An Interview with Ryan Haft

0:21 Luke F. Walton What's good, everybody? This is Scoobert Doobert with Love Music More, and I am joined with Ryan Haft. who we are going to be talking about uh audio engineering recording talking with bands building studios all sorts of awesome stuff including some live sound too so how are you doing ryan great to

0:37 Ryan Haft Good.

0:37 Luke F. Walton uh great to meet you so

0:39 Ryan Haft You as well.

0:40 Luke F. Walton you're

0:41 Ryan Haft Good

0:41 Luke F. Walton in this

0:41 Ryan Haft day.

0:41 Luke F. Walton new you're in this new studio space um you just gave me like kind of a 360 tour before we started recording um What prompted you to have to make this move? I feel like it's like a very relatable music story, like recording story.

0:58 Ryan Haft Right. Yeah, I guess we were chatting about it a little bit, but I can give the full story is that I was in a space. I'm in I'm in Miami, Florida. I was in a space in North Miami that I guess in town is kind of known as like.

1:10 Ryan Haft studio central there's like criteria studios is over there where the bgs made famous there's big documentary out i think on hbo or something like that but i was in that area and i've kind of worked in that area since i guess i started getting into this um i worked at another studio up there called the dungeon for a long time which is now defunct that was kind of like the rock and roll studio in miami but i was there for a long time four or five years and kind of smack dab in the middle of the pandemic even

1:38 Ryan Haft There wasn't a lot going on. They put like a CrossFit gym. and next to us and

1:43 Luke F. Walton Ah,

1:43 Ryan Haft and like we we noticed he was moving in we kind of all he had kind of done is like painted the walls black like just cement walls we were like hey man like i went to the leasing office and we were like hey look like this isn't gonna work and they kind of were like there you know there is one other space like we'll give it to him for the same price like whatever and we approached the dude like hey man like this isn't gonna work like can you can you move over to this other space like we'll paint the walls black for you like

2:10 Ryan Haft do like

2:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

2:10 Ryan Haft we'll we'll do all this stuff and he straight up was just like nah i'm good like nah i'm straight i'm straight just literally didn't give a shit and then you know drops weights and playing

2:21 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

2:21 Ryan Haft music over a pa the whole time

2:24 Luke F. Walton so you're like you're like trying to record you're like on an acoustic guitar and you've got like a 45 pound weight like clanging next door and yeah pa music what a freaking

2:34 Ryan Haft yeah

2:34 Luke F. Walton nightmare

2:34 Ryan Haft it was just if you tried to do anything delicate like a like a vocal with a condenser mic or yeah any acoustic guitar like between the hours of basically like 11 and 7 p.m just like wouldn't work if i was doing like cranked up guitars or like loud drums like like you know you'd get away with it i

2:52 Luke F. Walton Yes.

2:53 Ryan Haft should add that this this space was like was built out i think in the 90s i believe originally it was this studio called tapeworm and you know that somebody moved on from it and it was just a built out recording studio in his warehouse space so we we had taken it over so we didn't do the initial build out and for years it was fine and then come to find out with the gym next door like oh yeah there's nothing on the other side of these walls between you know the other space and

3:20 Ryan Haft yeah so that led us to like all right we either retrofit this space for a ton of money and like hope it works like float you know float a room inside of a room situation or it was like you know maybe we just moved from this area and just start start from scratch like have a chance to like truly design between the rooms and stuff

3:40 Luke F. Walton And I think that's really interesting. Like you have now, obviously, it's hard. I mean, even me, like with my little home studio behind me, I'm.

3:48 Luke F. Walton yeah i'm going through it just trying to be like okay put a bail over here it's like wow these things are expensive this is they gotta get a rug you know all the little things can only imagine what it's like to be actually on the commercial level recording space so but you also have the the added benefit of now you can design it the way you want and for your needs so can you talk about kind of like

4:10 Luke F. Walton what what was the light bulb moment is like hey we're gonna do it our own on our own and then how are how are we going to make it ours like our our dream space okay

4:21 Ryan Haft yeah i mean well like i guess from the other space so it's me and like a couple guys that share this this space so and the other space was basically just control room live room that was it you

4:30 Luke F. Walton cool

4:30 Ryan Haft know bathroom

4:30 Luke F. Walton yeah

4:31 Ryan Haft whatever

4:31 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah

4:31 Ryan Haft so we were like all right like if we move to another space like how can we how can we increase the efficiency of the spot so like the idea with the design in this place is i'm in the big control room right now but like across the hall there's a small control room

4:45 Luke F. Walton Oh,

4:45 Ryan Haft and

4:45 Luke F. Walton cool.

4:45 Ryan Haft both of both of them look out at the same live room so we

4:49 Luke F. Walton Neat.

4:49 Ryan Haft have we have two control rooms that both face the live room so like one one room could be mixing one room could be tracking both rooms could be mixing but

4:56 Luke F. Walton That's really cool.

4:57 Ryan Haft allows at least like two two things to cohabitate at once like

5:00 Luke F. Walton Yes, yes, yes.

5:02 Ryan Haft so that was one and then yeah i guess i don't know just organic comics of like i guess the other space had a very large control room and everybody got real comfortable with that so this this room is like a nice comfortable size you could fit like several people in here to not feel like you're all sitting on top of each other

5:20 Luke F. Walton and i

5:20 Ryan Haft Um.

5:21 Luke F. Walton think that's kind of that's kind of rare nowadays because there's so many places that are being built as like production spaces like even my home studio is kind of like that where it's like it's not particularly comfortable for an entire team to come through or a whole band and i feel like with the music that you're making it's it's critical to be able to have the entire band in listening to what what you're tracking even if they're not participating in the tracking but like just being able to give their input being able to create that like collaborative space that you

5:47 Luke F. Walton I feel like that really works with the kind of music that you're making.

5:51 Ryan Haft yeah totally yeah

5:54 Luke F. Walton And you have a million bathrooms.

5:57 Ryan Haft we did it was garage garage sale on toilets when we first started on the spot i guess i had told you that yeah the the bare space came with like four bathrooms in it it was like i think the space was used as like a Underground church at some point so lots lots of shitters

6:16 Luke F. Walton I feel like a lot of people don't realize kind of the care and science and the art that goes into like building a creative space where you have you know on the one hand you want it to sound great and then on the other you want it to feel great how did you kind of navigate that like putting up panels choosing colors making it feel like a creative space but also you know checking all the boxes acoustically

6:38 Ryan Haft I mean, at first, like, the design, the layout kind of started as, like, I kind of just sketched out something on paper and

6:44 Luke F. Walton Cool.

6:45 Ryan Haft just kind of put, like, some of the Studio 101 stuff down. Like, all right, like, let's not do parallel walls and that type of thing. Try

6:53 Luke F. Walton But

6:53 Ryan Haft to, like, not have parallel walls.

6:54 Luke F. Walton just in case people don't understand this stuff, maybe they're just a bedroom producer or not even just a music fan. Why no parallel walls? Why is that like? Bullet point number one of what you're going to avoid when you're building your space.

7:10 Ryan Haft i mean i'm not i'm not like super knowledgeable about

7:12 Luke F. Walton Oh,

7:12 Ryan Haft it

7:13 Luke F. Walton that's cool.

7:13 Ryan Haft but like the idea is just you know as a sound comes off speakers it's going to reflect off of surfaces right and the idea of like skewing walls a little bit allows like for sound i mean it's be the same way of like light hitting a mirror i guess similar like as you know a sound like hits one wall it's going to ricochet off of it and you're trying to avoid it ricocheting back to your ears so you to not color like

7:38 Ryan Haft color the the source coming out of the speakers from early reflections right so the idea is to like sound hit walls then scatter into a different direction and then the second step is like adding absorption stuff to kind of like grab it and hold it down same

7:52 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yeah. And just like you

7:53 Ryan Haft same

7:53 Luke F. Walton were.

7:53 Ryan Haft live room control room same same kind of concepts yeah

7:56 Luke F. Walton Yeah. And that's that's interesting point. We could we could dig into a little bit. But you were talking about behind you, you're going to put in a huge diffusion panel and you said how many pieces of wood did you. What did you say you have out?

8:08 Ryan Haft man i don't know like we were we were originally on the tip of just like just buying you know buying them you know there's all these companies that make them gik and stuff like that but

8:17 Luke F. Walton Right,

8:17 Ryan Haft my other partner was like i think it's going to be better if we do it custom and he he convinced me somehow so we actually got a hold of a program that we're going to do like a qrd style

8:28 Luke F. Walton Okay,

8:28 Ryan Haft diffuser

8:28 Luke F. Walton nice.

8:29 Ryan Haft and

8:29 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

8:29 Ryan Haft we got we found a program that like we could kind of put in the dimensions that we wanted on and it would sort of spit out like how many wells it's supposed to have and the you know the depths of the wells and it turned out to be like every little well is going to be one inch and this thing is like i don't know 12 feet long by

8:51 Luke F. Walton Oh my

8:51 Ryan Haft like

8:51 Luke F. Walton god.

8:52 Ryan Haft eight feet high so like it's a it's a ton and

8:56 Luke F. Walton that's awesome yeah

8:57 Ryan Haft yes we still we have it all cut we still need to just like stain it to kind of match some of the stuff that's in here and then assemble it

9:05 Luke F. Walton yep glue that stuff on so yeah just just for people um that uh might might be familiar so like what we were talking about with the parallel walls this is that to the you know nth degree of all these little tiny reflection surfaces that you create and and the the beauty of what you're doing is you actually did it mathematically most people don't realize that

9:23 Luke F. Walton I said there is like a mathematical formula to being able to diffuse the sound around the room rather than just having like a bookshelf or or just some random

9:32 Ryan Haft yeah

9:32 Luke F. Walton bits

9:32 Ryan Haft i mean a bookshelf

9:32 Luke F. Walton of wood.

9:33 Ryan Haft a bookshelf would kind of do a kick-ass job too you

9:36 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

9:36 Ryan Haft know what i mean yeah

9:37 Luke F. Walton yeah, right.

9:37 Ryan Haft and i mean we did a little we did some of the math on it but like by no means like is this place like mathematically perfect like if a true designer were to like check out

9:49 Luke F. Walton That's

9:49 Ryan Haft but

9:49 Luke F. Walton why the magic though, right? Like sometimes I mean. if everything was mathematically perfect then every studio would kind of sound the same or whatever i mean i feel like part

9:56 Ryan Haft but

9:56 Luke F. Walton of the magic

9:57 Ryan Haft but i i've listened i read interviews and i've

9:59 Luke F. Walton yeah

9:59 Ryan Haft seen stuff with people and like people that are even still mixing i mean even studio designers that are mathematically on paper these rooms are built and should spit out whatever frequency response like perfectly flat like it never fucking does

10:14 Ryan Haft like even these like super expensive rooms like these guys end up still using like dsp on their speakers to like do some correction and stuff like so i mean i don't know i've always kind of worked in whatever no mathematically perfect room like my entire career and like i assume most engineers are working in suboptimal spaces you know you work on them but like there's quirky stuff to all these rooms to every room you work in you know what i mean and like

10:45 Ryan Haft great great products come out of these Yeah. things you know what i mean so there's

10:49 Luke F. Walton Well, that's part

10:50 Ryan Haft something

10:50 Luke F. Walton of...

10:50 Ryan Haft like your your brain just kind of fills in the gaps of things that are weird in the room you get used to it and you just learn what's weird about it or something

10:58 Luke F. Walton yeah and i mean every like every part of the chain like you learn what's weird about certain speakers because every speaker is a little bit different you learn what's different about different headphones or different microphones all these kind of things you almost learn just by osmosis and being around it and then um one of the things i notice a lot of mixing engineers especially they're going into a new room they'll listen down to a bunch of mixes they know super super well

11:21 Luke F. Walton and then they'll kind of in their head create that delta of this is

11:24 Ryan Haft yeah

11:24 Luke F. Walton what it yeah should sound

11:25 Ryan Haft you hear

11:25 Luke F. Walton like this

11:25 Ryan Haft yeah

11:25 Luke F. Walton is what it does sound like yeah

11:26 Ryan Haft like in this in this space like oh yeah there's like extra low end or like oh the mid range is like kind of poking out a little bit here like yeah i mean that's that's a good way to you know adapt yourself to a space you're not like completely comfortable with

11:40 Luke F. Walton very cool i like that a lot um in terms of differences between uh how you're treating

11:45 Luke F. Walton the live room versus the control room would just be curious just to kind of share with listeners or with me really like what what do you think what do you think like what what was your philosophical kind of difference there more diffusion and open in the live room or did you try to keep everything pretty dead so you could do more stuff in the box or what was your what was your plan there

12:04 Ryan Haft My my my preference for it was the live room was to like try to like. try to keep it as live as i could i

12:12 Luke F. Walton Cool.

12:13 Ryan Haft mean i like i like the rooms to sound live and i have like some rolling gobos and stuff i

12:17 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah, yeah.

12:17 Ryan Haft feel yeah you want something to sound dead you can just surround it by a bunch of things and build like a blanket fort above the drum kit or whatever if you really want to do that like

12:26 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

12:26 Ryan Haft it's easier to do that than i mean you can obviously you can create live stuff with reverbs and stuff like in that but to me it's hard to fake i mean it sounds fine but like there's nothing like

12:39 Ryan Haft the actual space being activated right so we wanted to kind of i wanted to keep it as open as i could without it being like harsh and and

12:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah, like a garage.

12:49 Ryan Haft just tuning it yeah just kind of tuning it right so we we threw up some stuff put some diffusion and some like some not broadband but like basically kind of like mid-range absorption stuff to just try to control the garagey sounding

13:02 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

13:02 Ryan Haft things because this was just there it is unparalleled walls in there but you know without treatment it still kind of sounds like a like a warehouse or

13:11 Luke F. Walton yeah

13:11 Ryan Haft a garage or

13:11 Luke F. Walton right

13:11 Ryan Haft something

13:11 Luke F. Walton yeah

13:11 Ryan Haft so absolutely

13:12 Luke F. Walton it's i mean it's that sound when people move into a new place you know like picture your apartment or whatever when you walk in for the first time and it's just like wow this feels

13:21 Luke F. Walton tough to live in or like a like a really brutal restaurant where you hear everybody's conversation all at once

13:25 Ryan Haft oh

13:25 Luke F. Walton just

13:25 Ryan Haft yeah even

13:26 Luke F. Walton stressful

13:26 Ryan Haft like yeah like you say when you move into a place and there's no furniture in it you like clap and you're like holy shit and then as soon as you throw like a carpet down and a couch and some stuff around you're like all right this doesn't feel like you know i'm in a i'm in a garage or a warehouse or something so so yeah we started it like kind of with

13:44 Ryan Haft sort of with nothing i did like some drums and then i was like all right like i was like okay there's some harsh stuff in like the upper mid-range so we we got like a skyline diffuser on one wall and then we started adding some stuff on the ceiling and you kind of

13:58 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

13:58 Ryan Haft see back

13:59 Luke F. Walton I see there it back there, yeah.

14:00 Ryan Haft yeah and it started to like tighten it up a little bit but it hasn't fully like removed like the life from it so

14:08 Luke F. Walton Cool.

14:08 Ryan Haft for

14:08 Luke F. Walton I love that.

14:09 Ryan Haft now feels all right i'm sure like i don't know in a couple months after doing some more stuff i'll be like all right we should we should change one thing or maybe take some stuff off the wall or

14:19 Ryan Haft i don't know it'll probably like be an endless endless trial and error situation yeah

14:24 Luke F. Walton yeah i mean well i feel like that's the life of the engineer is just you solve one problem you discover the next or just like the little things like oh this channel strip just isn't working today um you know just you constantly uncovering like the next thing that you have to do on your to-do list like linear problem solving yeah

14:40 Ryan Haft yeah that and like i mean in a weird way taste too like right now i'm like oh i want it live if

14:46 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

14:46 Ryan Haft you know like I guess I'll have the option like I get on these tips where I'm like yeah I want this super tight drums and then maybe I'll be like we need to put up more diffusion or we need to put up more absorption on these walls so

14:59 Luke F. Walton exactly

14:59 Ryan Haft and like

15:00 Luke F. Walton yeah that's

15:00 Ryan Haft we'll

15:00 Luke F. Walton a good see point yeah

15:00 Ryan Haft it'll be it'll be a process but

15:02 Luke F. Walton yeah but i love that I don't know just just providing yourself that flexibility and like trusting those instincts and trusting that you'll get there when you get there I think all of those are really good lessons because a lot of engineers especially when you're building your first space or building your first home studio the impulse is to do everything at the same time because like anything short you're doing it so like anything short of it being perfect is a failure or whatever it's like no even top of the line commercial recording spaces are have incremental change

15:35 Ryan Haft yeah and i just think i mean i think if you're going to be working in a space like all the time like you like you said like you kind of need to learn it a little bit like you need to spend some time in here to be to realize like all right this is something that actually needs to change or this is something like we should modify right so i

15:51 Luke F. Walton That's a good point. Yeah,

15:52 Ryan Haft think

15:52 Luke F. Walton you gotta.

15:52 Ryan Haft it takes i think it takes a little time to like actually come to those conclusions you know i mean like you could obviously just sit in here and run like a measurement test and then you know you know whatever whatever the math says you know but

16:04 Luke F. Walton I feel like you're saying

16:04 Ryan Haft Aside

16:05 Luke F. Walton the great,

16:05 Ryan Haft from the math, I think you can.

16:07 Luke F. Walton great.

16:08 Ryan Haft you know you can tweak things to your your preference right

16:10 Luke F. Walton yeah i mean if if everything was all math then it would in that way then it would just anybody could do it because you just bring those measurements and it's done it's like yeah not there's there are there are these missing elements it's like when people say like music is math or whatever it's like i don't know you're kind of missing the whole point uh sure parts of it are the magic the magic yes

16:31 Ryan Haft the magic the magic's the thing that you can't can't do on the calculator right so

16:35 Luke F. Walton On that note,

16:36 Ryan Haft and stuff around

16:37 Luke F. Walton I

16:37 Ryan Haft until magic

16:38 Luke F. Walton really want

16:38 Ryan Haft happens.

16:38 Luke F. Walton to talk to you about outboard gear because I know this is always a hot debate with music, just fans and then creators and obviously there are budget issues to have a real LA 2A versus the UAD LA 2A. Would just love to kind of like hear your perspective on you have some awesome outboard gear, I was checking out your website, the magic and the mojo of.

17:02 Luke F. Walton outboard versus uh in the box and when you kind of reach for one or the other yeah

17:10 Ryan Haft yeah i mean i guess i could bring it back for a long time i was the first studio i mentioned that i worked at called the dungeon was like a full analog spot ssl outboard gear tape machines i kind of came up using all that stuff and i guess maybe somewhere deep down i always wanted to believe that that stuff sounded better and

17:33 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:33 Ryan Haft for a long time it did i

17:34 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:35 Ryan Haft believed

17:35 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:35 Ryan Haft it did it sounded it had the thing it had the magic right like i had the sauce um i think now we're in a period of time where plugins have leveled the playing field pretty drastically um

17:50 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:53 Ryan Haft yeah i mean it's impressive i do i do actually do a lot of mixing in the box somewhat these days even though i do i am sitting in front of a big ssl

18:01 Luke F. Walton Uh-huh.

18:01 Ryan Haft i do i do like to mix on it but um

18:04 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

18:05 Ryan Haft i do i do heavily use all of this outboard gear that's here in the studio in

18:10 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm.

18:10 Ryan Haft the tracking phase i do i do see that not being replaceable so

18:15 Luke F. Walton Cool.

18:16 Ryan Haft i i the way i like to work is i do like to kind of grab sounds the way i think they should sound or the

18:22 Luke F. Walton Okay.

18:22 Ryan Haft way any the band the band or the artist thinks they should sound on the way in right

18:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

18:27 Ryan Haft so like if it should be if it should be brighter it should be punchier or it should be distorted to all shit

18:32 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

18:33 Ryan Haft um i like to i like to at least like aim at that on

18:36 Luke F. Walton Yeah, for

18:37 Ryan Haft the way

18:37 Luke F. Walton sure.

18:37 Ryan Haft in and the outboard gear you can you can push it far

18:40 Luke F. Walton Yes.

18:41 Ryan Haft you

18:41 Luke F. Walton Yes.

18:41 Ryan Haft know you can you can dime the knobs and things still sound like pleasing where you start doing that stuff from plugins and you start to reach like the upper limitations of what the plugins can do or what what they modeled appropriately right i

18:55 Luke F. Walton Right.

18:56 Ryan Haft know

18:56 Luke F. Walton And that is

18:56 Ryan Haft a lot of guys i implement yeah

18:58 Luke F. Walton it. Yeah, go for it.

18:59 Ryan Haft plugins like i implemented i mean i've listened to some interviews like chad blake talking about it that like he tries to think of plugins as not outboard gear but like as just like a new tool even though the picture of an la2a like is it really an la2a it's yeah it's not exactly the same but it is a new tool so you just you know you have to figure out ways that you can get things out of plugins

19:21 Ryan Haft a different way than you would out of outboard gear like 1176 is like outboard ones like you know you could smash them they sound pretty awesome the

19:29 Luke F. Walton Totally.

19:29 Ryan Haft plugins like you totally smash them and they start to get kind of brittlely and harsh but a lot of what a lot of people do workarounds is like you know you use like three instances of

19:38 Luke F. Walton Yep, that's

19:39 Ryan Haft a 1176

19:39 Luke F. Walton what I do.

19:39 Ryan Haft plugin doing just like a little bit and it's like it kind of gets you a closer result to like if you just took one hardware 1176 and just destroyed the shit out of the input or something like and

19:50 Luke F. Walton that's a good point and yet like a lot of i mean it makes sense why that would be the case right is like when you're driving these actual capacitors and these actual lines and

19:59 Ryan Haft transformers and shit yeah

20:00 Luke F. Walton transformers yeah like that that makes sense that that would be able to impart a sound that would be super super hard to capture and like there's some approximations like i like a black box there's this thing like true iron by kazrag that's pretty cool that's like transformer

20:14 Ryan Haft Yeah, I have both

20:14 Luke F. Walton yeah

20:14 Ryan Haft of those.

20:15 Luke F. Walton they're cool um but yeah they're not they're not quite that thing but they are enough of that thing that if you need to add like 20 you can so

20:24 Ryan Haft Right.

20:24 Luke F. Walton it's a really good good point like if you if you're getting the sound that you want in the actual tracking phase and then you need to add an extra 20 it's like hey the plug-in's got your back but if

20:32 Ryan Haft Absolutely.

20:33 Luke F. Walton you need to add 100 it's like i don't know i don't know if you're gonna

20:36 Ryan Haft get It

20:36 Luke F. Walton there

20:37 Ryan Haft gets a little tricky. And if I get sent, I mean, it happens, I get sent things that like, I do need to get about 80% of it back and I will send out, I

20:45 Luke F. Walton yeah

20:45 Ryan Haft will treat it like, all right, I am going to retract this

20:48 Luke F. Walton i'm

20:48 Ryan Haft files.

20:48 Luke F. Walton recording this yeah exactly yeah

20:49 Ryan Haft Yeah.

20:49 Luke F. Walton yeah

20:50 Ryan Haft And I will send it out to like a plethora of. of of outboard stuff and like tweak it till like i'm like this is what it maybe should have sounded like in my tracking stage and then print it back in and that is my starting point like so i kind of capture some of that stuff and then i go into like the mixing portion of it where i

21:08 Luke F. Walton that's like a really interesting not all mixing engineers think like that but i think the ones that do are the ones that really really crush it where they like look at it go okay i would attract that differently

21:18 Luke F. Walton let's re-amp it like I do that sometimes with guitars if somebody sends me a really crappy line in signal

21:23 Ryan Haft yeah

21:23 Luke F. Walton just send send them it back

21:23 Ryan Haft back out

21:24 Luke F. Walton to it tube amp send it right back in it's like great it's like we just had a nice tracking session and worked on the tone together instead of like grinding away for three hours trying to get 15 plugins to do the job it's like I've got an amp I'm just gonna throw it in the amp it's gonna take 30

21:37 Ryan Haft minutes yeah like yeah like anytime i end up on a track and then like i end up i use the fab filter pro q a

21:44 Luke F. Walton Yep.

21:44 Ryan Haft decent amount for schedules anytime i end up with like this eq curve that's like looks

21:48 Luke F. Walton Yes. Right.

21:49 Ryan Haft like this trying to like make it just sound like even that's

21:53 Luke F. Walton Yep.

21:53 Ryan Haft when i'm kind of like all right like i

21:55 Luke F. Walton Yep.

21:55 Ryan Haft got to do something else to like make this work you know like the eq curve should not have to look like that to have just like an electric guitar sound right so

22:04 Luke F. Walton Yep. Yep. I

22:05 Ryan Haft usually

22:05 Luke F. Walton totally.

22:06 Ryan Haft then then then it's like all right let me just send it out through something like I have a tape machine here sometimes I'll

22:12 Luke F. Walton Cool.

22:12 Ryan Haft hit it to like one of one of the tracks on one of the tape machines and

22:14 Luke F. Walton Perfect.

22:15 Ryan Haft usually like you could start taming the weird stuff that sounded bad and then you can end up with just like a normal EQ on your track mix like

22:22 Luke F. Walton that was a really hard thing for me uh when i was doing my first mixes because i thought like because i would use the presets or whatever i thought that like eqs had to be really drastic and and then like the more i actually just would be in a studio somebody and be like oh you're just using like a shelf it's like oh it's like okay

22:38 Ryan Haft Yeah, yeah, I mean that's been like a i mean it's an ever ongoing thing forever right and i mean i i will do like some extreme shit if it has to be done like i'm not i've had a friends coming up that like would be afraid to like

22:55 Ryan Haft yeah put the high shelf 10 db they're like 10 db that's crazy i'm like dude just close your eyes and turn it up if it sounds good sounds good so sometimes you do just got to close your eyes and make some crazy ass eq move to work but like more more and more now i've learned that like i think what you kind of just said is like yeah like you're like you know what it could be a little brighter i just need a little bit of a high shelf on one thing and that's it i don't need to use the other i don't need to use the other four bands

23:22 Luke F. Walton of Yeah.

23:22 Ryan Haft this eq

23:22 Luke F. Walton Yeah. exactly there's

23:24 Ryan Haft Yeah.

23:24 Luke F. Walton there's a plug-in that i've been really liking uh by good hurts called tilt shift and it's literally just the it's just it just does this or this it's

23:33 Ryan Haft Right.

23:33 Luke F. Walton it's

23:34 Ryan Haft Yeah.

23:34 Luke F. Walton like it's like the tone knob on decapitator basically uh but just a little more hi-fi and uh it's great because i it it prevents me from doing too much because i just go oh this just needs to be brighter db and a half i'm like oh okay it's sitting now i'm

23:50 Ryan Haft yeah

23:50 Luke F. Walton gonna step right away but like

23:51 Ryan Haft darker

23:51 Luke F. Walton before i'd be like you know like oh get the presence like here like oh really tight q which is like a little tight band for listeners um and uh it then at the end of it all i'd be like oh this sounds like thin or really bright or just weird like it doesn't sound like the instrument anymore it's became this other weird thing uh like

24:11 Ryan Haft yeah

24:11 Luke F. Walton my

24:11 Ryan Haft and it's weird it's like you you could do some crazy eq move like that with like valleys and peaks and mountains and all kinds of things and then you like like bypass that and then go to like the other one where you just do the tilt you're like just

24:21 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

24:21 Ryan Haft a bit brighter and then go back and forth and you're like just a bit brighter totally worked I didn't need to squeeze all these peaks into this thing like

24:29 Luke F. Walton Right. Especially because like... i don't know i i had a i had a problem when i was uh when i wasn't mixing and i was just in the band and just sending it to mixing engineers because they would send me back stuff and i'd be like that doesn't sound like the instrument anymore like either they sound replaced the drums or like they they did something so drastically tonally to something that it's like hey that's not what i delivered you i want

24:53 Luke F. Walton i want like

24:53 Ryan Haft You

24:54 Luke F. Walton the

24:54 Ryan Haft just

24:54 Luke F. Walton song

24:54 Ryan Haft wanted like an enhanced version of that, but not

24:57 Luke F. Walton yeah

24:57 Ryan Haft a completely

24:57 Luke F. Walton like i wanted

24:57 Ryan Haft different

24:57 Luke F. Walton i

24:58 Ryan Haft version of

24:58 Luke F. Walton wanted like a i wanted a mix of the arrangement that i provided rather than like like oh this is like a different thing now um not not saying that i like wanted the mixing engineer to not be creative it's like just saying like hey like maybe don't

25:16 Luke F. Walton uh sound replace everything or put it into this like box or your set of presets like let the song become the best version of itself yeah

25:25 Ryan Haft do its thing but i i guess i guess i can guess that those

25:29 Luke F. Walton yeah

25:29 Ryan Haft experiences are what led you into doing exactly doing it yourself yep

25:34 Luke F. Walton so it's it's not not necessarily a bad thing

25:37 Ryan Haft no yep i have the same i mean that's how i got into this too yeah same story

25:40 Luke F. Walton please i'd love i'd love to hear love to hear uh how did yeah how'd

25:43 Ryan Haft mean

25:43 Luke F. Walton you how'd you come out how'd you decide to be on the side of glass how did how did that happen

25:46 Ryan Haft i just i mean similar thing to you that you just said like i played in i played in plenty of bands we would do some recordings and they kind of would never really come out how i imagined or wanted and i didn't have i guess i didn't have like the engineering vocabulary so

26:02 Luke F. Walton No, of course

26:03 Ryan Haft to

26:03 Luke F. Walton not.

26:03 Ryan Haft like say what i wanted right i just like it should be brighter heavier whatever but so yeah at some point i just was like all right i'm gonna buy i think i bought i bought a digi002 and i bought like five 57s maybe a 1421 it's like a birthday present to myself i think when i was fucking 21 or 22 or something like that

26:25 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

26:26 Ryan Haft and the band i was playing at the time i was like all right i'm gonna record whatever however many songs we've got right now and just just do it just start to do it and just you know tweak you know plugins and

26:39 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

26:39 Ryan Haft yeah i just started doing it and then here and there like a buddy's band would just be like you know like that kind of came out cool like we do our little demo and

26:49 Ryan Haft it did did some people's demos and then you know things started getting better and i was able to like charge a little bit of money and then i got lucky and i actually the the studio that i mentioned the dungeon where i kind of got my first start i straight up just kind of emailed them was like hey i record bands like in my living room like i'd love to like maybe come by and like help out or whatever and

27:13 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

27:14 Ryan Haft i got i got kind of lucky that the owner fred at that time i think had a another young young daughter and he was just like dude i need somebody here to help me like just perfect real just bright place right time thing yeah he brought me in i was there for like a i don't know a week maybe and he realized like i knew how to record bands already and he just gave me the key was like all right cool yeah you work here like and

27:36 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

27:37 Ryan Haft then from there i just you know i i started just collecting gear kind

27:43 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

27:43 Ryan Haft of and

27:44 Luke F. Walton right.

27:44 Ryan Haft then event eventually at some point i was like yeah like i have enough stuff that maybe i don't need to work at this place and then so i started i opened up a like a studio in a house with a partner my buddy john who plays in this band Torche he's also a great engineer um so we we kind of partnered together but both of our

28:06 Ryan Haft collections of gear together and like had this sweet sweet house that had like a huge live room and a control room kind of

28:11 Luke F. Walton Awesome. Yeah.

28:13 Ryan Haft and um did that for a long time and then and then i ended up moving into the the space that was demised by the crossfit gym and then um after that i'm they'll build this place i'm

28:29 Luke F. Walton yeah man

28:29 Ryan Haft here

28:29 Luke F. Walton awesome awesome so um that that's a really cool uh thing because i was i was going to ask you um this question because i get this a lot of like how does somebody start finding bands to record or like working in that and that that you kind of answered that but feel free to expand on it but just like being in the scene recording your own stuff showing up doing

28:50 Ryan Haft yeah

28:50 Luke F. Walton your job finding your network yeah yeah that's i cool

28:52 Ryan Haft mean for me i guess maybe i don't know i don't know if it's luck or it's

28:56 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

28:56 Ryan Haft just situational

28:56 Luke F. Walton everybody's

28:57 Ryan Haft but

28:57 Luke F. Walton got their

28:57 Ryan Haft it

28:57 Luke F. Walton own journey.

28:57 Ryan Haft was it was but it was yeah i did i played in bands like i constantly was playing in bands and playing shows with other bands so like i sort of had a network of like local local bands and bands that i was friends with and bands that like eventually it expanded to like bands that like we would tour with and things

29:12 Luke F. Walton Right, yes.

29:13 Ryan Haft like

29:13 Luke F. Walton That makes sense.

29:14 Ryan Haft that yeah i mean it was it was just being out meeting bands seeing bands talking to people and then eventually like you record some bands and their buddies band is like it was like who did that and they're like oh this guy did it like and

29:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

29:25 Ryan Haft that's kind of how i did it forever like i made i mean i made a website you know that i sent you but like Yeah, i did that

29:30 Luke F. Walton doesn't.

29:30 Ryan Haft like i don't know two years ago because my girl but my girlfriend was kind of just like you fucking need to have this and i was like oh yeah i guess you're right so i mean so i made one and you know it was like fun to make it or whatever but up until then like i didn't advertise at all really it was like everything was just always word of mouth and it kind of sort of still is like

29:42 Ryan Haft up until then like i didn't advertise at all really it was like everything was just always word of mouth and it kind of sort of still is like but yeah i don't know yeah just being involved with the local music scene just music scene in general like that is what led me to finding new bands to record and like

30:02 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

30:02 Ryan Haft yeah just every single time trying to do a good job trying to make every recording I do better than the last one or the best one I've ever done this time and

30:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

30:10 Ryan Haft you know just trying to do a good job i mean i love doing it so that's not that's not a stretch to do you know but um yeah

30:19 Luke F. Walton have you found have you found that the love has increased the more you've done it or has it just been kind of this constant thing have you had any peaks and valleys with kind of your relationship to to recording production

30:30 Ryan Haft i guess there there are some peaks and valleys i still very i still very much enjoy it because it is not the same every single day every

30:39 Luke F. Walton Yes, yeah,

30:40 Ryan Haft single recording you do like i'm i'm not a big proponent of like like sound replacing things and and like using tons of sample stuff you know what i mean so like every

30:50 Luke F. Walton yep,

30:50 Ryan Haft time i record a drum set like it sounds fucking different than the last time i recorded a drum set and like same with the guitar amps like i don't really you know sometimes they sound kind of cool but i try to mic guitar amps and not use you know my model stuff so

31:05 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm.

31:06 Ryan Haft having that different every time like keeps it exciting to

31:11 Luke F. Walton Yes.

31:11 Ryan Haft me

31:12 Luke F. Walton Yes. And then how do you how do you like keep your approach different? Is it just by, you know, just listening and being like, OK, no, this would. go well in this sequence or like reevaluating your chains or or kind of approaching things like how do you how do you keep it so you're not feeling on your side like you're being too templated or you're always running the guitars through s7 57 you know like etc etc okay

31:34 Ryan Haft I don't know I guess like I guess I have a I've in the past had a problem with like gear like like I just lust for like different gear and stuff like that and I think I chase the same thing with sounds in a way we're

31:47 Luke F. Walton yeah

31:47 Ryan Haft like

31:47 Luke F. Walton i get that

31:49 Ryan Haft Like if I recorded a guitar with a 57 and a 421 last time like this next time I'm like, you know what like maybe we should try like

31:57 Ryan Haft so i can a condenser and this other thing you know like let's see if like that's a good combination

32:02 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

32:02 Ryan Haft like i mean i'm guilty of like maybe experimenting a little bit on the clock i'll be like like let's try this other weird chain or sequence of mics you know because to me it's like you throw it up and if like some magical thing happens you're like damn that's fucking sick like i can keep note of that and if it doesn't work then like it takes like two seconds to just like switch up mic and put

32:23 Ryan Haft but the 57 back which you

32:24 Luke F. Walton right

32:24 Ryan Haft know works you

32:25 Luke F. Walton right exactly you

32:26 Ryan Haft know what i mean so

32:26 Luke F. Walton have your bag and so might as well keep exploring and you might find the thing that like makes that record it like that is that magic

32:34 Ryan Haft totally and like and i i think maybe either i attract it or i don't know like i choose to work with certain bands that i feel are like open to that type

32:43 Luke F. Walton Cool.

32:43 Ryan Haft of thing you

32:44 Luke F. Walton Yes.

32:44 Ryan Haft know like like yo let's let's throw a drum room mic in the garbage can and

32:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

32:48 Ryan Haft you cool. know whatever kind of like just

32:50 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

32:51 Ryan Haft yeah like weird goofy stuff like that but i think it excites people like oh yeah like what the fuck was that gonna sound like i'm like i don't know like let's do it and then maybe it sucks maybe it doesn't work but you're like all right well you know we'll just mute that but i think

33:04 Luke F. Walton There's also...

33:04 Ryan Haft i think it makes it exciting for everybody to like try things that things that are like weird like

33:09 Luke F. Walton well

33:10 Ryan Haft yeah

33:10 Luke F. Walton that that energy is infectious too like um one of the one of my favorite things with uh miking drums is like putting a um i know a lot of people do this but putting like basically a microphone pointed right at their groin like over

33:24 Ryan Haft crotch

33:24 Luke F. Walton crotch

33:24 Ryan Haft crotch crotch mic

33:25 Luke F. Walton mic and that um like seeing drummers change the way they play when i you know crank that thing a little bit like run into this dresser or something or just like get that get that yeah and plant that in so it doesn't sound anymore like they're just playing like sterile close mic like now they have some energy

33:44 Ryan Haft yeah

33:44 Luke F. Walton just

33:44 Ryan Haft that doesn't there's like a little pumping thing happening

33:46 Luke F. Walton push pull thing and now they're hitting the drums differently and they're you know it's like those those kind of things are really interesting how they are infectious in terms of just the performance on the other side of the glass of like

33:57 Ryan Haft right right right i

33:57 Luke F. Walton you're exploring on

33:58 Ryan Haft listened

33:59 Luke F. Walton this

33:59 Ryan Haft i

33:59 Luke F. Walton side you explore on that side yeah yes

34:00 Ryan Haft can't remember if i read it or maybe i heard it in a different podcast but somebody was mentioning like like that mic like taking the crotch mic and like sending just that signal to the drummer when they're playing like you don't give them the kick snare and the other thing you send them just that because because that microphone has its own balance right it has its own balance of kick snare symbols and

34:23 Luke F. Walton yes right oh

34:24 Ryan Haft like and psychologically like if they're hearing like oh like there's too much hi-hat happening in this one microphone that they're hearing they

34:31 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah

34:32 Ryan Haft start to they start to like chill out on the hi-hat and maybe just play harder on the kick and snare and like like see like the headphone mix can kind of like change

34:40 Luke F. Walton that's so true that's

34:41 Ryan Haft change people's performances

34:43 Luke F. Walton so true i do that a lot with my vocals um is like playing with the level at which my voice is cutting through or being buried by the mix and then also like the level of my headphones um like if it's like really loud i'm going to sing differently even

34:57 Ryan Haft You

34:57 Luke F. Walton if

34:57 Ryan Haft sing quieter.

34:57 Luke F. Walton my yeah

34:58 Ryan Haft Yeah.

34:58 Luke F. Walton you know it's just like that that give and take of all those variables it yeah it fundamentally changes how you approach performance even just subconsciously i you know i

35:06 Ryan Haft Yeah. Yeah. I've always. I had never really thought about it on the drumming side of that

35:11 Luke F. Walton yeah

35:11 Ryan Haft till I heard

35:11 Luke F. Walton yeah right

35:12 Ryan Haft somebody talk about it, but I've always kind of been hip to that idea with vocals. I'm like, if I need these vocals to like push it a little harder, like I'll just send them a little less of themselves. So they got to they got to they got to give more to hear to hear it. Right. So.

35:25 Luke F. Walton right exactly exactly

35:27 Ryan Haft Yeah.

35:27 Luke F. Walton and it it's also funny because it like if you hear yourself less you end up singing a little bit more like you do when you're live because you don't hear

35:35 Ryan Haft right

35:35 Luke F. Walton yourself super well a lot of times especially if you're a more up-and-coming band you got monitor mixes and no in-ears or anything like that like kind of used to like pushing it uh but then when it's super intimate um yeah you can like kind of back off the mic and and be scared uh and interesting like the psycho acoustics or whatever the uh the

35:54 Ryan Haft it's like psychology of recording right like that's that's like i guess that's that's producer stuff right like just the weird tricks that you don't even have to not to tell anyone to

36:01 Luke F. Walton yeah

36:01 Ryan Haft like coax

36:02 Luke F. Walton right

36:02 Ryan Haft them to like perform

36:03 Luke F. Walton yeah

36:03 Ryan Haft better like yeah

36:04 Luke F. Walton some jedi mind trick kind of zen master stuff of yeah just turn this knob a little bit and you're gonna react to it differently yeah

36:12 Ryan Haft i turn you down you'll sing a little louder and everything's gonna be good

36:15 Luke F. Walton love that exactly yeah and i i love that idea of applying that to drums too especially because it's so it's so difficult i think that was the scariest thing to me when i started approaching um like live recordings with drummers especially in the beginning because i think i over mic'd um which is a natural thing that most people do when they're starting up is just put a mic on everything um

36:39 Ryan Haft That's still

36:39 Luke F. Walton it's

36:39 Ryan Haft over, Mike.

36:40 Luke F. Walton i mean it's fun but like especially in the beginning i think it it's like it's really hard to be like okay now i'm like dealing with 32 channels all at once and i'm like a new engineer or whatever it's like oh my god it's

36:53 Ryan Haft it's a lot to manage yeah still

36:54 Luke F. Walton a lot to manage yeah

36:55 Ryan Haft i mean it's still a lot to manage yeah

36:57 Luke F. Walton totally totally uh so like i i almost i felt like liberated when i started miking the drum kit less and then from there i was able to mic it more again you know if that makes sense

37:10 Ryan Haft yeah every now and then like i guess i get sent something that's like somebody had just i just like kick in snare top tom

37:15 Luke F. Walton Uh-huh.

37:15 Ryan Haft tom overhead overhead that's

37:17 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

37:17 Ryan Haft it you

37:17 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

37:18 Ryan Haft know what i mean Right. and i'm like oh i don't know if i'm gonna be able to do the thing and then like you start working on it and you're like man this shit is just like like the phase is way better so

37:26 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

37:26 Ryan Haft it sounds punchier and

37:28 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

37:28 Ryan Haft like yeah like the less things that there are like the more direct the sounds feel and

37:35 Luke F. Walton Sure.

37:35 Ryan Haft the phase is better and like

37:36 Luke F. Walton For sure.

37:37 Ryan Haft sometimes it sounds better you know

37:39 Luke F. Walton yeah

37:39 Ryan Haft so i i kind of done a similar thing where i you know whatever 20 mics on the kit to like you know what like maybe i should just do kick snare tom tom overheads that's

37:48 Luke F. Walton yeah

37:48 Ryan Haft it and then you know take it back from there and be like all right now room my room mics and then we'll leave it there lately

37:54 Luke F. Walton yeah exactly that

37:55 Ryan Haft lately i've kind of landed in that like i just have those that simple thing and then a stereo room mic and i limit myself to that

38:02 Luke F. Walton i love it and i like that too because it's like okay here's my bass line i know that if i don't have this i'm gonna regret it now what does that kit need it's like oh it needs more gut from the snare okay snare bottom you know like that those kind of like like you can react to the sound rather than just being like here's my default miking setup

38:21 Ryan Haft What what I always do yeah?

38:24 Luke F. Walton like i i own this many mics i'm going to use them all you know

38:27 Ryan Haft yeah i

38:27 Luke F. Walton that kind of

38:28 Ryan Haft mean

38:28 Luke F. Walton thing

38:28 Ryan Haft i i try to keep in my head sometimes when i mic up a ton of stuff just like i'll be like i'm gonna cover a lot of bases and chances are like i'm gonna mute a bunch of these fucking microphones like you

38:38 Luke F. Walton yes because

38:38 Ryan Haft know i'm gonna start pulling them up one by one and see what works and then like

38:41 Luke F. Walton you

38:41 Ryan Haft i don't have need all

38:42 Luke F. Walton that you

38:42 Ryan Haft of these

38:43 Luke F. Walton have to have that confidence though like yeah that discipline to be like i actually will yes

38:47 Ryan Haft yeah to me it's discipline because i've been guilty of just like it's like i record it all 18 mics all 18 mics need to make it into this balance when like really just like pull two of them out and you're like oh everything is way more clear now so like just keep it moving like

39:03 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah. And allowing like trust and room for you to react to it. um it's like i i got i think it was andrew scheps or something was talking about um how it's so natural and native to put um high pass filters on on everything other than like a kick drum but he's like sometimes the magic is in the weird floppy low end from the tom it's like just like reading and reacting allowing

39:28 Luke F. Walton the sound like you were saying with the mics

39:31 Ryan Haft yeah yeah

39:31 Luke F. Walton on the

39:32 Ryan Haft i

39:32 Luke F. Walton guitar or whatever like

39:32 Ryan Haft think i think i think i maybe heard that in a interview or something before too or i've had to like kind of consciously do that too because i've gotten to a habit of like

39:41 Luke F. Walton oh for sure me too absolutely

39:42 Ryan Haft it doesn't nothing nothing nothing happens below 60 hertz so peace out but like sometimes like like on guitars like on guitar you just like leave it open like there's a weird 20 hertz rumble happening on guitars but if you get rid of it like like guitar sound sound is big so

39:55 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah. That's a great point. I wanted to talk to you specifically about guitars.

40:01 Luke F. Walton And because I was just listening to the EP that you just sent me over on Bandcamp, and just the size of the guitars, and I was also looking at your website and your size, like make it loud. I'd love to like hear your principles of, you know, making it loud, making things hit hard.

40:20 Luke F. Walton making rock records and like letting those guitars speak and have their space so um we just love to hear a little bit about kind of like how you approach that ep and then also kind of how you approach that just in general

40:35 Ryan Haft i think in general works a little better i mean the ep is well

40:38 Luke F. Walton Yeah, cool.

40:38 Ryan Haft the ep was is is my band that i play in which

40:41 Luke F. Walton Nice.

40:41 Ryan Haft has its own demons to it i mean maybe maybe you have that same Yeah, experience

40:46 Luke F. Walton yeah.

40:46 Ryan Haft like recording my own stuff like to me though it's almost easier to like work with other people's stuff because i

40:53 Luke F. Walton It's like i'm doctors don't

40:54 Ryan Haft just yeah

40:54 Luke F. Walton operate on themselves.

40:55 Ryan Haft that's that's a that's a fantastic analogy actually um i have a i have a hard time just being um objective sometimes when Yeah, yeah,

41:06 Luke F. Walton yeah,

41:06 Ryan Haft when it's my own stuff probably because i've heard it so many times and whatever but i guess maybe just the general ethos of the whole thing maybe it kind of stemmed from just records i liked that inspired me to even want to do this i like just had big ass drums and like big ass guitars and i think um

41:24 Ryan Haft I think not maybe not a race but like maybe it was just kind of like the thing we were pushing is the who I mentioned my buddy John um

41:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

41:32 Ryan Haft we kind of came up doing this a lot together and I feel like we both were like very much like trying to make recordings that like sounded like in front of the speakers and

41:40 Luke F. Walton Yes.

41:41 Ryan Haft louder

41:41 Luke F. Walton Yes.

41:41 Ryan Haft louder louder but then like not fucked up smushed loud like loudness war stuff but so yeah I kind of always tried to strive for these big larger than life sounds but still kind of keep them natural sounding yeah

41:57 Luke F. Walton I love the in front of the speaker thing because I feel that too where it's like some records you just feel like even just on your phone sometimes it feels like it's like levitating up here how

42:06 Ryan Haft i mean

42:07 Luke F. Walton did you pull that off where it's not coming from the source

42:09 Ryan Haft for

42:09 Luke F. Walton anymore it's so cool yeah

42:10 Ryan Haft yeah like from from what i guess i've learned now that like it's um what's the right word it's like relative is it relative eq it's just like the kind of the way you eq things relative

42:22 Luke F. Walton right

42:23 Ryan Haft loudness

42:23 Luke F. Walton relative

42:23 Ryan Haft right like

42:24 Luke F. Walton yeah

42:24 Ryan Haft the you you can try to eq things in a way that like makes it feel loud but like metering wise like isn't any louder than something else right i think that's that i think that's the trick to like what you just said like it sounds like it's above your phone it's just like finding the right ways to make the mid-range sit and make things jump out of the mix and like shit like that

42:46 Luke F. Walton and all the saturation i mean like we were that's how we kind of How we kind of began this conversation was talking about all of the different outboard gear and then also the plugins and stuff and trying to coax that saturation, those transistors and

42:57 Ryan Haft Yeah,

42:57 Luke F. Walton stuff.

42:57 Ryan Haft saturation in a way just kind of like. it can like hold back transients without sounding like it's holding back transients

43:07 Luke F. Walton cool okay that

43:07 Ryan Haft or makes maybe

43:08 Luke F. Walton sense for

43:08 Ryan Haft it's i mean it's the it's the

43:10 Luke F. Walton people

43:10 Ryan Haft idea listening that

43:11 Luke F. Walton transient is like the the attack and release like the like that that initial like impact the that it's pushing into the microphone just just in case somebody doesn't know yeah

43:20 Ryan Haft right yeah and we do that like on a softer level but like i mean a guitar like a guitar amp if you you know if you hear just a guitar direct in it's just like blank blank it's like all transient right but

43:29 Luke F. Walton as yes

43:30 Ryan Haft soon as you send it through a through like a marshal amp there's no more transients but it's just like so like

43:35 Luke F. Walton yes yes yeah

43:37 Ryan Haft it's doing a similar doing a similar thing to like snare drums or vocals you know you kind of you kind of like round the top of it off and like it allows like the stuff behind it to kind of feel like it sits more

43:47 Luke F. Walton right

43:47 Ryan Haft forward and

43:48 Luke F. Walton that's a good way to put it yeah

43:50 Ryan Haft i think more now now i'm more conscious of using saturation to do these do these things where

43:54 Luke F. Walton cool

43:54 Ryan Haft in the past i think by just slamming stuff through outboard gear or mixing on a console those things were happen were happening and i just kind of was rolling with it you know now more like okay yeah like i kind of now now understand why things are happening because i'm using these tools or techniques and things

44:13 Luke F. Walton well

44:13 Ryan Haft like

44:13 Luke F. Walton i think

44:13 Ryan Haft that

44:13 Luke F. Walton that's that's like the difference between early digital and where we are now it's not just the tools got better like obviously the tools got better but it's also the engineers and stuff figured out how to use it and stack it and like have it do

44:26 Ryan Haft and

44:26 Luke F. Walton the thing

44:26 Ryan Haft come

44:26 Luke F. Walton combine exactly

44:27 Ryan Haft it now

44:28 Luke F. Walton and like

44:28 Ryan Haft yeah

44:28 Luke F. Walton that yeah

44:28 Ryan Haft everyone everyone now knows that the marriage between the like dirty analog shit going into the digital recording is like what sounds good the

44:38 Luke F. Walton yes

44:38 Ryan Haft real the real clean mic pre into the real clean digital daw kind of kind of boring you

44:45 Luke F. Walton right yeah

44:46 Ryan Haft know the the distorting tube pultec shit on the before the daw like is what sounds

44:52 Luke F. Walton yes

44:52 Ryan Haft real nice yeah

44:53 Luke F. Walton exactly it's that marriage and then because then you you get the beautiful combination this is part of the reason why i think stuff sounds better now than it ever did is you have the combination of control and like harmonics and having both you you can do so much more rather than just kind of like this is it yeah yeah

45:09 Ryan Haft yeah i mean me me and my one of my studio partners the other day we're they were like listening to a record and like i was like yo this record sounds i think it was a mars volta record we put it on or whatever and he was like so surprised how like little low end there was in it and this is you know this record was what 20 years ago because

45:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

45:26 Ryan Haft he's like man like low end in records now is like so big and

45:31 Luke F. Walton it's huge.

45:31 Ryan Haft it's big it is but it's it's because like playback systems can handle it now

45:35 Luke F. Walton Yep,

45:35 Ryan Haft and

45:36 Luke F. Walton yep.

45:36 Ryan Haft like and you don't like on tape i mean maybe i'm wrong i guess you probably could push low and pretty hard like you know on tape machines and through consoles and stuff but i think like the capturing of it in the digital environment

45:49 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm.

45:49 Ryan Haft and then being able to like control it there and

45:53 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

45:54 Ryan Haft hold it and allow it to get farther forward in the blend the blend of things allows for records to just have like fucking huge low end

46:02 Luke F. Walton And also, I mean, like delivery, I was talking to my grandpa about this, about like low end on vinyl. and you know how it was like harder in like the 60s and 70s to be able to be like here's like a super bass heavy thing and not have the needle

46:16 Ryan Haft needle

46:17 Luke F. Walton jump

46:17 Ryan Haft jump

46:17 Luke F. Walton out

46:17 Ryan Haft out

46:17 Luke F. Walton of the groove

46:17 Ryan Haft of the yeah groove right the

46:18 Luke F. Walton so you have that you have like the

46:20 Ryan Haft format

46:20 Luke F. Walton livery

46:20 Ryan Haft afford

46:21 Luke F. Walton vehicle

46:21 Ryan Haft the for the format allows you to

46:22 Luke F. Walton format

46:23 Ryan Haft have like

46:23 Luke F. Walton allows you and we have like flawless fidelity formats like on band camp like we'll drop your your your band's link into the bank for band camps and people can hear it at full res but like all that stuff that actually

46:36 Luke F. Walton that matters like you get more bass information when you're dealing with lossless formats and also i think that mastering has changed pretty drastically and kind of like the ways that mastering engineers look at creating a finished product

46:49 Ryan Haft i think yeah i think so i

46:51 Luke F. Walton yeah

46:51 Ryan Haft mean if you if you move from like the 90s into the 2000s and then in i mean i guess like the 2000s was like everyone basically asking mastering engineers like make this shit the loudest fucking thing possible mostly for cds right they were like they wanted like the cd to be like the loudest fucking cd ever and then i think it is it is obviously then now evolved that like most things are mastered

47:16 Ryan Haft headed towards just digital streaming i

47:18 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

47:18 Ryan Haft feel it's like digital streaming and vinyl right it's like those

47:21 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

47:21 Ryan Haft are the two kind of the two formats that are the most i mean streaming being the most popular by far obviously where like yeah that the the end product is different it doesn't

47:35 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

47:35 Ryan Haft need to be the loudest loudest thing because a lot of the algorithms of like spotify and all these things kind of just level you can obviously turn that thing off but i assume most consumers just download spotify and like and let it ride

47:48 Luke F. Walton Most people leave it on low res. drives

47:51 Ryan Haft yeah

47:51 Luke F. Walton me crazy

47:51 Ryan Haft you

47:52 Luke F. Walton i go into my friend's car i'm like this sounds like crap and i go on their settings like you're kidding me even your downloaded stuff is not at like 320 mp3 level but

48:01 Ryan Haft put it yeah put it 320 and then i mean you and i are probably just nerdy enough that like i go in and i take like the auto leveling thing off like yeah i want to hear it like i want to hear it like how was this made like what was what was what was the band and the whole process like this is the finished thing i want to hear that and

48:18 Luke F. Walton Exactly. Exactly. Totally agree. I don't

48:20 Ryan Haft like like some

48:20 Luke F. Walton turning

48:20 Ryan Haft some

48:20 Luke F. Walton the

48:20 Ryan Haft of the yeah

48:21 Luke F. Walton down sometimes, you know?

48:22 Ryan Haft yeah yeah i have to like convince myself that like if i if i end up doing a recording that's like a little bit quieter but like the transients jump more and like you know by lack of a better term maybe like has more fidelity but it's not as loud as like some other thing like i have to convince myself like well yeah like you could just turn it up a little bit and it sounds sick like

48:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right. i

48:43 Ryan Haft But

48:43 Luke F. Walton i yeah

48:44 Ryan Haft like people people chase the loud record things, you

48:46 Luke F. Walton i

48:47 Ryan Haft know, like

48:47 Luke F. Walton i understand why and also the perceptual loudness kind of stuff that you were talking about like i understand that even more um and that's also a tricky thing like um i've had some stuff especially on streaming that hits streaming that's um maybe would be perceptually more quiet because there's like more bass and sometimes the streaming doesn't hit the bass as hard i don't know some some interesting things like that but it's like

49:10 Luke F. Walton It doesn't

49:11 Ryan Haft it's

49:11 Luke F. Walton really matter.

49:11 Ryan Haft hard to gauge it's hard to gauge because i guess the the codex that the streaming services use to like whether like penalize and turn it down or turn

49:18 Luke F. Walton Oh,

49:18 Ryan Haft it up

49:18 Luke F. Walton yeah.

49:19 Ryan Haft or like are are from what i understand are based like

49:23 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

49:23 Ryan Haft um over over like a period of time on your track and it has a lot to do with like mid-range and low end so if you have a song that's like loud loud loud loud loud and then the whole middle of the song ends up like really quiet and not like very mid-rangey and it gets loud loud loud loud again again it may not get penalized that much because over

49:40 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

49:41 Ryan Haft over the duration of their song it didn't feel like there was a ton of like mid-range material

49:47 Luke F. Walton Interesting.

49:47 Ryan Haft in it but if you have like like just

49:50 Luke F. Walton by

49:50 Ryan Haft my stuff

49:50 Luke F. Walton yeah

49:50 Ryan Haft or like whatever rock rock stuff that's just straight mid-range blaring as loud as it can through the whole thing it's like those types of things probably like absolutely get penalized they're like oh we got to turn this thing down and like normalize it or whatever

50:03 Luke F. Walton yeah which is why i think like something like bandcamp is so cool to exist and i highly encourage all music fans to to check it out because it's like i know that audiophile people get on their high horse about loss lossless and all this kind of stuff but that's the way that you can really hear it the way that the band approved it and it'll sound

50:22 Ryan Haft They put

50:22 Luke F. Walton good on

50:23 Ryan Haft the final

50:23 Luke F. Walton any system

50:23 Ryan Haft thing there.

50:23 Luke F. Walton it's

50:24 Ryan Haft Yeah

50:24 Luke F. Walton this is it everything else is it's like it's like uh when people would buy vinyl um they would see like okay what like generation vinyl is this because it would get worse every like i was reading um a book and it was talking about like british versus uh english i mean british versus american um acts and they would send different generations of tape to each other and so each had a lesser version

50:48 Luke F. Walton version of the others um acts like because that

50:52 Ryan Haft Interesting.

50:52 Luke F. Walton would be how they would they would print the the vinyl so it like would sound way worse overseas um and it's like do you really want that or do you want to just like get this is this is better than first generation this is like zero generation it's

51:05 Ryan Haft Yeah.

51:06 Luke F. Walton it's it

51:07 Ryan Haft Yeah,

51:08 Luke F. Walton like

51:08 Ryan Haft I mean, it's a weird thing.

51:09 Luke F. Walton yeah

51:09 Ryan Haft Like there's a population of people and musicians and music fans too that like care about that, right?

51:15 Luke F. Walton yeah

51:15 Ryan Haft But

51:16 Luke F. Walton for

51:16 Ryan Haft there

51:16 Luke F. Walton sure

51:16 Ryan Haft is an entire population totally in

51:18 Luke F. Walton i just

51:19 Ryan Haft the world that could give a fuck.

51:21 Luke F. Walton feel like they're missing out it's like it's like it's like adding like enough salt to your dish or something like there's like another layer if this is your favorite thing like this is your favorite song it's like have you ever listened to it for real like it's

51:33 Ryan Haft Yeah, there's

51:34 Luke F. Walton totally

51:34 Ryan Haft probably like a little bit more emotion in it that they like,

51:38 Luke F. Walton right

51:39 Ryan Haft you

51:39 Luke F. Walton exactly

51:39 Ryan Haft know what I mean?

51:39 Luke F. Walton exactly and that's not to say that i don't love i i use stream like i love it i love having access to sample things like that's awesome but yeah if i if i'm about this and i i absolutely love it i want i want that file i want the highest res i want to have that in case you know apocalypse like i'll listen to that tune on my wave player

51:59 Ryan Haft Yeah, I mean, for the most part, I use title because it kind of touted itself as like it had all the high res stuff.

52:07 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah i like it um so i'd love to um kind of talk talk about your band um and and see uh you know kind of what you got going on anything that you'd love to you know promote um have people come your way and and listen to your stuff

52:24 Ryan Haft yeah i mean uh it's a band that we started in like 2005 did it for a lot of years toured did a couple records and then we

52:31 Luke F. Walton Uh

52:31 Ryan Haft kind

52:31 Luke F. Walton -huh.

52:31 Ryan Haft of just

52:32 Luke F. Walton Caps

52:32 Ryan Haft light

52:32 Luke F. Walton up.

52:32 Ryan Haft stuff capsule is capsules the band i'm talking about and um yeah just light stuff started to happen and we kind of didn't didn't do that project anymore

52:41 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

52:42 Ryan Haft for a while me and some of the other guys in the band had another band for a period of time we all just kind of ended up being the guys that play together like we kind of speak the same language right so we

52:53 Luke F. Walton Love it.

52:53 Ryan Haft didn't do this for a long time and one of the colin the other guitar player in the band besides myself uh he started a project kind of in the pandemic he had like a you know a collection of songs it was like hey man i kind of want to like record these so he would come he came to miami he lives in california now he came to miami and um we kind of just me and him basically just did it as like a recording project

53:16 Ryan Haft project

53:16 Luke F. Walton Yeah

53:16 Ryan Haft and then once you know once it was all done this project was called viral song and once it was all done like he we wanted to play like a couple shows so basically um basically the other guys in capsule ended up just being the band for it so

53:32 Luke F. Walton Cool.

53:32 Ryan Haft we played a couple shows as that and then as we did it we realized you know like man we haven't done this a long time we love playing with each other like

53:38 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

53:38 Ryan Haft we do it very well together we're

53:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

53:40 Ryan Haft like why don't we do some capsule stuff and we we started to get it we got an offer to go play this um this fest in Gainesville called called the fest it's like a big punk rock music festival that happens every year Gainesville Florida I think they're on like their 20th year 25th year or something

53:57 Ryan Haft something crazy we got offered to do that and we were kind of like all right yeah let's fucking do that and if we're going to do that like we should like write record a couple songs

54:05 Luke F. Walton totally

54:05 Ryan Haft so so we did that and

54:07 Luke F. Walton i love it dude

54:08 Ryan Haft they were released officially yesterday yesterday

54:12 Luke F. Walton yesterday what great timing that's awesome

54:15 Ryan Haft All

54:15 Luke F. Walton Cool.

54:15 Ryan Haft right.

54:16 Luke F. Walton All right. Yeah. So I'll definitely put that in the bio so people can check that out. I just have one last question for you. And this is kind of the thing that we do with with every everybody that comes on the show. So it's the show is called Love Music More. Segments called Love Music Why.

54:31 Luke F. Walton This is basically just your chance just to talk just poetically a little bit about like, why do you love music? Why do you love doing this? What is it about you giving so much of your life to music?

54:43 Ryan Haft that inspires you to you know wake up the next day and do it again that's man that's that's a that's a deep one i

54:49 Ryan Haft a deep one mean i don't know from a very early age i just kind of became obsessed with music i started playing guitar when i was like eight seven or eight like I mean, I got, I don't know, music just made me and everybody on the planet, hopefully, like it just made me feel, made me feel right like,

55:13 Ryan Haft Yeah. and I guess that kind of kind of addicting right like the way music can make can make you feel can make you feel all kinds of shit. It can make you feel like super hyped, it can make you cry, it can, you know, and I don't know. I just, I guess I wanted to be a part of that from

55:34 Ryan Haft Mm hmm. an early age. Like I just knew I wanted to like be involved in whatever universe that like music is.

55:43 Ryan Haft And, you know, it initially started with like playing music and like learning how to play and like trying to write songs and start forming bands. And it evolved into like now me helping other people like realize their artistic visions and

55:57 Ryan Haft Yes. make records and like. I mean I don't know it's still just exciting every day just being a part of music it's like a magical thing and like you know I've been fortunate enough to be able to travel a lot of the world like doing music stuff either playing or we didn't really talk about it but I do a lot of live sound engineering I toured with some bands and um i just i just went to china and india this

56:22 Ryan Haft Cool. last month doing No way. sound for this band snarky puppy which

56:26 Luke F. Walton Oh,

56:26 Ryan Haft is like a pretty

56:27 Luke F. Walton yeah, totally.

56:28 Ryan Haft big jazz fusion group

56:29 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

56:29 Ryan Haft yeah i do monitors for them and Awesome. um yeah i mean literally the other side of the world like thousands of people coming to just you know watch watch those guys which who are virtuosic you

56:42 Ryan Haft Yes. know musicians yeah just you know whole other culture is whole other side of the planet like also love this music you know like love music music's music's everywhere in the world and i think that's a beautiful fucking thing

56:56 Ryan Haft I agree, man. What's the difference doing, you know, live versus studio? Like, is it just a very different perspective or is it kind of same? Same things.

57:07 Ryan Haft I try not to think of it as Yeah. that different. There are different skill sets that you have

57:13 Ryan Haft For to implement. sure. I started in studio stuff and then moved into live sound. I feel like you don't have to pay attention.

57:23 Ryan Haft somebody would probably like slap me for saying this but i feel like i feel like i feel in live sound like you don't have to be as fucking detail oriented where in studios i feel like you are like a kick drum you're like

57:35 Ryan Haft Yeah, oh yeah. yeah it's like a microscope where i feel live you're like that's just sounds like a kick drum it hits next move

57:41 Ryan Haft Yeah, yeah, it on you yeah, yeah. know what i mean you find you fine-tune stuff but yeah the live sound i feel it's the same skill set of the eqing and using dynamic control to hold on to things but then you know the other layer is just feedback and

57:55 Ryan Haft Your feedback. like we were and like what we were talking about like building a new studio and like learning how the room sounds live live sound is mixing whatever in a new room every single day and

58:11 Ryan Haft Every single day. sound check has no people at it and then the show has thousands of people at it and then the whole room sounds different

58:20 Ryan Haft whole bunch of bodies absorbing yeah that but sound yeah yeah but you know but you're implementing just the same general skills as like you know this needs to be brighter now because there's people here so you know EQ

58:31 Ryan Haft yeah brighter thank you here we go exactly shelf shelf up here we go tilt shelf up is that good here it's still awesome

58:39 Ryan Haft tilt right that was this is a great conversation i learned a lot hopefully listeners did too it was it was an absolute pleasure um and

58:46 Ryan Haft yeah thank you for having me definitely check out check out um your band also put in your website so people could link up with you and see your the rest of your work and let's definitely keep in touch and I hope to make it out to your part of the country sometime very soon yeah

58:59 Ryan Haft If you do, holler, man. I will man all right really appreciate it Peace.