An Interview with Noam Wallenberg

2:21 Luke F. Walton What's good everybody? Scoobert Doobert here. Welcome back to Love Music More and I am joined with Noam Wallenberg.

2:27 Luke F. Walton Welcome to the show.

2:28 Noam Wallenberg Thanks for having me, man.

2:29 Luke F. Walton So I'm so excited to talk to you about all things music production, your career arc, your journey. Before I do, I'd love to talk a little bit about Vulfpeck because that's one of my favorite artists, definitely an inspiration of mine, and some of the unconventional ways that you went about mixing and mastering that record.

2:47 Luke F. Walton Not the traditional just like check the box, do the thing. It's like really thinking like a musician at every step of the process. Can you just tell me a little bit about that?

2:55 Noam Wallenberg What about that approach? Yeah, the Vulfpeck record that I did was a unique one in that it was a live record, meaning it was recorded live, but the intention to not bill it as a live record kind of at all, you know, typical live records are music that was recorded as studio recordings that then this is like another version of those songs. And this was very decidedly.

3:22 Noam Wallenberg not that these are original songs this is the only recordings that are ever going to exist of them they're not there isn't going to be studio versions these are the recordings um and the the sound was we were trying to make it so that you would kind of forget whether it was a studio record or whether it was a live live recording it was like meant to be ambiguous uh meant to kind of get lost in those records and also kind of feel like you know some of the reference points that we were using was like a bunch of these old

3:51 Noam Wallenberg old 70s funk records that were like highly highly polished that is kind of the antithesis of live recordings like it's like super controlled clean style of recording and mixing you know the usual

4:06 Noam Wallenberg game plan when you're recording you know when you're mixing a live record kind of went out the window and also the the usual thing of mixing a studio record kind of went out the window because

4:15 Noam Wallenberg Cool. all the you know a lot of the tools that i use when i'm mixing a studio record kind of couldn't be used in this scenario sure

4:21 Noam Wallenberg Could you explain to a listener that maybe doesn't, like they think like a live record like Frampton Comes Alive or something like that, you know, like a crowd with an audience. What are some of the limitations? Are you talking things like... bleed for listeners where a microphone is picking up the wrong audio source. What were some of the challenges? What held you back from doing that?

4:41 Noam Wallenberg yeah so it uh bleed bleed is a big part of it there's a lot of issues with bleed um just because you have a big blaring bass amp on stage and so every acoustic instrument is going to have a ton of bass every vocal mic is going to have a ton of drums every You know, everyone is going to bleed together between the instruments.

5:01 Noam Wallenberg There is also massive speaker arrays that are playing this music out to the room and there is an enormous kind of hall that they're recording in that has all sorts of reverberance and like a huge amount of length that it adds, particularly if you're making funk music is

5:19 Noam Wallenberg Yeah. like pretty outside of the world of like what that music usually sounds. Sounds like all these extra sounds that you're kind of fighting with and then you're also dealing with all of the

5:32 Noam Wallenberg imperfections that come with a you know this concert was very very well recorded but you know the the drum tuning is not going to be quite as meticulous and precise as if you're the tuning is going to kind of go out throughout the throughout

5:46 Noam Wallenberg Okay, the yes. show a Right, bit like it's right, you're not right. tuning in between songs of course like the placement on piano mics for instance i believe that i wasn't there i wasn't there for the recording of this but i think they stuck the mics inside of the upright and closed it

6:00 Noam Wallenberg Cool. uh is is and i think they had some extra mics on it but like largely it's these ways of recording that is like not typical of of what you would do with a studio record the other thing is like the way that people are performing is tailored to the it's not tailored to the record it's tailored to the live audience even if they intend for it to be tailored to the record which which they did

6:24 Noam Wallenberg it's just like they're putting on a show they're trying to get the energy right in the room and

6:28 Luke F. Walton Yes.

6:29 Noam Wallenberg so you know things like vocalists are running around and they're on handheld mics so it's like the distance is constantly changing dramatically as far as where the where the vocal mics are the overall volume of like the way that they play is really really different that that band records really really quiet usually

6:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right,

6:49 Noam Wallenberg and

6:50 Luke F. Walton right.

6:50 Noam Wallenberg And it just doesn't like playing stuff that quiet doesn't really work in No, totally

6:54 Noam Wallenberg a live setting. So it's it's just a whole it's a very different beast. A lot of things like compression were kind of out the window in some ways for me. Like when I was I'm trying to get rid of drum bleed and vocal mics if I'm trying to get rid of that.

7:10 Noam Wallenberg How are you doing that with like gating or just careful EQ? The trouble the trouble is that gating doesn't really work. work with that stuff because it's the bleed is so dramatic that it the idea of like getting rid of it completely is not a possibility because you'll notice you'll feel the mic disappear right there's certain things that i was able to do that with like sometimes i could do that with the not really gating but like i could chop out sections

7:37 Noam Wallenberg Sure. of like if the piano is not playing i could chop Like out that Tom mic sometimes

7:40 Noam Wallenberg Rumble or like that kind of tom stuff. rumble stuff like that i could kind of deal with with but like by and large i had to kind of leave all the mics live because like it just would have felt very very different you would

7:50 Noam Wallenberg Yeah. feel all of a sudden the atmosphere change uh if one of these mics was going in and out all the time i had to leave it in but like really all you can do is the vocalist is moving the mic around i can't compress that mic really because if i compress it not only does it it levels out the vocals but it means every time the vocalist

8:10 Noam Wallenberg vocalist isn't singing all of a sudden if however much compression i do that is how much louder the drums are in every vocal mic you know um

8:20 Noam Wallenberg Makes so sense. Yes. uh so the answer was just like tons and tons of this like really meticulous volume writing it's mostly there's very little compression on the record it's mostly just volume writing and things that nature there's a lot of like musical like choices that were technical choices that that i had to make that i then justify musically in some ways so

8:42 Noam Wallenberg Okay, okay, yeah, like you I get it, know I like get it. the the there's a shitload of bass bleed in the piano mics there was nothing i could do about that um and so the only thing that i could do was like

8:53 Noam Wallenberg filter the piano mics pretty dramatically and like make it kind of a thinner piano sound which you know like that's a that's a choice that I made that I'm like okay the piano is going to take up these frequencies piano is going to take up this sonic space and I have to make all the other instruments make that choice make sense music from a musical perspective you know like it's I didn't have a choice of whether or not that's going to happen that has to happen because otherwise the bass is going to sound insane on this record

9:18 Noam Wallenberg card but but if i swear the piano is that going to be thin yeah that's where a lot of the coolest musical decisions of like history come from is either like limited

9:25 Noam Wallenberg 100 yes resources or like crap we deleted that microphone we didn't record that thing on that take we gotta roll with it like i think i saw a video uh of you doing mismatched overheads on a drum kit like

9:36 Noam Wallenberg yeah yeah yeah just recently that's really cool i haven't seen that before but i was like that feels like one of those little light bulb moments is like oh yeah you can color outside of that box A box.

9:45 Noam Wallenberg that's that shit that i particularly with drums like when i'm producing records in particular like i i really love just like making choices that are for the sake of being different

9:56 Noam Wallenberg hmm yeah painting myself into a corner and then trusting that I'm gonna figure out a way to fight my way out of it and like what comes from that is a more interesting thing than if I made my life easier yeah

10:07 Noam Wallenberg i like that i like that yeah and it forces it forces character and like you're saying just like that idea with the scooped out piano it's like okay now i need to not make that sound like uh

10:20 Luke F. Walton oh i have to do this or

10:22 Noam Wallenberg Yeah.

10:22 Luke F. Walton this is the way it is i guess you have to make it sound like it's a bold interesting choice in the same way that you're making that bold interesting choice as a producer you're applying some of that producer mentality to the mix side which i think is kind of part of the secret sauce of my favorite mix engineers is they're willing to go there they're not just oh i just polish things they're like and some of my favorite mastering engineers have this kind of mentality too of like

10:47 Noam Wallenberg I see the end product. I see what you're going for. Let's take it there with whatever tools I have.

10:52 Noam Wallenberg You know what's so funny is I relate to that so much mixing wise there's records that I I'm just a mastering engineer. There's records that I'm just a mixing engineer. There's records that I'm producing and playing all the instruments and writing the songs with the artists. I do a lot of different kind of roles in the records that I work on, and I don't look at them differently most of the time.

11:14 Noam Wallenberg If I'm producing a record and I'm mixing the record... generally by the time i start mixing the record it's almost mixed like

11:22 Noam Wallenberg yeah as i'm yeah producing it it mostly gets mixed as it goes and i'm just never happening where i'm just like completely taking in a different direction when i like it's like it's all kind of an extension of

11:32 Noam Wallenberg a the same question thing a yep question for me though uh gain staging how's gain staging like like i that's something i always struggle with is like how much do i deal with that during the production side or do like i go like you know i get all my call my palate or whatever and then get to the mix and then start gain staging more

11:47 Noam Wallenberg So, like production yeah, I guess it yeah depends how technical you want okay yeah

11:51 Noam Wallenberg to get. yeah I don't know how technical you like to get on this podcast, we can get i think i

11:55 Noam Wallenberg but yeah, think that part of what's missing in the music conversation is that middle space of technical but not so technical that now we're talking electrical engineering wouldn't fan

12:04 Noam Wallenberg be able audio to anyway, yeah so. exactly neither like i just feel like i'm the i'll be the advocate of the uh unknowing masses because you know i don't know that much

12:13 Noam Wallenberg awesome so so uh i i'll tell you this when i'm recording my gain staging is all based on what the gear that i'm working with is doing right because it's you know the gain staging in that colors the sound and sometimes i want to hit preamps quieter and sometimes i want to hit them really hard and that it's all just about the stuff that gets recorded once i'm either in the box or to tape or whatever i get into my final gain staging like pretty pretty

12:38 Noam Wallenberg quickly i have a like a mixing template that i work in that is kind of over time has become my production template and it's it's a constantly changing thing like it's every couple weeks i it's changing in some capacity just as i'm getting you know i'm constantly trying stuff and getting inspired and also getting like in love with certain plugins or processes and also getting like simultaneously disgusted by other things that i've been doing for you you know just like

13:05 Noam Wallenberg like i'm Yep. very manic with what i get inspired I by understand. Yep.

13:09 Luke F. Walton Yep.

13:09 Noam Wallenberg my mix bus is for that project or either either just whatever it happens to be that week or whatever i'm kind of deciding it's going to be for that record i have it in pretty much at the beginning and as soon as we start

13:23 Noam Wallenberg start recording stuff i start funneling everything through that mix bus and bringing things into my template and my mix bus is something that i'm like super intimately familiar with how the gain staging works in it so like i you know the first thing on my mix bus is is often a compressor of some sort and

13:42 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

13:42 Noam Wallenberg you know i cycle through probably four or five different compressors that i like in that in that spot and

13:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

13:49 Noam Wallenberg I have settings on all of them that I'm like when I get my drums and bass cooking they should be barely touching this and

13:57 Luke F. Walton Mmm, yes,

13:58 Noam Wallenberg that's

13:58 Luke F. Walton yes.

13:59 Noam Wallenberg they should be they should just start the needle moving right and generally if I kind of get that working all of my other gain staging just to make sense musically like it's like you know obviously the balance is going to be different on every record and on every thing but it's like generally it's not that different so it's like usually

14:18 Noam Wallenberg if i do that my vocals are gonna you know if my vocals in relation to my drums are gonna be within five decibels of each other right so through all of that all of my gain staging of everything just makes sense and i like my choice is a technical one right at the beginning of just like where is my structure i don't know enough about structures whatever the first thing you put up in a structure right

14:40 Luke F. Walton like the steel beam right in the middle yeah the

14:42 Noam Wallenberg or whatever the fuck uh

14:43 Luke F. Walton backbone

14:43 Noam Wallenberg one one beam and then everything else i'm building around around that

14:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

14:47 Noam Wallenberg beam and and and whatever the height of that beam that's the height of the building and

14:51 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

14:52 Noam Wallenberg everything else is going to kind of make sense around it i'm never really getting to the place where i'm like shit my whole thing is getting way too loud and i need to turn the whole thing down or you know like it's like the the

15:01 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

15:02 Noam Wallenberg troubles that people get into with gain staging where like stuff just gets out of hand and then they don't know how to how to fix it without upending the whole way that they're

15:11 Luke F. Walton Yep.

15:12 Noam Wallenberg thing works you know everyone

15:13 Luke F. Walton I learned that the hard way.

15:15 Noam Wallenberg learns that everyone learns that the hard way

15:22 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.

15:33 Luke F. Walton they're so dope and it comes with a whole bunch of like liner notes and pictures and you know 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 show notes or the bio or wherever you're watching this to pick up your copy you know they're gonna sell out we really did not make very many of these and I want you to have it it's like a collector's item so

16:01 Luke F. Walton 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.

16:08 Noam Wallenberg there's very successful people who never learn learn

16:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

16:10 Noam Wallenberg it yeah, just

16:11 Luke F. Walton that's

16:11 Noam Wallenberg let

16:11 Luke F. Walton true. That's true.

16:12 Noam Wallenberg let me deal with it what

16:13 Luke F. Walton Right,

16:13 Noam Wallenberg you know

16:13 Luke F. Walton right. Yep.

16:14 Noam Wallenberg when i

16:14 Luke F. Walton I've

16:14 Noam Wallenberg get it

16:14 Luke F. Walton been on which the other,

16:14 Noam Wallenberg is which

16:15 Luke F. Walton I've been

16:15 Noam Wallenberg is

16:15 Luke F. Walton on the

16:15 Noam Wallenberg perfectly

16:15 Luke F. Walton receiving end.

16:15 Noam Wallenberg fine as well like my mixing and my producing is like very much one process um when i when i'm doing both it's like it's a and i kind of think of it in terms of like it's all music making obviously you know like music making in in many ways can be problem solving a lot of the time like there's a lot of periods of of the process of making music which is like like this moment doesn't feel right to me

16:39 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

16:39 Noam Wallenberg and trying to figure out what you know this emotional response that i'm having to the things that i'm hearing and and how to make myself feel this other you know i want to feel this and it make it feels so bad when that chorus hits because it doesn't feel this thing and like there are issues lots of issues that you can have within within a song that can be solved through either mixing or production

17:02 Noam Wallenberg and or both right like it's

17:04 Luke F. Walton Right.

17:04 Noam Wallenberg like you know you have a chorus that doesn't hit it's like you could oftentimes you can mix that the elements that you have in a way that are going to make it feel as full as you want it to feel you could also add an instrument to add intensity

17:18 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:19 Noam Wallenberg to that

17:19 Luke F. Walton I

17:19 Noam Wallenberg it's

17:20 Luke F. Walton agree.

17:20 Noam Wallenberg different tools but it's like the same kind of it's from the same tool chest like it's all it's all kind of meant to do the same things and so and the only thing that i don't i don't get into in that process is mastering which

17:32 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

17:32 Noam Wallenberg the process of mastering is something that like when i when i'm mixing a record i fully incorporate it into the mixing i i want my mastering to be as uncreative as

17:46 Luke F. Walton Cool.

17:47 Noam Wallenberg it possibly

17:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:47 Noam Wallenberg can generally

17:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:48 Noam Wallenberg and that's like just the like there's again tons of people have completely different philosophies and there's so many i forget who's someone was just telling me about a record that they did where they they were like kind of they weren't totally convinced on the mixing and then like it went to mastering and it was like holy it came back and it was like incredible it was perfect and i genuinely like it doesn't make any sense to me how someone could do that because i'm like you

18:15 Noam Wallenberg how do you make how

18:17 Luke F. Walton oh

18:17 Noam Wallenberg do you make it perfect once you have all of the control

18:20 Luke F. Walton yeah right i'll

18:22 Noam Wallenberg taken away from you you

18:23 Luke F. Walton i'll know give

18:24 Noam Wallenberg like

18:24 Luke F. Walton you i'll give you at least my my examples i please know i work with the same mastering engineer like 99 of the time i know what he's going to do and i can do it but i know he's going to do it and he has a different listening a better listening environment than i do i leave a little bit more room in all respects like master butt two buss uh

18:43 Luke F. Walton eq i pretty much steer clear like a lot of these little things i just basically just leave that naked even

18:49 Noam Wallenberg Yeah.

18:49 Luke F. Walton my bus compression is like pretty light like

18:52 Noam Wallenberg Yeah.

18:52 Luke F. Walton you're saying um and so i give him headroom i give him mixing room and he he knows what i like i know what he does i

19:00 Noam Wallenberg Yeah.

19:01 Luke F. Walton know what his room sounds like i know what my room sounds like and so it's almost like i could i could back the lights and if when i work with people i don't trust or i don't know i'll go way further i'll

19:10 Noam Wallenberg yeah

19:10 Luke F. Walton box them into the little corner that i want them in you know but with my guy sometimes he surprises me and it's like since i produce since i you know i play all the stuff you know notice like you do like 100 of the things it's like i want to leave at least two percent for somebody else to collaborate on it a little bit

19:28 Noam Wallenberg do you like ever put mastering stuff on your stuff just like wow just to get a sense of what it's going to do then

19:33 Luke F. Walton totally totally they

19:35 Noam Wallenberg you're pretty much doing it like i i think that the truth is that like mastering is is um i don't know man i it it i go i oscillate between feeling like mastering is like i'm trying to figure out a not inflammatory way to say

19:52 Luke F. Walton this do it

19:52 Noam Wallenberg like

19:52 Luke F. Walton this is a podcast you want to be

19:54 Noam Wallenberg i

19:54 Luke F. Walton inflammatory

19:54 Noam Wallenberg like

19:54 Luke F. Walton in a podcast

19:55 Noam Wallenberg a bunch of a bunch of the like wizard stuff about mastering is bullshit like is is bullshit it's meant to make

20:05 Noam Wallenberg people feel like they can't do things themselves and like it's like these special pieces of equipment or these special i think the only thing that's truly special about mastering is the room and the the person's ears it's just it's just their experience and and the room that they're working in you know they're special pieces of gear but like i would i would pretty much bet money that like any mastering engineer that you love

20:32 Noam Wallenberg of if you give them like

20:34 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

20:35 Noam Wallenberg a fucking stock Pro Tools plugins they could probably make something happen that you're gonna love

20:39 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

20:40 Noam Wallenberg it's like you know like it's it's mostly about how people are using that stuff and I feel like the best thing that people can do is stick a limiter on their shit and just you know they don't have to do it the whole time but like listen to something with a limiter slammed to like to the volume that they want it to ultimately be at

21:00 Noam Wallenberg because the truth is like if you just if you stick whatever an l2 you know the basic l2 on your master bus and you crank it it's like it's 90 of the way to whatever your mastering engineer is going to do that that's the truth i'm not from an eq standpoint of course but like from a dynamic control standpoint like it's most of what mastering is in a dynamic control sense is very refined ways of limiting things essentially like you know and that could be through

21:27 Noam Wallenberg multiple stages of limiters or compressors or clipping

21:31 Luke F. Walton or all these different things you're gonna make the whole thing louder like let's be realistic

21:35 Noam Wallenberg make the whole thing louder but it's like it's not that fucking different than just checking it out to it

21:39 Luke F. Walton totally

21:39 Noam Wallenberg on it it is

21:39 Luke F. Walton i like i understand what you're saying though but

21:41 Noam Wallenberg you know what i'm saying it's so it's

21:43 Luke F. Walton you're paying for the person and like and really what i'm doing is i'm paying for that gut check of like that final person that's heard my entire career arc for him to be like yo this mix is fire it's like okay great and like somebody that will tell me this sucks or like what happened to your bass and

21:57 Noam Wallenberg Yes,

21:57 Luke F. Walton that that's a big chunk of what i'm paying for with my guitar

22:00 Noam Wallenberg that is the best. The way that I started mastering was like I would get our artists to... get budgets to pay like my heroes to master like

22:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

22:11 Noam Wallenberg mastering

22:11 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

22:11 Noam Wallenberg heroes to master stuff and then i would just like take so deep advantage of the fact that i that i had paid them whatever three grand four grand to master this record that it felt like that entitled me to a conversation with them and

22:25 Luke F. Walton Exactly. We got

22:26 Noam Wallenberg that's

22:26 Luke F. Walton to talk about and the mixes

22:26 Noam Wallenberg i it

22:26 Luke F. Walton a little bit.

22:27 Noam Wallenberg was on the expense of the artist or the label that

22:29 Luke F. Walton Smart,

22:29 Noam Wallenberg i

22:30 Luke F. Walton smart.

22:30 Noam Wallenberg got to like you know just ask beg greg calbee to like tear me apart basically

22:36 Luke F. Walton Cool.

22:36 Noam Wallenberg which

22:36 Luke F. Walton Yes.

22:36 Noam Wallenberg is like just tell me every little thing that you felt like wasn't right with this and the way that i really learned to master was i would hire greg either like greg calbee or ted jensen or howie weinberg just all these

22:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

22:49 Noam Wallenberg like super top

22:50 Luke F. Walton heavy

22:50 Noam Wallenberg tier

22:50 Luke F. Walton hitter.

22:50 Noam Wallenberg heavy

22:50 Luke F. Walton Yep.

22:50 Noam Wallenberg hitter mastering engineers i would hire them to master these records for me and then but they're you know they're obviously well learned super expensive

22:59 Noam Wallenberg and at the time they were charging i think you know probably like an extra hundred bucks a track to do any alternative versions so the the mastering might be a certain amount of money and then it'd be like an extra 1500 bucks sometimes just to get instrumentals done and

23:14 Luke F. Walton Wow.

23:14 Noam Wallenberg so i would tell the artist i would say like let's spend the money on on the mastering and then don't spend the money on the instrumentals give me half of that and i'll do instrumentals i'll do i'll master the instrumentals for you

23:27 Luke F. Walton Totally, totally.

23:27 Noam Wallenberg and then I would reverse engineer their mastering to

23:30 Luke F. Walton Beautiful.

23:31 Noam Wallenberg do the

23:31 Luke F. Walton Such

23:31 Noam Wallenberg instrumentals

23:31 Luke F. Walton a good idea.

23:32 Noam Wallenberg and have

23:32 Luke F. Walton Such

23:33 Noam Wallenberg to and

23:33 Luke F. Walton a good idea.

23:33 Noam Wallenberg just force myself to like figure out what the you know it's instrumentals it's like it's got to be pretty close it doesn't have to be perfect

23:40 Luke F. Walton doesn't have

23:40 Noam Wallenberg perfect

23:40 Luke F. Walton to be perfect

23:41 Noam Wallenberg but it's

23:41 Luke F. Walton yeah

23:41 Noam Wallenberg like the

23:41 Luke F. Walton the stakes are not there but you you're

23:43 Noam Wallenberg stakes are not there

23:44 Luke F. Walton ab testing basically in between your your chain their chain the best in the world it's brilliant right

23:49 Noam Wallenberg yes it's and just you know i would do what i think i'm supposed to do which is like stick a compressor on the master right and then and the compressor would be doing like you know whatever a decibel and a half of of reduction throughout or whatever And then I would get to the verse and all of a sudden my master was a decibel and a half louder than Greg Calbee's. And I'd be like.

24:11 Noam Wallenberg okay so it gets to the verse and it's loud you know so that

24:16 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

24:16 Noam Wallenberg must mean that i'm doing nothing no compression in the verse i'm doing a decibel and a half of compression in the chorus so

24:22 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

24:23 Noam Wallenberg what it means is whatever i'm doing in the chorus he's not doing any compression on this record

24:27 Luke F. Walton Right.

24:28 Noam Wallenberg like just limiters or just you

24:30 Luke F. Walton Yep.

24:30 Noam Wallenberg know like he's all these things that i think he's doing i have evidence right here that he's not doing that stuff and that he's and also like i get a tom fill and and i hear his and i'm just like

24:40 Noam Wallenberg it's like oh fuck like his feels so much cleaner and i'm like oh he took all the low end out of the sides so when my toms go there it kind of centers the low and like all these things you can kind of reverse engineered just by hearing this stuff so yeah that was kind of my like unofficial educate like i

24:56 Luke F. Walton That's great.

24:56 Noam Wallenberg never interned under a mastering engineer or anything like that i just kind of figured it out

25:00 Luke F. Walton Well, that goes back to the game staging conversation of, you know. Like, okay, I have this much room and I've overfilled it.

25:10 Noam Wallenberg Yes.

25:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah, and now everything's all screwed up and I basically have to start over because it's all messed up versus now I have a process. Now I build it around this thing. And guess what? Now it's easier to produce because you understand where things can be placed. You understand how much room you have.

25:22 Noam Wallenberg Sure.

25:22 Luke F. Walton You're like, I can fill this whole room with cement now. But before I had the scaffolding, I had no idea that this space even existed or but then it also applies to unique creative challenges like the live situation is.

25:36 Luke F. Walton you're honing that way of thinking and now you're applying it in not just mastering but you're applying it across all of these unpredictable challenges just like you're saying that that musical problem problem solving is

25:50 Noam Wallenberg Hmm.

25:50 Luke F. Walton like you're developing your taste you're developing your ability to apply yourself to whatever problem arises and that's really cool

25:57 Noam Wallenberg Sure.

25:57 Luke F. Walton i

25:57 Noam Wallenberg Yeah, that makes total sense.

25:59 Luke F. Walton wanted to ask about fearless flyers which did you work on with With Fearless I Flyers.

26:03 Noam Wallenberg did Fearless Flyers 4.

26:06 Luke F. Walton Cool.

26:06 Noam Wallenberg Going to be working on the new one a bit as well.

26:09 Luke F. Walton Nice.

26:10 Noam Wallenberg I don't know if anything is announced.

26:11 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

26:12 Noam Wallenberg But whenever something comes out, I'll be working on that too.

26:15 Luke F. Walton Very, very cool. Very, very cool. Recording, mixing.

26:19 Noam Wallenberg I'm not recording. I'm going to be mastering the new one.

26:22 Luke F. Walton Mastering it awesome

26:23 Noam Wallenberg Yeah.

26:24 Luke F. Walton It's really exciting. Really love Nate Smith's drumming in particular.

26:29 Noam Wallenberg monster yeah

26:30 Luke F. Walton Absolutely magical. I wanted to ask you about that many transients for the listeners transient attack, whatever. There's so much going on in that music and everything's important.

26:42 Noam Wallenberg yes

26:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah, I just would love for you to opine on that just a little bit like, what's that like?

26:47 Noam Wallenberg yeah yeah it's how all of the instruments are like But like kind of transient,

26:52 Luke F. Walton everything

26:52 Noam Wallenberg right? Because Nate is hyper transient in himself.

26:54 Luke F. Walton exactly and then you've got like cory doing like intense funk everybody's playing a bunch of notes and they're all important and they're all pretty dry and i just feel like that creates such an interesting modern pop problem because like i i could picture how you would do that in like the 70s or something but then applying it to digital audio where everything is is pristine or

27:16 Luke F. Walton Or I'm just curious how that works. Are things being bounced down to tape? What is the blend of analog digital? How are you dealing with like instrumental music that's just seems

27:24 Noam Wallenberg Yeah.

27:25 Luke F. Walton like a challenge.

27:26 Noam Wallenberg So the Fearless Flyers record, that record came from me working on that record came from two records that I did a record called Anyways by May Earlywine. She's like an incredible singer songwriter, just just amazing. And it was a it was a record with her and Woody Goss who when Woody plays. like

27:42 Luke F. Walton Awesome. Yeah,

27:42 Noam Wallenberg she is

27:43 Luke F. Walton totally.

27:43 Noam Wallenberg um a

27:43 Luke F. Walton I'll go listen

27:43 Noam Wallenberg total throwback

27:44 Luke F. Walton to it.

27:44 Noam Wallenberg fantastic actually she just dropped a record that's that's produced by Theo uh

27:48 Luke F. Walton Hey,

27:48 Noam Wallenberg that

27:48 Luke F. Walton sweet.

27:48 Noam Wallenberg time um

27:49 Luke F. Walton Awesome. Awesome.

27:49 Noam Wallenberg so she's she's killing but but I did a record with her and I did a record with Woody that was like called a Wolfie Christmas that was kind

27:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

27:57 Noam Wallenberg of like Okay. a

27:57 Luke F. Walton I heard this. Yeah. I heard this.

27:58 Noam Wallenberg yeah it was like our our version of like Vince Giraldi Peanuts Christmas music both records we did live to uh a track tape

28:06 Luke F. Walton Cool.

28:06 Noam Wallenberg and

28:07 Luke F. Walton Yep.

28:08 Noam Wallenberg we both of them we did it in hyper for restrictive actually i say a track but my a track one of the tracks is busted on so

28:16 Luke F. Walton Cool.

28:16 Noam Wallenberg it's that really seven track seven track tape and we were kind of purposefully making that process restrictive and like you know the drums were of two drum mics that would get bus down to one channel and i'd have one channel that was all the drums and and mono piano because we didn't have enough channels to do stereo piano and it was just like stuff like that to just just make

28:38 Noam Wallenberg make things interesting and and also like make our process simplified the result was like everything came together so easily for

28:46 Noam Wallenberg Cool. us

28:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

28:47 Noam Wallenberg right there's something about uh simplifying all this stuff and also of the commonality of everything going to the same tape machine and being able to hit tape hard and all this stuff that like just really made that experience so good for us and so jack heard those two records and was like okay i want to have something

29:04 Noam Wallenberg like this involved in our in our world so based off of that he's like whatever you did to those records can i send you a fearless flyers record and can you do what you did to those records to the flyers right Yeah and so that's exactly what i did he recorded that at the blue note

29:19 Luke F. Walton Cool.

29:19 Noam Wallenberg in new york

29:20 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

29:20 Noam Wallenberg and live guy recorded and then i took those tracks it was more than seven tracks obviously but i took them and ran them seven tracks at a time through that through

29:30 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

29:31 Noam Wallenberg that a track machine essentially

29:33 Luke F. Walton That's so

29:33 Noam Wallenberg gave

29:34 Luke F. Walton good.

29:34 Noam Wallenberg it exactly that thing

29:35 Luke F. Walton How'd

29:35 Noam Wallenberg there's

29:36 Luke F. Walton you pick which like seven? How'd you pick which seven?

29:37 Noam Wallenberg admittedly i was on more than seven i think i probably They ended up on 14 tracks

29:43 Luke F. Walton Okay,

29:43 Noam Wallenberg on that

29:43 Luke F. Walton okay,

29:43 Noam Wallenberg record

29:43 Luke F. Walton okay.

29:44 Noam Wallenberg Yes

29:44 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

29:44 Noam Wallenberg I

29:44 Luke F. Walton yeah.

29:44 Noam Wallenberg think the drums were seven the thing that I can't do is like the tape machine's not perfect So anything that's a direct phase issue. I can't really

29:54 Luke F. Walton Could you explain to

29:55 Noam Wallenberg Yes

29:55 Luke F. Walton listeners about just the craziness that is drum microphones and what phase is and like how all of that has to go into your

30:04 Noam Wallenberg Oh,

30:04 Luke F. Walton mind for

30:04 Noam Wallenberg I could

30:04 Luke F. Walton mixing.

30:05 Noam Wallenberg I could talk forever about it. It's so So

30:07 Luke F. Walton You got maximum five minutes.

30:09 Noam Wallenberg please,

30:09 Luke F. Walton Let's keep this tight.

30:10 Noam Wallenberg please stop me. The basic concept of phase is just how multiple microphones work together, right? The simplest is like two microphones on the same source. You have two microphones on a kick drum, for instance, and the microphones are going to be slightly different, the waveforms that come from them based on the place that the mics are and based on the polarity, like when the kick drum hits whether the...

30:34 Noam Wallenberg The first arc of voltage is either positive or negative. Based on a few of those factors, when a kick drum hits and you have two microphones on it, they are either working together to move air in the same direction at the same time, or they're in opposite directions to move air and they are effectively fighting with each other.

30:56 Luke F. Walton Like noise

30:56 Noam Wallenberg Either

30:56 Luke F. Walton -cancelling

30:56 Noam Wallenberg like

30:57 Luke F. Walton headphones.

30:57 Noam Wallenberg noise, exactly like noise canceling headphones. It's they're either doing that. that within two speakers like they're either doing that within the air and messing with your it kind of has a sound that is like a off-putting or they are doing it within voltages either like in analog settings or in digital settings where they fight with each other and whatever the outcome of the fight is comes out of the speakers and usually sounds substantially shittier or thinner or less present because of the

31:28 Noam Wallenberg fact that these microphones are not moving air in the same direction at the same time that's the basic concept and when you're recording a drum set with you know in this case whatever seven microphones but often 10 20 microphones sometimes maximizing a huge part of getting drums to sound great is making it so that when the important elements of the drum set hit

31:51 Noam Wallenberg As many microphones as possible are trying to work together to move air in the same direction at the same time. And that can be a kind of challenging process because moving a mic a couple inches can sometimes completely change what that equation is. In the case of me dumping these drums to tape,

32:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

32:11 Noam Wallenberg the phase issues are less so of like exactly, you know, the relationships between the mics.

32:17 Noam Wallenberg and more so about if you take two microphones that are meant to be the same sound source and you have the time of them moving slightly which is what happens on a tape machine right a tape machine even if you have a really really great motor there is slight variances in terms of the speed the speed is basically constantly getting slightly slower and then catching up and getting slim so usually you get to the finish line at roughly the same

32:45 Noam Wallenberg time but it generally has these slight variances and usually those slight variances don't really matter because you have one tape machine and everything goes on that one tape machine and so even though there's a little bit of variances it all happens together so it doesn't you don't notice it doesn't really matter but if you take one overhead on one tape machine and another overhead on another tape machine

33:09 Noam Wallenberg those variances are not going to happen together and what's going to happen is you're going to get what is essentially a phaser right and that's like or a flanger where the first flanging came from is people taking exactly the same recording sticking it on two tape machines trying to get it as close as possible where they play back at exactly the same time and then they just naturally slowly get a tiny bit out of phase with each other and start to do these you know combs

33:36 Noam Wallenberg home filtering resonance sweep sweepy stuff that's

33:40 Luke F. Walton Great.

33:40 Noam Wallenberg the basics of of

33:41 Luke F. Walton That's a great

33:41 Noam Wallenberg what so

33:42 Luke F. Walton answer.

33:42 Noam Wallenberg that's

33:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

33:42 Noam Wallenberg the drums all had to go to one tape

33:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

33:45 Noam Wallenberg machine essentially that's

33:46 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Right.

33:47 Noam Wallenberg a super long answer for like the drums had to had to be on seven tracks and then i think the rest of the band was on another seven seven tracks i believe so

33:56 Luke F. Walton That's,

33:56 Noam Wallenberg i didn't answer your

33:57 Luke F. Walton no,

33:57 Noam Wallenberg question of

33:58 Luke F. Walton but you did in part.

33:59 Noam Wallenberg transient stuff yeah

33:59 Luke F. Walton Tape, what tape can do to transients can be very. That's very pleasant and help wrangle some of that just through the magic of that saturation and the ways that slamming into tape seems to help

34:12 Noam Wallenberg it's it's it's really interesting because like it's all the previous flyers records and all the previous wolf Vulfpeck records pretty much every single one was mixed by jack stratton and he jack jack is a great mixer and has a really really unique style of you know it's part of what people love about those bands is the way that those records sound.

34:33 Luke F. Walton Mm

34:33 Noam Wallenberg We

34:33 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

34:33 Noam Wallenberg went into both the Flyers record and the Vulfpeck record with the intention of not having it exactly that like there's

34:42 Noam Wallenberg Yeah, a yeah. reason that he hired me to do it right and it was just trying to do something different for these records and the way that his records feel and the way that his transients feel like everything feels kind of squashed in a cool way and all the dynamics are really really intensely controlled like you know that's the wolf compressor that he that he uses a bunch it's so intense the

35:04 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

35:05 Noam Wallenberg compression which is is part of what makes it really unique and cool you stick that on a snare drum every single snare drum is exactly the same volume basically you can have a 20 decibel difference in terms of how you're playing it and all those things are basically the same volume right and that's what makes it so intimate and interesting and and unique sounding is like that compression is controlling those dynamics in this intense way

35:29 Noam Wallenberg but the records that he was like kind of referencing for like how he wanted you

35:33 Luke F. Walton Yeah

35:33 Noam Wallenberg know these two new records to feel was a bunch of these records that like obviously were built before that compressor existed but also were made at a time when like compression was just less of a trend in particularly

35:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

35:48 Noam Wallenberg in drum sounds

35:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

35:49 Noam Wallenberg like it i think on the fearless flyers he was listening to a bunch of um george benson breathe

35:55 Luke F. Walton Cool.

35:56 Noam Wallenberg right which

35:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

35:57 Noam Wallenberg is like such

35:57 Luke F. Walton totally.

35:58 Noam Wallenberg a great sounding

35:58 Luke F. Walton For

35:58 Noam Wallenberg such

35:59 Luke F. Walton sure.

35:59 Noam Wallenberg a great sounding record um

36:00 Luke F. Walton Absolutely.

36:00 Noam Wallenberg but it's it was i believe it was recorded by um and mixed by al schmidt who's

36:05 Luke F. Walton Really?

36:06 Noam Wallenberg like yeah

36:06 Luke F. Walton Oh my God.

36:07 Noam Wallenberg who's like you know he's like the big band guy Yeah, like yeah. he's like compression is not

36:12 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

36:12 Noam Wallenberg what he's known for at all

36:13 Luke F. Walton Right,

36:14 Noam Wallenberg and

36:14 Luke F. Walton right.

36:14 Noam Wallenberg you listen to those records and they don't feel very compressed but i chose to like have my tape machine kind of be my compressor right

36:23 Luke F. Walton Yep.

36:23 Noam Wallenberg and like even though tape compression is called compression it's a really different process than compression right and it and it it it does shape the transients but in a very very different way it does not change the character it can make it feel like it's like you're listening to a different song

36:39 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

36:39 Noam Wallenberg even you

36:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

36:40 Noam Wallenberg know what i mean like it's going to add this urgency that that like it really really changes the intention of

36:46 Luke F. Walton Yes.

36:47 Noam Wallenberg the player in a very um sometimes incredibly compelling way um but in a way that like i don't you don't really hear on some of those older records

36:57 Luke F. Walton No.

36:57 Noam Wallenberg and that you know that's part of the genius of of jack is like making the feeling of nostalgia while using almost none of the tools of

37:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

37:07 Noam Wallenberg what

37:07 Luke F. Walton cool.

37:07 Noam Wallenberg made

37:08 Luke F. Walton Right.

37:08 Noam Wallenberg those records sound

37:09 Luke F. Walton Right.

37:09 Noam Wallenberg like it's almost like he's just willing this feeling of nostalgia just through through pure aesthetic but it's like all of the tools and choices are are totally unique to him like they're not they're not 70s choices it's just the way that he is hearing that stuff that makes it like a cartoon version of like a memory of what record sounded like in the 70s or something it's like the way that way that he mixes.

37:32 Luke F. Walton Yeah. 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, you go into the podcast screen, right? You click on the dot, dot, dot on Spotify.

37:51 Luke F. Walton 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 that stuff. stuff to share it out with the world.

38:00 Luke F. Walton I know that it's a lot to ask, but if you could please, please, please, just please just hit those three dots and then a five star. It would really help us out and helps us, you know, get the word out and spread the love of music. So thank you. 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.

38:17 Noam Wallenberg So regardless like he's doing this like this memory of that and like i'm kind of doing like a memory of what he does like i'm

38:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah,

38:27 Noam Wallenberg trying to make something that like you don't notice that i'm using completely different tools than what he does but still gives the feeling of like this Vulfpeck universe this fearless flyers universe um yeah. so tape the tape saturation was like everything it was all of it basically most of what I was doing was tape saturation

38:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah. And I love how you're bringing in that Al Schmidt kind of ethos all the way back to all the volume writing. yeah

38:53 Noam Wallenberg a

38:53 Luke F. Walton because i 100 that's

38:54 Noam Wallenberg it's

38:54 Luke F. Walton like the number one old school thing is just

38:57 Noam Wallenberg the number

38:57 Luke F. Walton like

38:57 Noam Wallenberg and it's you know it's not out of i didn't want to to be clear i if i didn't have to i if i could have compressed that shit i would have it wasn't because i wanted

39:07 Luke F. Walton it's

39:07 Noam Wallenberg to do

39:07 Luke F. Walton a it lot

39:07 Noam Wallenberg it was

39:08 Luke F. Walton more

39:08 Noam Wallenberg just

39:08 Luke F. Walton work

39:08 Noam Wallenberg it was so much more work it was i i must have went through i spent days volume like truly

39:16 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah i believe

39:17 Noam Wallenberg i

39:17 Luke F. Walton it

39:17 Noam Wallenberg spent a full day the first thing i did was i booked out my studio and i spent a full day

39:27 Noam Wallenberg every bass mostly vocals but like all the other instruments a bit as well to take like i i did tape transfer i mixed the project in pro tools but i did tape transfers first thing i did was dumped everything on the tape and i did volume rides everything on the way

39:42 Luke F. Walton On

39:42 Noam Wallenberg to

39:42 Luke F. Walton the way

39:42 Noam Wallenberg tape

39:43 Luke F. Walton in.

39:43 Noam Wallenberg so i like on the way in i did all these volume rides because i wanted to because i mean that's that's like where the volume riding kind of originates from is like people having to control the way that you know That you have

39:55 Luke F. Walton makes sense.

39:55 Noam Wallenberg a if you have a singer and their verse is 15 decibels quieter than their chorus and you're using Neve pre's that are staged you know it's like it's not really possible so you sit there with a fader and if you just if you just record it as is and you

40:12 Noam Wallenberg compress it after you've recorded it it's like you end up with a noise floor that's 15 decibels louder in the verse than it is in the chorus and you end up with a chorus probably that is completely distorting the tape machine and a verse that's like not even touching it like

40:28 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

40:28 Noam Wallenberg it's just like the dynamics are so you know so much more of a concern and and that's also my concern on this record was like I'm I'm I'm using a tape machine without out noise reduction so

40:39 Luke F. Walton and it's

40:40 Noam Wallenberg it's like i need

40:40 Luke F. Walton live

40:40 Noam Wallenberg to deal with that yeah

40:41 Luke F. Walton so you have more dynamics like when i'm when i'm in the studio i lock in and my dynamics are pretty tight because i

40:48 Noam Wallenberg that

40:48 Luke F. Walton know i understand like down the road i am going to create all these problems if i'm blowing my preamps or whatever

40:54 Noam Wallenberg that's

40:54 Luke F. Walton right

40:54 Noam Wallenberg the amazing thing of you mixing mixing and playing all this stuff yourself is like you you deal with your own problems so

41:01 Luke F. Walton exactly

41:02 Noam Wallenberg you have to It completely changes

41:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

41:05 Noam Wallenberg the way that you play as an instrumentalist,

41:08 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

41:08 Noam Wallenberg 100%.

41:08 Luke F. Walton totally. But then when you get live, you can't really like do all of that anymore.

41:12 Noam Wallenberg It's

41:13 Luke F. Walton You're trying

41:13 Noam Wallenberg your fight

41:13 Luke F. Walton to...

41:13 Noam Wallenberg for your life out there. you're absolutely man

41:17 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

41:18 Noam Wallenberg yeah it's the the the like particularly the vocals like it's and and also you know handheld mic like if you're um if you have a really sensitive u47 and you're a foot away from it and you move a couple inches further or closer like the change in volume is not that dramatic and the change in proximity effect like how much low end is in the voice is not that dramatic

41:43 Noam Wallenberg and but if you have these handheld mics like you're eating the mic that's a different sound

41:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

41:49 Noam Wallenberg than if you're three feet away and and like it's the the record is all every all of it all of the above you know everyone everyone's doing everything because they're putting on a performance some of the only compression that i'm doing on those vocals is multiband compression i'm doing a little bit of multiband stuff just to deal with the fact that the proximity effect is so variant in live vocals i

42:15 Luke F. Walton Right?

42:15 Noam Wallenberg i find that that like particular if you want live vocals you're really trying to make them sound like a record it i haven't found really another way to deal with it other than multiband compression because it's like the the the amount of low end is like sometimes it's like eight decibels louder

42:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

42:31 Noam Wallenberg in a certain section than it is in another just because of you know within a word or you know they're they're doing exactly

42:38 Luke F. Walton for

42:38 Noam Wallenberg the

42:38 Luke F. Walton sure

42:38 Noam Wallenberg right thing which is like working the mic but it's like that creates all kinds of other variances in terms of the like frequency makeup of a vocal track yes

42:46 Luke F. Walton and those are the things that can pull you out of a mix in the same way watching a movie they drop a frame or the coloring is wrong or whatever you suddenly realize oh no they're acting this isn't real uh yeah

42:57 Noam Wallenberg yes it's yeah you get you get one thing that is like oh this is a microphone this isn't this isn't someone singing straight to me this is someone singing to a microphone and then that is being projected to me and like generally I want direct injection of most of those like I'm

43:14 Luke F. Walton Right.

43:14 Noam Wallenberg I'm trying to take the process out of it and just make it feel like someone's in your head uh you know

43:21 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:21 Noam Wallenberg yeah

43:22 Luke F. Walton Love that. Love that. Great place for us to pivot to your personal music and kind of your production. like beyond obviously these Vulfpeck records fear fire records that's super exciting and really i'm sure a lot of listeners are super excited about how you kind of took that torch and what you what

43:38 Noam Wallenberg uh

43:38 Luke F. Walton you made of it how do you how do you apply and how does that contrast with what you do for for yourself for your own music and then also in your your production world

43:46 Noam Wallenberg yeah so i mean i'm not a singer so i what i consider to be my music is generally music like projects that i'm co-writing thing um

43:54 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:54 Noam Wallenberg i i usually am taking some ownership with my partner uh is a singer jennifer hall who is like that's that's my biggest musical outlet right now that i like i consider to be my music is is that stuff right we we write all the music together i produce all of it i play most of the instruments on that stuff a few hired guns but it's mostly just like um just the two of us sitting in a room and making making

44:19 Luke F. Walton Beautiful.

44:19 Noam Wallenberg uh her records which which she's she's incredible and and and and her music is like this kind of indie pop stuff that is that is super super cool you know i have a couple other like projects that i'm potentially putting my name

44:34 Luke F. Walton Ooh!

44:34 Noam Wallenberg on possibly i've never put anything out with my name on That's on

44:37 Luke F. Walton exciting.

44:38 Noam Wallenberg it uh woody goss and i are working on like a duo record

44:41 Luke F. Walton Cool.

44:41 Noam Wallenberg right now that Amazing. i think might might end up being like a name name project it's it's yet to be either album or a bunch of single we we don't exactly know what we're doing but we're making like instrumental music outside of that i i produce a ton of records i would say about half of what i do is is mixing and mastering and half of what i do is is like producing producing records for artists

45:01 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

45:01 Noam Wallenberg and that varies pretty immensely as far as like what that means and for a bunch of artists that means the studio that i'm in right now is the studio in my house which is like a smaller production studio and then i have a studio that i work at in town called rax tracks recording which is like a chicago staple it's been here for 30 plus years um and i've been there for for more than half of that about

45:24 Luke F. Walton Wow.

45:25 Noam Wallenberg six 16 17 years i've been at that studio

45:27 Luke F. Walton Amazing.

45:27 Noam Wallenberg artists come to either of those places and sometimes it is just us artists with a song you know voice memo or something like that and we just make the song whatever that means right so sometimes that's me playing all the instruments sometimes it's me and the artist playing a bunch of instruments sometimes it's us hiring a band and and vibing off of what everyone's

45:51 Noam Wallenberg is bringing or or sometimes it is us making all the music in here and then replacing things with a live drummer you know it's like there's

45:58 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

45:59 Noam Wallenberg so

45:59 Luke F. Walton yeah.

45:59 Noam Wallenberg many different processes most of the time that brand of production that i do is this kind of like free we're just here in a room making music and whatever the fuck that means is what we're what we're doing right now and and it's there's no restrictions as far as like we're trying to get this person on it's like this oftentimes it's it's so Uh, there's a ton of records that I do that for.

46:21 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

46:22 Noam Wallenberg Um, and then there's also records that I do that are, are, um, a band, you know, established a band or an artist that has a band that they play with or something like that, um, or already has parts. And in that role, I'm like kind of a curator and aesthetic guide.

46:41 Luke F. Walton Like Yes.

46:41 Noam Wallenberg I'm kind of like trying to help if there is a vision for the record, trying to help shepherd it. it

46:46 Noam Wallenberg Yes. and and bring like the language into the choices of what we have to do to make that

46:52 Noam Wallenberg Okay. language happen so if we're talking about you know things that feel this way i'm the one asking the questions of like what do these instruments sound like and and also how do we get it there and how do we pick the

47:04 Noam Wallenberg kit to make and the drummer to make that happen and then ultimately i'm lots of times i'm the fifth band member i'm the sounding board i'm the like tiebreaker i'm the you know i'm all and i'm the like person that the singer gets locked in a room with while the rest of the band gets kicked out while we just like work through the emotions of where the song is coming from and just you know all of these things that are like the nitty-gritty of of truly what makes records happen

47:30 Noam Wallenberg And is is pretty much what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis with with production.

47:35 Luke F. Walton Beautiful answer. So

47:36 Noam Wallenberg Yeah

47:37 Luke F. Walton that brings me to my last question.

47:39 Noam Wallenberg Yes

47:39 Luke F. Walton This is the question that we ask every guest. So the show is called Love Music More. The segment's called Love Music Why? And the question is really simple. The answer can sometimes be really difficult. Why do you love music?

47:51 Noam Wallenberg fuck i feel like i should have been prepared

47:55 Luke F. Walton no it's better if you're not it doesn't have to be perfect it can be the the momentary answer like why do you do this why do you keep why do you keep waking up the next morning excited to do it again why do you do those volume faders

48:06 Noam Wallenberg yeah this volume fate volume faders because i'm fighting for my life i assume to most of your listeners which is like music has such a

48:16 Noam Wallenberg profound effect on me when I was growing up kind of my saving grace and I don't know I was terrible at school I was terrible at sports I was terrible at at a lot of stuff and and music was kind of the one thing that like made sense to me um and also the way that I felt listening to certain records when I was young like I it truly truly shaped the way that I related to the world in such a you know I

48:44 Noam Wallenberg i had my first heartbreak and i listened to the same record on over and over the same songs over and over again for weeks and weeks and i i remember you know i can remember these moments of like hearing paul simon still crazy after all these years for the first time on on the cta and like ball like just ball there's one court when the drums come in there's this minor chord and i just like

49:11 Noam Wallenberg like start bawling on the train like figuring out what the fuck i'm crying like what am i crying about like that's questions that like i don't know if i would have asked myself if i didn't have that song in that moment so there's all these like immensely connective and profound moments that i had with music and when i transitioned from being a

49:34 Noam Wallenberg music listener to being a music maker the goal is just to be that for someone else like that's that's such a profoundly exciting thing to me is like i get that still myself when i'm making the music like i'm my metric is trying to get those feelings it's all feeling based it's all just whether you know how do you know that a

49:59 Noam Wallenberg production is done how do you know that a song is done it's like you get these feelings in your heart that make you feel like something is happening and make you feel like something is becoming bigger than just what you put into it and every time that I

50:18 Noam Wallenberg you know make a record that someone someone i can tell that someone's having an experience that i had when i was younger and also you know still have today obviously it makes me feel connected to the world when those moments happen it's a similar feeling to like you know if you help your friend out you know your friend is in a deep tough emotional place and you talk them out of it or something like that it's like there's something that feels giving but also

50:44 Noam Wallenberg of definitely taking like without a doubt when you help a friend out of something you feel so fucking good about yourself the rest of the day because you just feel purposeful and feel connected to the world and feel like you're you're kind of bringing something good into the into the universe in that moment probably my unhealthy addiction to that feeling is like feeling connected to the world but I don't know.

51:09 Noam Wallenberg And does any of that make any sense at all?

51:11 Luke F. Walton Absolutely does. It absolutely does. And I love the idea of when music makes you feel that deeply, you

51:19 Noam Wallenberg Yeah.

51:19 Luke F. Walton almost feel that obligation to pay it back.

51:22 Noam Wallenberg It's like, yeah i feel like that yeah. it i i i'm trying to not sound like it's a charitable thing in any way to it's for me making things that are i want to be clear i'm not getting my job is very fucking easy and enjoyable and it was hard to get it but it's really really fun and i and i uh like i'm mostly getting something out of it uh i don't think that i'm doing something charitable charitable or anything like that i'm

51:50 Noam Wallenberg i'm uh it's deeply selfish all of the music that i make because i i'm just having fun doing it but now

51:56 Luke F. Walton there you go now now we have both sides now it's like we wrapped

51:59 Noam Wallenberg have both up sides i just want to want a fair and balanced take on that they

52:03 Luke F. Walton so where can people get in touch where can they find you where can they hear your music

52:08 Noam Wallenberg could uh noamwallenberg.com has a bunch of bunch of music up there and then my instagram is at noamwallenberg you can find me there

52:16 Noam Wallenberg Sweet. And I really want to hear that duo record, man. Let's Oh hear it. yeah, it's gonna,

52:21 Noam Wallenberg Can't wait. something's gonna come out in the next year, I don't know when, I don't know what, but something's gonna come out.

52:26 Noam Wallenberg I'll be pre-saving that and I'll be jumping on it. I love it, dude. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for chatting.

52:32 Noam Wallenberg It was really, really nice to meet you, man.