. Walton um

2:45 Kyle Pulley fucking sick.

2:45 Luke F. Walton tell me the story about your uh your feature length feature length debut with a song

2:51 Kyle Pulley Yeah.

2:51 Luke F. Walton yeah

2:52 Kyle Pulley So, yeah, I mean, a little backstory of it was I got a song in a movie, which is really sick.

2:58 Kyle Pulley sick I recorded it with my friend Francis who sings in this band Hop Along and we were working on some music together and then Alex G is buddies with Francis and was like hey I'm doing a soundtrack for a movie do you want to you know contribute a song so Francis chatted with the director turns out the director was like a fan of this old song that Francis put out when they were like 18 and so they hit it off and so we got to do this song

3:25 Kyle Pulley and have it in the movie and we finished it like right in between me moving out of my old studio because we got kicked out of it maybe a story for later but the building got sold and so then

3:36 Luke F. Walton i Mm

3:36 Kyle Pulley moved into

3:36 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

3:36 Kyle Pulley this new studio and like the first thing i had to do was fucking make this song with francis and then it always takes longer than you think so i was like coming in mornings and like finishing it while i had this band from chicago and so finally like you probably have had this experience with movies like there's just so many freaking moving parts that your song is like the last thing they're worried about like

4:01 Kyle Pulley Totally. you turn it in and then you're just like is this even happening am i getting punked like i haven't been paid like what the fuck is happening and so every so often something would come through and be like it is real it is happening what's happening no one's playing a joke on you and so like a year or two later it actually uh it was in this movie called i saw the tv glow and it it was in like

4:24 Kyle Pulley most theaters which is fucking sick and so i got to go see it in a movie theater and uh you know in uh center city philadelphia with my buddies with francis and my my wife and some friends the song is the first song in the credit so the the credits done and then the song plays and it was just this like fucking awesome feeling to hear

4:47 Kyle Pulley That song that I had like just drove myself crazy and stressed out just like blasting over the speakers in this movie theater. It was really cool.

4:56 Kyle Pulley and then there was just like the reality check there was literally this dude behind me i saw him walk in with like a huge pounder of beer and uh and he was just like literally snoring through like the end of the movie through my song and i was like okay well like you know it's just background noise to some people bunch of people were talking and just like blah blah what'd you think and like i don't know um uh i think uh i think it was just like one of those goofy things where i was like so excited i like

5:24 Kyle Pulley i like told the person next to me like i i wrote this song and she was just like oh the one with like phoebe bridgers in it or like the one in the movie i was like no not that one you know this one so but it was cool to me and you know you don't make music for i mean you make it for other people but ultimately you have to make it for yourself so i had fun it was nice for me to listen to it i'm sure some other people enjoyed it too so and the movie was cool

5:52 Luke F. Walton I love that. I totally resonate because I've had the same experience only one time. I flew specifically to Japan so I could go see the movie in theaters because

6:01 Kyle Pulley Oh,

6:01 Luke F. Walton it was

6:01 Kyle Pulley that is sick.

6:02 Luke F. Walton sick.

6:03 Kyle Pulley That's so sick. And how long did you spend in Japan?

6:06 Luke F. Walton That time I spent 27 days. I was there for a

6:10 Kyle Pulley Oh,

6:10 Luke F. Walton while.

6:10 Kyle Pulley hell yeah.

6:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah, my wife was like, bro, where are you?

6:14 Kyle Pulley You didn't take your wife with you?

6:15 Luke F. Walton No, I wish. I wish.

6:17 Kyle Pulley Ah, damn. Yeah. I've only done a layover in Japan.

6:21 Luke F. Walton Cool.

6:21 Kyle Pulley Seems really cool.

6:23 Luke F. Walton It

6:23 Kyle Pulley My wife's

6:23 Luke F. Walton is.

6:23 Kyle Pulley family's from Taiwan, so

6:25 Luke F. Walton Oh,

6:25 Kyle Pulley I've spent a little

6:26 Luke F. Walton cool.

6:26 Kyle Pulley bit of time

6:26 Luke F. Walton Taiwan

6:27 Kyle Pulley there.

6:27 Luke F. Walton seems awesome.

6:27 Kyle Pulley Taiwan is like, Taiwan feels like, you know, if, so. uh so philadelphia has this like inferiority complex i don't know if you follow football at all Yes, but like you

6:40 Luke F. Walton yes.

6:40 Kyle Pulley know like the way the eagles feel

6:41 Luke F. Walton Former

6:42 Kyle Pulley and

6:42 Luke F. Walton Chargers fan, San Diego,

6:43 Kyle Pulley okay yeah

6:43 Luke F. Walton yeah,

6:44 Kyle Pulley okay

6:44 Luke F. Walton that's where I'm from.

6:44 Kyle Pulley so like the way eagles fans feels how like it's kind of like permeated through philadelphia like everybody is just you know every there's like this inferiority complex so you know everybody in philadelphia if you ask someone about philadelphia

7:00 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

7:01 Kyle Pulley it's like blah blah philly blah blah blah philly blah blah new york but blah blah philly you

7:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

7:05 Kyle Pulley know it's like you're always comparing you know so i feel like taiwan is the if tokyo is new york taipei is philly it like

7:14 Luke F. Walton I like

7:14 Kyle Pulley it's like

7:14 Luke F. Walton that.

7:15 Kyle Pulley it's like same it's like a similar vibe but like taipei is just like a little more fucked up it's like some reason like it's a little dirtier i don't know why i think it's because they just get a lot of rain and weather and stuff like

7:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah,

7:27 Kyle Pulley they

7:27 Luke F. Walton yeah.

7:28 Kyle Pulley make their buildings out of like these tile blocks and then they just like they're just covered in like their buildings kind of look like the interior of like a frat house shower like there's just like all this like mildew kind of like on the buildings you're like i see you sweeping the street like just power wash this building bro but taiwan sick i don't know i'm gonna go on a lot of tangents so just like reel me in

7:51 Luke F. Walton It's perfect. No, it actually bridges to something I really wanted to talk about. about because

7:55 Kyle Pulley Oh,

7:55 Luke F. Walton uh

7:55 Kyle Pulley okay.

7:55 Luke F. Walton philly obviously people i've had so many people probably 90 la they gotta go to la if i didn't go to la i wouldn't have a career what's it like being in philly having a successful career how did you build it how did you do it what other what advice would you have to people that maybe aren't in or la or new york to be able to like Build a network and get work.

8:19 Kyle Pulley When I was growing up in South Jersey, I loved like punk and hardcore and to me like Philly was like the center of the universe when I was 16, 17 because like, you know, the bands that I love to like paint it black or Kid Dynamite or just like a bunch or horror show or like all these punk bands that like I fucking loved.

8:43 Kyle Pulley they were in philly that's where cool shows are happening so it just like drew me there and i just always felt like philly's a place where like you know enough people have cared to stick around to like build something you

8:54 Luke F. Walton Okay,

8:55 Kyle Pulley know and

8:55 Luke F. Walton yeah.

8:55 Kyle Pulley so my gripe now that i'm older now that i've been here for you know however many years it would be nice if there was like a little more industry like it would be nice if i like went to a coffee shop and like what do you know i just like ran into some guy who does anr or some guy manages this band or that under that band that

9:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah.

9:11 Kyle Pulley being said there is like a tremendous amount of community in philly you would go to just like some random show at like the 200 cap club and there's a bunch of people there and some of those people are just like playing in little bands and some or you know you know bands that are coming up some people are just there and then you'll also have like people who are playing in like like the heavy hitting bands of like a national scene but like the philly

9:38 Kyle Pulley the philly scene for sure and you know it's just like not this weird like competitive thing it's like yeah like the singer of the men singers wants to come out and see his friend's band play for like 50 people and there's not like this weird competitive thing that is what i have always appreciated about philly in fact i just had an artist come from la to work here in the beginning of february and and you know it's like

10:06 Kyle Pulley it's this artist jay som that's you know melina and then her friend mal who plays guitar in the band they both came from la and you know i'm like introducing them to like the assistants and like interns and different people and they're like like wow everyone here is so nice i'm like what do you i'm like what do you mean of course they're nice like we're all here in a studio if they were a dick they wouldn't be here but they're like you'd be surprised

10:32 Kyle Pulley But so, yeah, I mean, I think in regards to finding work and stuff like that, you know, I think K-pop was a very like important thing for me coming up. I read a lot of that and Larry Crane would always talk about like, you know, it's really important to.

10:50 Kyle Pulley to build a community around what you're doing in the arts and and you know and now that people you know now with algorithmic discovery and blah blah and all this stuff i mean you know artists are always talking about like trying to build their you know a community of fans as well so so

11:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah

11:08 Kyle Pulley i started you know i went to drexel uh just because i didn't know what the fuck else to do they had like a music program i did that i ran into a few friends of mine that's where i met my business partner joe who played in this band algernon cadwallader and at first in class i was just like who the fuck is this guy he's got some dumb ass lip ring and at the time i had this like i had long hair but then i had cut it into a mullet

11:37 Luke F. Walton Cool.

11:37 Kyle Pulley i thought

11:37 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

11:37 Kyle Pulley it looked i thought it looked kind of cool i thought it kind of looked like redhead sting but like nobody you know i don't know but i don't know if that's cool either but we we hit it off because we were at the same like basement show and it was like oh you're actually cool and you actually care about music we're really inspired by wilco they Cool. have the loft

11:54 Luke F. Walton Yes.

11:54 Kyle Pulley in

11:54 Luke F. Walton Yes.

11:54 Kyle Pulley chicago so we're like that's what we want we want a huge ass fucking warehouse just like loaded with gear and so from like age maybe 23 or 24 to like age

12:05 Kyle Pulley age 30 i lived in this 7 000 square foot warehouse with like Cool. 10 other people we had this other we had one room that was like a jam room that we're like collecting gear and you know we always left let bands like stay over like i remember one time there was this like 15 piece like ska band or something that played somewhere and a friend of ours was like booking the venue and they're like hey this band really needs a place to stay where can a fifth

12:31 Kyle Pulley A 15-piece ska band. stay at

12:34 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

12:34 Kyle Pulley short notice and so it's just like yeah sure like come yeah

12:38 Luke F. Walton over.

12:38 Kyle Pulley i mean we would literally like there would be like a show around the corner sometimes and we would literally just be like everybody who's here can come over our house because it was just like that big you know sometimes you would like go to sleep and you wake up at 2 a.m to use the bathroom and you'd have to like get in line for the bathroom so um so yeah so it was a wacky place and it you know uh attracted a lot of weirdos

13:03 Kyle Pulley there's a lot of bands and so I met just like a ton of like-minded people and just Joe had been doing it for a little while longer than me when we both moved in but you know he's uh Joe's like a couple years older than me and just has had a little more experience so he kind of like spearheaded the acquisition of gear he was working at a pharmaceutical company doing AV for uh and making like a decent salary but also living like like a total bum like

13:27 Luke F. Walton Cool.

13:27 Kyle Pulley me like paying like $300 in rent so he was just like constantly on craigslist just like picking up used gear

13:34 Luke F. Walton So

13:34 Kyle Pulley so yeah

13:34 Luke F. Walton smart. So smart.

13:35 Kyle Pulley so

13:36 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

13:36 Kyle Pulley i mean we just collected a bunch of gear and recorded our friends and recorded our own bands and just like developed and just yeah built it up from there is the is the short answer and so i think it's interesting because i i feel like when i was like you know i'm i just turned 40 so i'm a little older now but when i was like 17 18 i feel like there was like like fucking punk shows that

14:00 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

14:00 Kyle Pulley happened in random ass towns in new jersey and there was like there was music that there was like a local scene like people would scrape out like a musical community kind of like anywhere and i wonder it'd be interesting someone should do some research about it or something but i wonder with the advent of social media there's just this increased FOMO where you have where you feel like you you have to go to these places in order to do stuff like

14:25 Kyle Pulley You know, all these people, tons of people move from other places to Philly because of the music scene. And it's like, well, yeah, but I mean, you know, Richmond, Baltimore, you name it, like it could have that too if more people just.

14:38 Kyle Pulley stayed and i mean they do have music scenes too but i mean i'm just saying a lot of people move from this city

14:42 Luke F. Walton i i

14:43 Kyle Pulley so

14:43 Luke F. Walton know what you mean too of just also like the ways that scenes evolve and kind of like the the vibe of live music in the united states right now is super different than a lot of other countries too i think just in part because social media part because like it's hard to live like rent is super expensive like all those things and um having creative spaces like a 7 000 foot warehouse where everybody can crash

15:06 Luke F. Walton that unlocks all of this incredible potential because

15:10 Kyle Pulley Yeah.

15:10 Luke F. Walton now you're not like worried about all that overhead and those that do have the day jobs are subsidizing the gear addiction yeah

15:16 Kyle Pulley Yeah, exactly. Just made stuff and kind of just kept doing it. So yes,

15:22 Luke F. Walton Are you still working with Joe as a business partner today?

15:25 Kyle Pulley I

15:25 Luke F. Walton Cool.

15:26 Kyle Pulley am. Yep.

15:26 Luke F. Walton How does that relationship evolve?

15:28 Kyle Pulley I'm assuming that's spanned over a decade now. I mean, we've been friends for... After almost two decades, we've been playing best

15:39 Kyle Pulley Wow. buds for like 18 years and we've done the studio for like 15. And now we have a third partner too. We have someone named Mark Water, who's an excellent producer engineer who is a co-owner of the studio. You know, we're all creative people and we all want to do things the way we want to do them. So I think in doing any sort of artistic collaboration, you need to just understand like.

15:59 Kyle Pulley what the rules are what the boundaries are and so for us it was always like you do the records you want i'll do my records the way i want we both did separate records but like the space itself like the studio and the business and the brand and everything that was like the thing we collaborated on and so it's much easier to be like yeah you do records however the hell you want you work with whoever you want like whatever but like

16:25 Kyle Pulley we're gonna we're gonna come together and like agree on how what is the best thing to do with regards to the studio and i'll give him a lot of credit and me a lot of credit and i mean i'm sure you know from playing in bands like it's best when people know like what their strengths are and

16:41 Kyle Pulley Yes then just like let someone like my strength was always like more of the organizational stuff um

16:49 Kyle Pulley Okay. as you know with regards to like organizing interns or like doing social media or just like some of the business stuff and then joe is just like a total gearhead and you know and like we're all gearheads but like he just loves to like peruse facebook marketplace or craigslist or whatever just for fun he's always like picking up deals so he does a ton of research

17:14 Kyle Pulley i don't care to do research chances are if he says it's good i'm gonna agree i Yeah.

17:19 Kyle Pulley i i kind of will make it work with like whatever's in front of me and i just like i don't know like to me it's like not worth reading all about this fucking guitar this microphone i don't have because i don't have it so i'm just gonna use the thing that's right in front of me so joe's done an excellent job in like curating the gear that we have and uh i i think i've done a good job and just uh

17:40 Kyle Pulley you know, making sure it all works and is organized. So, yeah, Well, I feel like that's probably part of the secret to the longevity and the success when you kind of know what you're doing and know how you relate to each other. I feel like that cleans it up, especially when you maybe get into some sort of stressful situation like when you had the studio sold out from under you and you had to move spaces. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that. That sounds chaotic.

18:05 Kyle Pulley I assume maybe your studio is in your. The same place that you live Yes. or whatever so But imagine your studio is not right.

18:13 Kyle Pulley Yes. So imagine it's a different place and you go there all the time and you just weathered a global pandemic and you're like, damn, glad that's behind us. That was crazy. And it was one of those rare times where like there wasn't anything going on in the studio and both Joe and I were like there at the same time.

18:35 Kyle Pulley Okay. I think I was mixing something and then he was there to pick something up. and so we see these guys uh the studio was in this like big old uh factory the thing about you know the east coast philadelphia in particular everything is old as fuck and so isn't this old like five story brick old factory building you know 120 something years old

18:56 Kyle Pulley so uh it was full of like different artist studios so it was you know you'd see people walking around with like a crazy mustache or splattered in paint or just like you know um there's a fashion designer you know fashion photography so there'd be like very like attractive people with like cool clothes you

19:12 Kyle Pulley Cool. know just walking around so then we see these guys in like tucked in polo shirts and fucking khakis and we're in clipboards and we're just like

19:22 Kyle Pulley we're just like who are you guys like you're clearly not here for and they're like oh we're architects and we're like that's bad and so we called our called our landlord and he was like yeah you know i mean that's a whole other story he was like such a piece of work but yeah so he so he was like well you know i'm trying to sell it but who knows what's gonna happen it was like

19:45 Kyle Pulley you know and then six months later we were out of there so it Yeah. was kind of an insane time because i you know people still need me to make their records i'd be working on music and then i'd have a moment i'd be like what the fuck am i doing what the fuck am i gonna do like you know just like

20:03 Kyle Pulley wow who even fucking cares about this record like i mean i could have a studio and so um i just have these freak out moments but joe had this like every so often joe has these fucking moments of genius and he's like yo uh dr dog who's like a pretty established band from philadelphia they've been around i

20:22 Kyle Pulley Yes. don't know if you're familiar but they've been around for a while and he's like they have a studio that they've had for a while and they just played they're like you like kind of farewell tour like i think they're just not as active as they used to be and i was like damn that is fucking smart and

20:39 Kyle Pulley Yeah. so um we're old friends with uh the drummer eric um didn't know the other guys as well

20:48 Kyle Pulley but funny enough i did do one of my very first records i ever was an intern or like hung out or my very first like actual album credit was like a doctor dog

20:56 Kyle Pulley No way. credit from like 15 years ago which is another story i i interned for this guy bill moriarty for a while i he did eventually fire me but i did have um but i did i did get a credit on their record uh fate so they kind of knew about me and and and hop along had toured with

21:14 Kyle Pulley with with dr dog like a few times so joe was like had spent some time on the road with them so yeah we connected and they were just like yeah this seems like

21:24 Kyle Pulley it makes a lot of sense we have this studio with like no gear because uh a few of the people had moved away and brought a lot brought a lot of their gear with them and we're like yeah we have a student we have all this gear and no studio so it's

21:37 Kyle Pulley Peanut butter been yeah and jelly, it's yep. been great and i mean i've always been joe and i've always been huge fans of dr dog so it's just cool to like get to be in this space and get to hang out with them and you know it's funny like when i was a kid and working on that record

21:51 Kyle Pulley i was like holy shit these guys are like fucking rock stars and now that it's like i don't know 18 years later or whatever i'm like these guys are just older versions of my dumb ass friends you know what i

22:04 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

22:04 Kyle Pulley mean so

22:04 Luke F. Walton yeah, right.

22:05 Kyle Pulley it's like it's it's and in a lot of ways it's like i feel like it's come full circle to the being in the like 7 000 square foot warehouse you know what i mean it's

22:14 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

22:14 Kyle Pulley like no one's living here but like a lot of those you A lot of the rules apply of how you get along in a creative space and, you know, give people latitude and ask for favors and and,

22:25 Kyle Pulley you know, push and pull and just like make sure everybody's getting the most out of the space that they can respecting people's autonomy. And so I feel like that experience of like living there helped me know how to like negotiate like the politics of moving into this place like this creative space that these guys have been in for.

22:44 Kyle Pulley for 10 years or you know 12 years or whatever and have it feel like our space but also like let them still feel like they're very much a part of it and so it's been awesome and it's been great to make uh new friends and i got to work on their latest record which was really sick because of that so those six months it was terrible just having no idea like what was going to happen and then i'll tell you what man

23:10 Kyle Pulley Moving is the worst, but moving a recording studio is way worse. And like... we have a upright piano and that wasn't even the worst thing to move we had this like 36 channel neotech console uh it had originally been like custom ordered by jackson brown so

23:30 Kyle Pulley Wow and somehow just like through the years like came to us but this thing was like so so big it it took like five or six people to like barely move it and i feel like it almost killed us but but we did it and we're here and so now we're and now we're looking you know now i feel like

23:49 Kyle Pulley Mm i'm traumatized -hmm. from that um from you know just Naturally. like fucking nerds coming in tell me telling me to get out ever since then we've been saving money and we've been trying to find a building that we can buy so that no nobody kicks us out and then we can just focus on making records and that's been a whole it's been a whole thing It's stressful,

24:09 Kyle Pulley but I don't know. It's just like, I mean, you know, it's just like anything else. You're just like, how the hell am I going to? get a get a song in japan or

24:17 Kyle Pulley Yeah, how the hell totally am i gonna book a tour how the hell am i gonna you know you just

24:21 Kyle Pulley Brick by brick yeah exactly so yeah we're we're trying to buy we're trying to buy a bunch of bricks yeah

24:27 Kyle Pulley Yeah, yeah exactly try to throw some bricks at windows yeah yeah so we found this incredible studio last summer and it like took over my life for a month just like trying to figure out how to buy it was like a it was literally a million dollars

24:43 Kyle Pulley and just like all these different people just came along because there was already a studio built on the third floor looked fucking amazing and so every so often you know we just like talk to so many people who are like thinking like oh maybe this would be cool to like partner with you guys and buy it and it just kept falling through it just it's still it's still on the market but i i just yeah it haunts me so so

25:06 Kyle Pulley But hopefully we'll find something.

25:07 Luke F. Walton I've got some big news everybody. My vinyl record is out. We didn't make a ton of these so these guys are going to sell out and I'd love for you to get your hands on one of them because they're so dope. They're so dope.

25:19 Luke F. Walton And it comes with a whole bunch of like liner notes and pictures and special stuff. The things that really went into making this record and I want you to get your hands on it. So go to scoobertdoobert.pizza or check out my Instagram for a link or click the link in the...

25:34 Kyle Pulley in the show notes or the bio or wherever you're watching this to pick up your copy you know they're going to sell out we really did not make very many of these and i want you to have it it's it's like a collector's item so thank you thank you for supporting my music and i can't wait for you to hear it actually on physical vinyl enjoy the rest of the episode

25:53 Kyle Pulley So I want to switch gears a little bit and ask you kind of a technical question a little bit. When

25:58 Kyle Pulley Rip you're working on a record, like an album, and you're not mixing the whole thing, you're just doing like a track, how do you approach that? Do you know kind of the context in which you're working or are you just trying to make that track hit as hard as you possibly can?

26:13 Kyle Pulley That's a good question because I actually have been doing a little bit more of that I mean I on some level I think it's important in record record production to like know your role and

26:25 Kyle Pulley Okay. know where you are and so you know if they're hiring me to mix a song it means they want me to do my thing with this song so i'm gonna rip it as best as i can and i have to trust like the artist who is like the de facto executive producer or i have to trust the you know whoever's producing it or whatever to to keep those things in mind and if there's other things i need to listen to like

26:47 Kyle Pulley you know i will i i did a friend's record and he had like a different engineer and producer work on every song

26:53 Kyle Pulley Wow. i've i've no yeah and uh it sounds awesome um and everything sounds a little different but i think that's what he wanted um i'm i'm mixing a record right now and i'm maybe only mixing half of it but yeah i don't know but i but i think the artist has a really clear idea of what she wants so i'm just gonna if she's happy then probably it's fine so

27:16 Kyle Pulley totally i'm always just so curious about that just um because i i've done some stuff but it ends up sounding kind of compilation-y because it's never really known like you're kind of you're doing a single and then it kind of makes a record but it's the same thing it doesn't really get remastered it's kind of not ideal but i'm just curious

27:31 Kyle Pulley yeah your moral it's it's not i mean i i feel like you know if you're making an album or like you know i think it like it makes sense to have different people produce but i think I think it makes sense to have just, I mean, obviously one person master, but hopefully one person mixed all of it too.

27:50 Kyle Pulley i would agree yeah i get it i feel like that's also just kind of part of the way that uh like modern music has evolved where it's been so like single focused higher output all this kind of stuff and then packaging later um but you know like doing your best to like make it all work just always curious about like those kind of workflows and ways that you're

28:09 Kyle Pulley Yeah. you're putting yourself in the right headspace right No, that's a good question. I had to think about it for a second.

28:15 Kyle Pulley on um in terms of uh working with different partners uh i know a lot of people that that mix but a lot of it will be they'll be mixing their friends they'll be mixing their own music what's it like working with label partners with different labels how how does that kind of change the workflow and change like like we were talking about the movie story like does this happen

28:35 Luke F. Walton happening

28:35 Kyle Pulley Yeah.

28:35 Luke F. Walton or do I need to CC this person on the mix? Whose notes do I listen to? Just curious about your experience.

28:41 Kyle Pulley Yeah, you know, the thing is every label and every manager is different. I try to like take the temperature and just like if somebody is if someone is sort of

28:51 Kyle Pulley feels like they want to micromanage a little bit i try to make sure i like communicate as much as i can with them while respecting the artist like i wouldn't want to send a mix that the artist isn't approving but i try to keep them in the loop as as much as possible that that's really the only thing that's i think different you know just because ultimately they're kind of your boss too so you want to communicate as well as they can that's

29:15 Kyle Pulley i think that's really all that it it changes the only the only other thing is like with labels is they always want stems so you just gotta make sure you include that in your bid i've learned that the hard way and they're like great and now the stems and you're like no that's like it's like day or two of work

29:34 Luke F. Walton I

29:34 Kyle Pulley that

29:34 Luke F. Walton know.

29:34 Kyle Pulley i fucking forgot

29:35 Luke F. Walton I

29:35 Kyle Pulley about

29:35 Luke F. Walton know.

29:35 Kyle Pulley so yeah yeah yeah

29:36 Luke F. Walton Yes.

29:37 Kyle Pulley and No, it's so funny, too, because artists' labels, a lot of times, it's just a little throw-in, like, oh, yeah, just hit the stem button.

29:44 Kyle Pulley by the yeah i know yeah someone someone um yeah uh someone asked me for stems the other day and i was like okay so I know it sounds like it's easy, but like, you know, there's tons of like parallel processing and two bus processing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I know you don't know what any of that means, but just trust me when I say it will take me like 10 to 15 hours to make sure the stems are right.

30:10 Kyle Pulley Yeah, they're organized. They're, yeah. Yeah. Yep. Let's talk about parallel processing. For

30:16 Kyle Pulley Oh, people yeah. that don't know what that is, maybe just a quick primer. And then for those that do. what's your approach to

30:22 Kyle Pulley i'll it? i'll rip it so i mean parallel processing is basically i mean most a lot of people probably do it without realizing it like a lot of parallel you know like a really basic example of parallel processing is reverb having a reverb send you know you have your dry signal and then you send it to your aux return and that has reverb on it and so you have

30:43 Kyle Pulley you have like you know you have these two faders and one is wet and one is dry well you can do that with you could do that with reverb you do that with delay obviously you do it with time-based effects but you can also do with compression you can use do it with distortion i don't know if you could do it with eq i guess you kind of can some people split things up yeah

31:00 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah, yeah.

31:01 Kyle Pulley you could do it there's probably a way to do it but um but basically that same idea so you know when it's reverb people just call it reverb but whenever you know if you're sending stuff the stuff to a bus and you're compressing it distorting it etc etc people usually call it parallel processing uh

31:14 Luke F. Walton No, and what does that unlock for you when you're mixing? Like instead of trying to dial like one track in to be the blend, you instead kind of have like a more extreme version and a drier version you're blending them. What does that unlock for you?

31:27 Kyle Pulley you know what i'm my friends have a joke my friends and family all have a joke sorry my internet is not always okay referring to my approach to things as being like style which

31:38 Luke F. Walton Kyle style.

31:38 Kyle Pulley is just like you

31:39 Luke F. Walton Yes.

31:39 Kyle Pulley know turning it up to 10 so yeah so if i'm cooking if it calls for like a few cloves of garlic i'm going i'm doing the whole bulb you know what i mean like if it's it calls for something like i'm doing it like and that's kind of my approach sometimes to music or mixing where i'm just like oh this thing sounds cool you know just like 10 anything i pull up like the first thing i do is just like what does it sound like

32:04 Kyle Pulley all the way up and so parallel processing is like once i learned about that i was like oh that approach is actually like usable instead of me just like making everything just sound like completely untransient list like mushy bricks blocked out whatever i uh my friend ryan schwab who masters a lot of the stuff he's also a software developer he calls it the inner detail which i i think is a really great way to put it but like if you take a vocal or drum

32:33 Kyle Pulley drums and you send it to something else and you just like absolutely just like clip it or um you know crush it or whatever when you blend it back in with that dry signal you're actually what you're effectively doing is you're actually kind of turning up like

32:48 Kyle Pulley the valleys in addition to the peaks you're actually like sort of filling in the valleys you're bringing up the quiet parts uh but you're but since there's still that like dry stuff you're still retaining that that transient response so i mean um i do yeah i do tons of parallel distortion and tons of uh parallel compression i just find that it makes things sound like really full uh present exciting um while also

33:14 Kyle Pulley you know retaining some of that like just natural detail yeah

33:18 Luke F. Walton Totally. I love the way that it turns a mix from a bunch of different distinct parts into a song.

33:25 Kyle Pulley yeah yeah yeah it's all moving stuff together you know but yeah i'll do like i do a parallel just like a parallel compression like on all my electric guitars i do parallel compression on on drums obviously i do a lot of different parallel compressions on drums but anytime you watch those like mix with the masters Masters, those guys just use tons and tons of parallel compression.

33:45 Kyle Pulley Actually, I booked a mixed critique session with, are you familiar with Craig Bauer?

33:50 Luke F. Walton Yes. Yep. Uh

33:51 Kyle Pulley Yeah,

33:51 Luke F. Walton -huh.

33:51 Kyle Pulley yeah, yeah. So I booked a mixed critique session with him on Tuesday.

33:56 Luke F. Walton Cool.

33:56 Kyle Pulley So see if he thinks it... see what he thinks about my all my parallel stuff and he'll be like dude you gotta chill out bro what are you doing so

34:07 Luke F. Walton yes 100

34:07 Kyle Pulley we'll

34:08 Luke F. Walton that's

34:08 Kyle Pulley see how that goes yeah

34:09 Luke F. Walton what they'd say to me too I'm sure right

34:11 Kyle Pulley yeah i know chill out

34:14 Luke F. Walton Since you have a mastering engineer that you typically work with and send mixes to, I'm really curious about that relationship. Do you deliver mixes as is? Do you remove limiters? do you deliver things like with more flexibility on the mastering stage less flexibility on the mastering stage does it go back and forth what's that look like oh

34:33 Kyle Pulley i mostly pull off just the limiter like i just throw a limiter on at the end just like everybody else so i'll pull that off um and send it over to him my my friend ryan uh developed this plug-in called gold clip so

34:46 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah

34:46 Kyle Pulley yeah

34:47 Luke F. Walton it's

34:47 Kyle Pulley so

34:47 Luke F. Walton super

34:48 Kyle Pulley i

34:48 Luke F. Walton famous

34:48 Kyle Pulley so

34:48 Luke F. Walton yeah

34:48 Kyle Pulley i i have uh yeah yeah so i so i have gold clip so he he developed that because that was like part of his mastering chain it was like the one piece of hardware that he couldn't replace with a plug-in he's like i'll fucking make

35:02 Luke F. Walton There

35:02 Kyle Pulley so

35:02 Luke F. Walton you go. Yes.

35:02 Kyle Pulley so i have that always on my bus too and then like depending on the genre like he always uses it for mastering so sometimes if stuff is supposed to be a little gentler i'll take the gold clip off too because i feel like sometimes when it double dips on the gold clip things just get like

35:20 Luke F. Walton Yeah

35:20 Kyle Pulley really like maybe just like too modern sounding or too like aggressive but for the most part a lot of the stuff i mix is like loud rock or pop stuff so that's not often i know a lot of people master themselves but i just always felt like it's like having an editor or having a spell check or something just someone who had a really great listening room really great ears and could just like you know

35:43 Kyle Pulley Help me look help me sound a little better than maybe I actually am you know

35:46 Luke F. Walton What's good, guys? Scoobert Doobert here for the Love Music More podcast, and I want to let you in on a little secret. One of my favorite new things, Minuendo lossless earplugs. So these are really, really, really cool. I've got two of them here. It comes in this awesome sweet box, but it comes with a bunch of little goodies like carrying case, tether, cleaning tools, but the real tech.

36:10 Luke F. Walton Is in these little tiny lossless earplugs. My favorite thing about it is one you can swap out any of the included tips So depending on the size of your ear canal,

36:19 Luke F. Walton we're all built different you can get a nice comfortable fit but there's also this little lever on these adjustable versions that can go from 7 to 25 decibels of cutting so depending on if you're listening to New metal or jazz you can just hit the little lever and adjust in real time And I think that's really really cool

36:36 Luke F. Walton You know, for the longest time I was listening in those awful foam earplugs and it makes the music sound like that. It just cuts off all of those high frequencies.

36:45 Luke F. Walton And so I was always tempted to sneak them out a little bit. Oh, it's my favorite song. No earplugs. And you get hearing damage. You have tinnitus after the show and then you come back, you want to work in the studio. And guess what? Your ears aren't right. And that's why I love Minuendo because you can just pop these in and have full, full, full fidelity.

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37:20 Kyle Pulley Totally. And, you know, I think if you find some specialization within what you do, I mean, I think from a business sense, it makes sense to have other people do things because I send Ryan mastering clients all the time. And because of that, he sends me mixing and production clients because he doesn't want to do that and I don't want to master.

37:40 Kyle Pulley So, you know, people always talk about finding your niche from a genre standpoint, but I think it's also. good to find it from a uh you know a service standpoint or whatever yeah

37:51 Luke F. Walton it's a really good point yeah there's so many people that want to take it all in house and very understandable but if you have somebody that you trust like you're saying that's that final buffer of gut check of like hey man i know you had a cold recently your ears might be a little plugged up the highs are all screwed up like go again you know take some pseudofed and give

38:11 Kyle Pulley yeah yeah

38:12 Luke F. Walton it a shot

38:12 Kyle Pulley exactly yeah

38:13 Luke F. Walton yeah we're all human actually that that's a question i wanted to ask um revisiting mixes do you have like a process say say for example you're doing mix one you haven't sent it to the artist yet you're just kind of like combing through getting all the gain staging everything all set up do you take a break and like come back to it listen to it and then send it to the artist how do you structure that that transition from like mix in progress to delivered mix any steps steps

38:38 Kyle Pulley oh my god yeah it's kind of funny that it took me this long this long to like come up with this but i had just like everybody else like when you're starting out like you have this like inherent maybe not everybody but have this sort of like insecurity you know and

38:53 Kyle Pulley Yeah, so oh when yeah i would i would always just when i when i started mixing i would always think like man those guys in the 70s they were just like on a console they would work all day and like that was it you know and like i really in the beginning i was you know a dr dog fan and i was like oh my god i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this

39:08 Kyle Pulley like an aspiring like analog nerd i can never go full analog because it just it never sounded good enough but

39:08 Kyle Pulley i'm gonna

39:14 Luke F. Walton You never go full analog.

39:15 Kyle Pulley um but yeah i'd be like ah you know they didn't have that they just like fucking sent it so that's what i'll do and then stupid and yeah after a while and and i used to have clients would always want to attend mixing so you know they would be there and i would be like you know checking like the gate or like leveling the compressor like like

39:35 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

39:35 Kyle Pulley automating vocals and they're talking about like baseball or like i don't know or like dinosaur junior's first record or whatever the fuck and then also i would charge hourly so i just felt like i gotta fucking move it i have to respect this band is like just uh pulled their money together like they only have this much of a budget like i gotta mix three songs today and so i would just like blast through mixes

40:01 Kyle Pulley And they always sounded bad and it would always take like a lot of, you know, going back to it to like get it to sound good until finally I was just like.

40:12 Kyle Pulley it coincided with me just going like completely digital too because like for a while i was mixing hybrid because i just felt like the dynamics like a waves of 1176 just like did not slap like i just needed to have i had like a couple compressors i used to mix hybrid with a hd system and i always had my bass going through a bae 1066d just because i felt like that transformer just like imparted something to the bass that like i just

40:41 Kyle Pulley just couldn't replace with the plugins i had and i always had like a couple distressors going for like parallels on drums and again like i just couldn't find a compressor a plugin that was like good enough at doing that until i joe got bought some uad stuff and i feel like the uad stuff they like for whatever reason they finally like cracked the code and they they were able to get the dynamics to actually be like pretty sound pretty good and so once i was able to just go like entirely in the box i was like

41:10 Kyle Pulley i was like okay no more bands attending mixes no more sending bands mixes like at the end of the day when you're like in love with yourself you know and

41:20 Luke F. Walton Your ears are all cooked and

41:22 Kyle Pulley ears are all cooked you're like i'm a fucking genius like then you you know like here you go so yeah i i just i was like you know this is like why am i comparing myself to dudes in the 70s they they probably would have killed to have this technology and so i really just like kind of pick a

41:39 Kyle Pulley pick away at mixes i'll pull it up i'll mix it i'll like walk into the common room i'll talk to the whatever band is tracking in the main room or shoot the shit with whoever's here just you know i try to take breaks and i'll and even if i finish a song like i'll i i will try to wait at least like a day or two before i send it to the artist you always catch stuff i try to listen to stuff at home in the stereo but i'll try to listen on my phone

42:03 Kyle Pulley but mostly it's just like you just need some perspective like

42:08 Luke F. Walton Yes.

42:08 Kyle Pulley what you know and you send that first mix and then you listen to the next day you're like wow the snare is really loud and now and then you've just blown your credibility you know they're like why did you send me this the snare is crazy loud didn't you notice that and you're like oh my god ear fatigue you know so it just i mean it's it sounds so stupid uh but A joke.

42:31 Kyle Pulley I always joke that on our tombstones, it'll say he learned the hard way because that's pretty much like seemingly the only way I learn is doing it wrong the first time.

42:42 Luke F. Walton Sorry to interrupt this very important broadcast, but it's time for one more advertisement for myself for this podcast. 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.

42:56 Luke F. Walton this you go onto 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 if you could do that for me that's the best way for the algorithms 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 it would really help us out and it helps us you know get the get the word out and spread the love of music so thank you if you're listening on youtube you know what to do

43:22 Luke F. Walton Like, subscribe, all that good stuff. Thank you so much, and here's the rest of the episode.

43:27 Kyle Pulley so yeah last five or six last like seven eight years that's kind of been the way i've been doing it it's it's gone a lot better and then you spend some time you really listen to it listen to a bunch of places you take some space away from it you come back to it a day or two later and now i send mixes to people and i get like you know just these amazing compliments like people like being brought to tears that just like makes you feel so great so

43:50 Kyle Pulley So, yeah.

43:50 Luke F. Walton I agree. No, it's so much better when you bake it a little bit more, even though it puts yourself out there a little bit. Like if you send it halfway, then the artist can be like, oh, no, no, we're going to steer it over this other direction. But when you fully bake it, you're like, hey, this is where I think this song should go. This is what's moving me.

44:06 Luke F. Walton And then the other thing that always gets me is mixing is such a process of zooming in, zooming out, zooming in, zooming out. I try not to solo things too often, but just that process of like. like fine detail broad perspective that

44:19 Kyle Pulley Yeah.

44:19 Luke F. Walton like it that boggles my brain i only have so much in the tank to do that kind of work i do a whole bunch of other work like tracking or whatever like go late into the night linear problem solving whatever but the in out in out my my uh i only have so so much that i can i can pull off in a day yeah

44:37 Kyle Pulley Yeah. I have this like sort of duality where I can sit there and do that like detailed work for a while and it doesn't bother me. for me

44:44 Luke F. Walton Yep.

44:44 Kyle Pulley but if i'm like vibing i don't want to go through and like check all the triggers of

44:48 Luke F. Walton I know.

44:49 Kyle Pulley the sampler

44:49 Luke F. Walton Yes.

44:49 Kyle Pulley i don't want to go through and check all the gates i don't want to like organize the folders i don't want to so what i learned to do is just like have a separate time where i'm like i'm going to put it in the template i'm going to go through and auto align everything i'm going to organize it in the folder i'm going to like have a very organized template and just have it so that once i'm

45:10 Kyle Pulley And just like get it set up so that once I'm ready to go like

45:14 Luke F. Walton Yes.

45:14 Kyle Pulley i'm moving a little bit because i i realized that too where i would work so quickly and turn everything up to 10 because i was just like so impatient to like hear the song all together but

45:24 Luke F. Walton Right,

45:24 Kyle Pulley um

45:24 Luke F. Walton right.

45:24 Kyle Pulley yeah so kind of separating those like

45:27 Luke F. Walton Smart.

45:28 Kyle Pulley um that process like i i have like an older laptop uh that can do like some of that stuff and so i'll do it like when i'm on the plane or just like you

45:37 Luke F. Walton Yes.

45:38 Kyle Pulley know at home like then my next purchase is to get get a more tricked out laptop that i can

45:42 Kyle Pulley Cool.

45:51 Luke F. Walton yeah that

45:51 Kyle Pulley the dream yeah

45:52 Luke F. Walton is the dream and i totally agree yeah creating that little bit of assembly line work work in your head can free up all that room um

45:59 Kyle Pulley Yeah.

46:00 Luke F. Walton it's hard though like when you it you know working with bands all different kind of tiers and uh some people have got really good producers some people just went to like the local studio and they didn't

46:11 Luke F. Walton time correct anything and they wanted to sound like a modern pop song it's like well

46:15 Kyle Pulley Yeah.

46:15 Luke F. Walton the drummer's all over the place it's like here's hours of you going all right let's find everything yeah

46:20 Kyle Pulley I actually did a record where I had the opposite,

46:23 Luke F. Walton cool

46:23 Kyle Pulley where somebody where someone this this band had recorded. uh with a producer somewhere in the midwest they're like a chicago ish area band like you know pop punk emo sort of thing and they're just like there's just something that doesn't feel right

46:39 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

46:39 Kyle Pulley about

46:39 Luke F. Walton yeah,

46:40 Kyle Pulley this

46:40 Luke F. Walton yeah.

46:40 Kyle Pulley mix like it just feels we don't have the words for it but it's just like it just like our drummer keeps complaining about it it just i don't know what he does to the drums after we record it but it just doesn't like sound like us and i was like i have some ideas and so

46:56 Kyle Pulley so they i ended up getting the sessions and the dude had just like taken every single drum hit just put it right on the grid and then just got like uh like what was the drummer from foo fighters taylor steve taylor hawkins right just like loaded up some taylor hawkins like sample packs or something and you're just like and it was just like symbols and just like smashed like samples and i was like yeah no wonder you guys aren't happy this

47:24 Kyle Pulley this doesn't this literally isn't you

47:26 Luke F. Walton Is

47:26 Kyle Pulley and so

47:27 Luke F. Walton it you?

47:27 Kyle Pulley so

47:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

47:27 Kyle Pulley i went through and just like the drums did need some editing but i feel like the whole point of editing Or I worked, I

47:37 Kyle Pulley Yeah. studied under a producer, interned apprentice with a producer, and he said the whole point of editing drums or tuning vocals is to make it sound like you didn't do that.

47:47 Kyle Pulley Yeah. And I was just like, oh yeah, of course, like any idiot can slam it to the grid.

47:52 Kyle Pulley Yeah. Any idiot can just go and put it like right on the piano roll, really listening to it and being like, okay, how can I make this sound like intentional but

47:59 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

47:59 Kyle Pulley human, you

48:00 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

48:00 Kyle Pulley know?

48:00 Luke F. Walton That's why this band, they didn't understand how long I spent on it. they thought i just like put it in the computer and clicked quantize it's like no this

48:09 Kyle Pulley yeah yeah

48:10 Luke F. Walton is

48:10 Kyle Pulley yeah

48:10 Luke F. Walton it's

48:10 Kyle Pulley oh

48:11 Luke F. Walton like this is a five and a half minute long song and i

48:13 Kyle Pulley god

48:13 Luke F. Walton everything

48:14 Kyle Pulley yeah

48:14 Luke F. Walton was just you know especially because the entire band recorded live to that drum that drum part i was cool with just like leaving it i was like this is cool and they're like no no we really want it to like sound modern and locked and like who boy this

48:29 Kyle Pulley we're like you guys didn't yeah you guys guys did the opposite

48:32 Luke F. Walton they

48:32 Kyle Pulley they

48:32 Luke F. Walton get they did that they didn't know they're they're

48:34 Kyle Pulley didn't

48:34 Luke F. Walton they're

48:34 Kyle Pulley know yeah

48:35 Luke F. Walton they're

48:35 Kyle Pulley of

48:35 Luke F. Walton new course they're

48:35 Kyle Pulley yes

48:36 Luke F. Walton young that's what i'm here for to like help them out and then next time they got some advice so next time right chart the

48:43 Kyle Pulley and

48:43 Luke F. Walton course yeah

48:43 Kyle Pulley that

48:43 Luke F. Walton yo

48:43 Kyle Pulley that learn yeah and the the learning curve in the studio like you

48:47 Luke F. Walton dude

48:47 Kyle Pulley you forget you forget about that you know i just remember being in high school and my punk band talking to the you know recording in the local studio and being like like can we i heard the misfits recorded live is that a thing we could Yeah.

49:01 Kyle Pulley do and the guys like yeah totally and i was like cool i guess that's what we'll do if the misfits did it because those records sound great because those aren't sight fucking uh exemplary performances so you know that what my frame of reference was it was like those records are so sloppy but they you know they sound great yeah

49:23 Luke F. Walton You have moment in time, man.

49:25 Kyle Pulley yeah

49:25 Luke F. Walton Moment in time.

49:25 Kyle Pulley exactly it's almost uh torturing myself but like i i listen to uh there's this other podcast called like life of the record and so every so often they'll do some records i'm like oh shit like you know i would like to know how that was made Yeah. so one one of the bands uh one of the records was like foolish by super chunk and that was made in like 94 and then the other one was american football which

49:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

49:47 Kyle Pulley was made in like 99 and so you know that's still like digital but most studios did not have digital or if they did have digital it was that tape which is like the worst of both worlds

49:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

49:57 Kyle Pulley and

49:58 Luke F. Walton exactly.

49:58 Kyle Pulley so so So, but,

49:59 Luke F. Walton brutal

49:59 Kyle Pulley you know, you listen to those records and you're like, holy shit, that is just the drummer.

50:04 Luke F. Walton cool yeah right

50:05 Kyle Pulley You know, they just practiced a lot, you

50:09 Luke F. Walton yes

50:10 Kyle Pulley know,

50:10 Luke F. Walton exactly

50:10 Kyle Pulley crazy. But when you and you listen to it, you're like, damn, those like 22 year old kids fucking ripped,

50:17 Luke F. Walton yep

50:18 Kyle Pulley you

50:18 Luke F. Walton yep

50:18 Kyle Pulley know.

50:18 Luke F. Walton well the thing that i this is what i ended up communicating to this band was You know, I spent six hours or something doing this. Could you have spent six hours recording a bunch of takes of the drums? Because I bet you I could comp, because you're a good drummer, if you could play this thing 20 times, I

50:37 Kyle Pulley Yeah.

50:37 Luke F. Walton bet you I could comp something that sounds even better than what I did.

50:40 Kyle Pulley Yeah, exactly.

50:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

50:41 Kyle Pulley Yeah, I mean, you

50:41 Luke F. Walton Party

50:41 Kyle Pulley know, and

50:42 Luke F. Walton process.

50:42 Kyle Pulley I've been I've started actually making like a little TikTok series on our social media just

50:47 Luke F. Walton Cool.

50:48 Kyle Pulley like talking about pre-production because, you know, for for bands that are starting out, there's just so many, you know, there's just I mean, there's just a record is the sum total of like a million little decisions, you know what I mean? And so and not all of them apply and sometimes they do and sometimes they don't and blah, blah, blah. But.

51:05 Kyle Pulley yeah there's i mean that's i mean that's why we do it because it's just like fun to keep figuring it out but uh yeah you kind of forget that like oh yeah we're in we're recording all the time and and you know some people do it like once a year so yeah

51:17 Luke F. Walton some bands it's like yeah this is like my third song i've ever recorded it's like okay great

51:22 Kyle Pulley totally

51:22 Luke F. Walton that

51:22 Kyle Pulley yeah yeah

51:23 Luke F. Walton puts me in a different place like yeah let's

51:25 Kyle Pulley yeah totally

51:25 Luke F. Walton do this together yeah

51:26 Kyle Pulley but i i but i love having i feel like we get a lot of bands it's like a decent amount of like their first record ever kinds of

51:35 Kyle Pulley Good, bands and good. you know i take pride and i don't take it for granted that uh i get to be like i try to treat that with respect like i try to make sure people have like a good first experience because some people have because sometimes i'm their second or third and sometimes people have some bad experiences and i'm like oh that's

51:53 Kyle Pulley Yeah, such right. that's such a bummer one time this band told me about how a producer they worked with like took someone's part and converted it to MIDI and turned it into like MIDI clarinet and he was like check this out and they're like what are

52:08 Kyle Pulley Oh, you my God. what are you like are like I was just like that's insane that's an insane thing to do

52:19 Kyle Pulley i mean i'm sure for there's a world in which like yo that's a cool guitar part i'm gonna turn it to midi clarinet we're gonna like throw it through this like crazy distortion

52:28 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

52:28 Kyle Pulley peddler

52:29 Luke F. Walton there's

52:29 Kyle Pulley whatever like i could totally see a world in which like that

52:32 Luke F. Walton got to

52:32 Kyle Pulley is

52:32 Luke F. Walton be a few more.

52:32 Kyle Pulley like yeah yeah i could totally see a world in which like that is fucking sick but yeah not not in this instance so

52:41 Luke F. Walton let alone MIDI clarinet that is it that

52:43 Kyle Pulley oh

52:43 Luke F. Walton is a particular

52:44 Kyle Pulley yeah oh

52:44 Luke F. Walton uh cringe level

52:47 Kyle Pulley god yeah

52:47 Luke F. Walton I but I can I can picture it now I can see I can I can visualize a signal effects chain at which at the end the MIDI clarinet is at least funny by

52:58 Kyle Pulley right yeah well you know sometimes sometimes

53:00 Luke F. Walton being funny

53:00 Kyle Pulley you know sometimes when things sound bad that's what makes them cool

53:05 Luke F. Walton oh totally totally like I like Caro Caro Benito and they're um um like a lot of what they do is this incredible precipice walk of is this a joke or is this one of the coolest things i've ever heard

53:19 Kyle Pulley Right.

53:19 Luke F. Walton and

53:19 Kyle Pulley Yeah,

53:19 Luke F. Walton they

53:20 Kyle Pulley yeah, yeah.

53:20 Luke F. Walton have a very bizarre fan base because of this you know but it's

53:23 Kyle Pulley Right.

53:23 Luke F. Walton a cool

53:23 Kyle Pulley A strange

53:24 Luke F. Walton career

53:24 Kyle Pulley cross-section of us.

53:25 Luke F. Walton totally

53:25 Kyle Pulley Yeah.

53:25 Luke F. Walton so um i don't want to take too much of your time so i'm going to hit you with the question that i always close with and take as much

53:32 Kyle Pulley Okay.

53:33 Luke F. Walton on this one as you want because it's a The simple question, but also a difficult one.

53:37 Kyle Pulley All right. I'll try to make it. I feel like you've probably only asked me like three questions.

53:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

53:42 Kyle Pulley I've had some

53:43 Luke F. Walton exactly.

53:43 Kyle Pulley really long answers. So I,

53:44 Luke F. Walton It's

53:45 Kyle Pulley okay,

53:45 Luke F. Walton good. Makes my job easy.

53:46 Kyle Pulley well, that's good. As long as it's not making it harder.

53:49 Luke F. Walton So this show is called Love Music More. This segment is called Love Music. Why do you love music?

53:58 Kyle Pulley wow damn that should not be this hard to answer um i really think music is like it's kind of like magic you know like it's really crazy that air can vibrate and it makes everybody feel a certain way it's crazy that you can vibrate air and make people feel better music has the ability to heal people heal their trauma uh it can make people feel less alone so it just it it has this like

54:25 Kyle Pulley quality that a lot of other mediums maybe don't have it brings people together and you know I love listening to music and there's certain songs that bring me right back to like a certain place you know if I listen to Rancid I immediately think of like drinking coca-cola and like skateboarding if I listen to like the Dirty Projectors or Grizzly Bear I think about like sleeping on a fucked up mattress like on the floor of the warehouse if I listen to

54:53 Kyle Pulley to Orion Sun, like I immediately think of lockdown and the pandemic and just like, you know, spending Friday nights with my wife listening to R&B.

55:01 Kyle Pulley So I think it's like amazing that it like short circuits this place in your brain. And the other thing I love about music, particularly recording music and working music, you know, every it's like this, it's this common denominator that it just allows people to to talk and converse like I'm 40 years old and there's like really not a lot.

55:21 Kyle Pulley lot i have to say to like a 22 year old that they're interested in hearing probably uh and but because we you know because of music like i'm able to connect with people you know who are different ages than me different backgrounds you know and and that's what's kind of cool about doing stuff with like the guy who's helping us with the loan for the for trying to buy this building is the bass player of this band we've recorded like six times

55:49 Kyle Pulley You know what I mean? Our real estate agent is this dude who I think Joe has recorded two or three times as like an old friend. Music is this beautiful cross-section of life and, you know, and it just like allows me this sort of like connection with all different kinds of people.

56:08 Luke F. Walton That's beautiful music

56:09 Kyle Pulley So music rocks.

56:11 Luke F. Walton does

56:12 Kyle Pulley music rocks and we're talking because of music so that's sick and you and you live in la is that are

56:18 Luke F. Walton I live in San Diego,

56:19 Kyle Pulley you still oh

56:19 Luke F. Walton which is

56:19 Kyle Pulley you're in kind san

56:20 Luke F. Walton of

56:20 Kyle Pulley diego

56:20 Luke F. Walton weird. I moved back. I was in LA and then kind of around the pandemic, moved back to San Diego and love it here. Making it work.

56:28 Kyle Pulley yeah

56:28 Luke F. Walton It probably would be easier if I was in LA, but it's

56:31 Kyle Pulley right

56:31 Luke F. Walton not that far.

56:31 Kyle Pulley i mean it it would be in it like it would be and it wouldn't

56:35 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

56:35 Kyle Pulley be you

56:36 Luke F. Walton exactly.

56:36 Kyle Pulley know what i mean so i mean yeah it's like philly's the same deal it's like philly's two hours from new york there's not a lot of people who like sing the praises of i mean somebody actually i some people really do love la and some people really do love new york but sometimes i feel like it's a little bit of like a like a badge of honor like You know like I I did it, you

56:58 Luke F. Walton Yeah. And like,

57:00 Kyle Pulley know

57:00 Luke F. Walton to be fair, they did like entertainment capitals. That's super impressive. But yet there's something there's something to the two hour away city, especially for things like deep work or finding something that's more like personal on your own. Like I've always thought that if I lived in New York City, I'd be a completely different person just because of the energy and the temptation all around me to always be out.

57:23 Luke F. Walton always be doing where I most of my best stuff is in this alone you

57:29 Kyle Pulley Yeah.

57:30 Luke F. Walton know

57:30 Kyle Pulley Yeah. I mean, New York in particular, like I had this, I had this like lukewarm take.

57:38 Kyle Pulley uh recently because my wife my wife does podcasting and so she got asked to speak somewhere and they put her up in a nice hotel and so i got to go and also be in this like nice hotel tribeca and

57:51 Luke F. Walton Rebecca.

57:52 Kyle Pulley i was just like yo new york is awesome except

57:55 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

57:56 Kyle Pulley that you need to be like a millionaire in order to like live like even with the most most like basic human decent like comfort you know like obviously it's awesome but it's just like yeah you have to live in a fucking i mean and people i i couldn't imagine like having to like have my studio in like a new york bedroom that'd be fucking but

58:19 Luke F. Walton yeah people totally do they do it really well and i think it's totally it's personality dependent but i i just know the person that i would be Would not be nearly as productive. I'd be more fun. I

58:30 Kyle Pulley yeah

58:30 Luke F. Walton might be more

58:31 Kyle Pulley i

58:31 Luke F. Walton interesting

58:31 Kyle Pulley think my one weakness is that i i really am bad at doing stuff i i don't want to do like i'm bad at like sucking it up and i just in some ways i like would have rather recorded like the fucking punk band than recorded like try to record some i don't know anything else i think now that i'm like older and more mature i'm just like

58:53 Kyle Pulley You know, there's somebody I went to school with who's like Taylor Swift's like engineer or whatever. And I'm just like, damn, that is actually kind of cool.

59:02 Kyle Pulley also i don't know that if i would have been able to like do this stuff that would have like gotten me to that point like if i got to skip the steps like maybe that would be cool but like i just you

59:13 Luke F. Walton Oh, it's a great point.

59:15 Kyle Pulley know

59:15 Luke F. Walton It's a great point about paths and cities and that all ties in.

59:18 Kyle Pulley yeah yeah yeah oh

59:20 Luke F. Walton Well, Kyle, thank you so much for the great wisdom. I love chatting, love hearing more about your story and it was

59:27 Kyle Pulley yeah

59:27 Luke F. Walton an absolute

59:27 Kyle Pulley dude it

59:27 Luke F. Walton pleasure.

59:28 Kyle Pulley was great to meet you thanks for thanks for hitting me up and uh I'll let you know next time I'm on the West Coast,

59:34 Kyle Pulley Yes, you know, please. maybe we can maybe we can rip a burrito or a Hell tuna yeah.

59:37 Kyle Pulley or whatever. You know, I, Do you you know. ever do you ever tour?

59:40 Luke F. Walton i do sometimes yeah they're usually more like little mini tours like little kind of spot date things i did a little mini japan tour in october uh

59:48 Kyle Pulley hell yeah

59:49 Luke F. Walton that

59:49 Kyle Pulley definitely

59:49 Luke F. Walton was sick that's a total dream come true but yeah i

59:52 Kyle Pulley yeah

59:52 Luke F. Walton can relate

59:53 Kyle Pulley that is

59:53 Luke F. Walton it's

59:53 Kyle Pulley like that is the dream it's

59:56 Luke F. Walton so it was so sick i can't

59:57 Kyle Pulley like

59:57 Luke F. Walton i really want to do it again it was yeah yeah

59:59 Kyle Pulley that's amazing um do you ever make it out to the west or um east coast

60:03 Luke F. Walton i've played new york a few times but as this project that's the only east coast states i've done i've done but i i want to i like you know i'll definitely let you know if like plans start bubbling or something like that i'd Yeah, love

60:15 Kyle Pulley yeah,

60:15 Luke F. Walton to

60:15 Kyle Pulley hit talk me up.

60:15 Luke F. Walton and uh where can people find more about you listen to some of the art that you've worked on

60:21 Kyle Pulley You know, I'm on Instagram and TikTok, Headroom Philadelphia. You can find my website, kylepulley.net, headroom.studio. Um, yeah, and, or, you know, just send me a message and I'll send you something.

60:39 Luke F. Walton Sweet. Well, Kyle, I hope you have a great one and I can't wait for everybody to listen to this great conversation.

60:45 Kyle Pulley Oh, hell yeah. Same to you, Scooby.

60:47 Luke F. Walton All right. Until next time.

60:48 Kyle Pulley Bye, everybody.