An Interview with Sam Moses

2:49 Luke F. Walton What's good, everybody? Welcome back to Love Music More. I am Scoobert Doobert and joined with Sam Moses from Moses Mastering. Welcome to the show.

2:58 Sam Moses Hi, thank you for having me.

2:59 Luke F. Walton I'm so excited to talk about mastering and talk about your take on finishing records, putting that final polish on and just kind of... the ways that it looks song to song because i'm sure that you get

3:11 Sam Moses Yeah.

3:11 Luke F. Walton things that are super smashed super quiet everything

3:15 Sam Moses Yep.

3:15 Luke F. Walton in between what's it look like just in terms of that initial workflow when you have a song hit your inbox yes

3:20 Sam Moses Well, at this stage, this will just be my opinion and observation of the last like 14 years. And then specifically once COVID hit, labels too and kind of everybody moved to this like very much single release and then social media kind of testing.

3:33 Sam Moses of ideas so tiktok instagram has become huge for artists and labels to you know tease a song we're working on this song blah blah blah and then if it gets traction they'll they'll end up cutting it or sometimes spoiled magic it's already done and they're just building buzz which is smart because

3:53 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

3:53 Sam Moses marketing is a lot of this industry but yeah so most of the time i say that because

3:58 Sam Moses most people are releasing singles and then i know at some point they're going to wrap that into an ep most likely then i know at some point they're going to wrap that into a record at some point and then i know at some point they'll probably do a deluxe record

4:12 Luke F. Walton Yes!

4:13 Sam Moses so there's kind of this cycle like i'm in the process of the deluxe of a few different records right now that they started releasing this record a year and a half ago cycle of their plan was you know single

4:25 Sam Moses the single marketing single marketing okay now ep now we tour that okay momentum single single okay here comes the record okay now we've got momentum features on the deluxe okay here's the deluxe i say all that too because my main focus whether i get now at this stage a single or a record is to know that i need to make every song reach its full potential from day one and then also i need to keep in mind

4:54 Sam Moses that these will probably all end up on the same record and also end up being from different mixers, producers, etc, etc. So I have to keep in mind that sometimes I know that every song can't reach the same end potential as maybe the few sonically better songs. If you've mastered, worked in audio, you'll probably learn you can...

5:18 Sam Moses You can push certain songs and when I say push it's like compression or overall loudness. If it's really well put together, sourced, mixed, then it doesn't distort, it doesn't kind of fall apart when I push it a bit more or give it some saturation. When I get a song, it's always in the context of this will probably end up next to 10 to 15 other songs. And so I have to keep that in mind.

5:40 Sam Moses I always have tons of notes in my sessions, you know, of what I did and kind of where we landed for loudness and compression, dynamic range,

5:49 Luke F. Walton What

5:49 Sam Moses and true

5:50 Luke F. Walton peak. does that look like? Are you putting those notes within the notes

5:52 Sam Moses It's

5:52 Luke F. Walton section

5:52 Sam Moses all in

5:53 Luke F. Walton of tools tracks?

5:53 Sam Moses logic. And I have a unique workflow. So I started in a band and then that moved into.

5:59 Sam Moses like the post-production into producing mixing and mastering kind of accidentally happened this was 15 16 years ago and my workflow for mastering became very much how I approached like mixing you know which is to me very creative busing aux parallels effects and when I got mastering and when I started we started sending stuff off when I was just producing or mixing

6:26 Sam Moses It just felt like there was such a disconnect in the creativity to me of like every other process stage of making a song felt creative, collaborative, communal. When it got to mastering, it just felt transactional. It was kind of how a lot of people feel like it's a mystery or like it's, you know, a fairy duster. It's whatever. And I really just think that equals it's misunderstood.

6:51 Sam Moses And it's misunderstood because, in my opinion, the word mastering has been hijacked, which is kind of an extreme word, but hijacked and watered down to two bus processing.

7:02 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

7:02 Sam Moses So when we watered it down to that and more so when plug-in companies started saying this is mastering, meaning a limiter equals mastering, that really got us going down.

7:14 Sam Moses kind of the confusing route of what a great master engineer can offer which to me is bringing peace of mind being able to listen to a mix having consumed so many records that are finished records that are out you know if you've studied those records and I think if you've done due diligence which I've learned over my career a lot of master engineers kind of stumble into it and then they kind of just like have massive imposter syndrome their whole career of like

7:41 Sam Moses They don't really know why it's better. They don't know how to call something done. They don't have a process. They just kind of go with their gut and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And for me, I was just like, my brain likes to have systems.

7:55 Sam Moses So I looked at other industries and thought, well, other industries have ways to call something done. And I've talked about either making a pizza before, depending on the type of pizza you want to make, there's a recipe in context. If you want to make Neapolitan, it's double O flour. Usually it's X amount of, you know, days to rise. It's a special water.

8:15 Sam Moses It's a special temperature. If you follow that, you will indeed get the Neapolitan. Pizza, if you want deep dish, it's usually, you know, organic bread flour, it's a different method, different tomatoes, that'll get you that style. And so with art, I think for a long time.

8:33 Sam Moses people have always done like well how do you actually know something's done how do i know when my song's done and really i simplified it to well if you're wanting to compete in the commercial market then we know the end product goal like the end goal is to compete in the commercial market they want to make money they want to make a living off of it okay so you got to play the game and the game is the commercial market usually

8:55 Sam Moses you can accept that that's what it is or you can try to do it another route the other route usually isn't profitable for people and that's not good or bad that's kind of the reality like i'm in the music industry an industry a billion multi-billion dollar industry it's about entertainment art and making money and the money you know funds all that so

9:16 Sam Moses For me, I just started looking at commercially successful records many years ago, studying them more in depth than pretty much any master engineer I know at this stage, to be honest, like when I've talked to who were kind of mentor from afar and now peers,

9:29 Sam Moses I just broke everything down into studying what does 50 hertz and below do on all these records and 50 to 100 and 100 to 200 and, you know, here's the top 10 records and here's where the kick actually lives. Here's where the vocal lives. Here's where. You know, dynamic ranges, here's where loss is, here's where RMS is, here's where true peak is.

9:51 Sam Moses and how those four correlate heavily into the end product you get and there are definite patterns within those four numbers when you're at final volume that definitely determine how well a song sounds how big it sounds how it's perceived and how it's going to translate i'm not really ready to share it on a podcast but like i have the sam meter workflow in logic which circles back to why do i work in logic

10:19 Sam Moses Because of my workflow, I cannot create the system and the way I blend parallel and or almost mix at mastering the

10:28 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

10:28 Sam Moses tracks together, you know, and use my meter system that basically paints a picture without me really even needing to listen, which I never do. I love listening. That's why I got into this because I love records.

10:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

10:41 Sam Moses But at this stage, I have it so dialed in, especially if I can look at a frequency chart or an analyzer with it. To pretty much, I could tell you what a song sounds like and how compressed it is.

10:52 Sam Moses and you know whether it's bass heavy or not or how dense it is by just looking at my meters and knowing how songs look you know with five or six numbers especially when I can look at the mix and that's how I get to the finished product it's as simple as every song starts at point a and we need to get to point b point b is the finished product that's coming out commercially to the world so point a mix I mean this is going to be the most simple way you can think about mastering

11:19 Sam Moses and you'll have the exclusive of it because i've probably never broken it down like this publicly yet it's

11:25 Luke F. Walton fantastic

11:25 Sam Moses in my book i'm writing actually

11:26 Luke F. Walton great cool

11:27 Sam Moses that's coming out um

11:28 Luke F. Walton usually we do the plugs at the end but where do people find where do people find the book like you got a website or on your instagram or

11:34 Sam Moses you'll know on my instagram so it's called finishing records um

11:38 Luke F. Walton love it great

11:38 Sam Moses yeah

11:38 Luke F. Walton title yeah

11:39 Sam Moses in it is the final chapter is how i master and i you know i've written it a thousand different ways but i simplified it to The mix starts at point A. We've got to get to point B, which is finished. People go, well, how do I know it's finished? Finished is the commercial market genre you're working in for 99% of people. It's Justin Bieber

11:58 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

11:58 Sam Moses song. It's Katy Perry. It's whoever you want it to be. So I measure mix A and I look at DR, Lust, True Peak, RMS.

12:09 Sam Moses you know those things you know you can read those numbers and when i talk lust really i'm just doing momentary in the course on average because that's usually the loudest part and then you can measure um you know point b your your hit song you're chasing which

12:22 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

12:23 Sam Moses everybody's chasing a song usually even

12:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

12:25 Sam Moses if they're like we don't have any references i'll send it back like well we actually wanted it to be like this you

12:30 Luke F. Walton Cool.

12:30 Sam Moses know

12:30 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right,

12:31 Sam Moses that

12:31 Luke F. Walton right.

12:31 Sam Moses would have been great

12:32 Luke F. Walton That would have

12:32 Sam Moses to

12:32 Luke F. Walton helped.

12:32 Sam Moses know from so

12:33 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

12:33 Sam Moses i always do deals i'm like are you sure there's no references and they're

12:36 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

12:37 Sam Moses like oh yeah well we were jamming this 12 song playlist you

12:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

12:40 Sam Moses know but

12:40 Luke F. Walton right.

12:41 Sam Moses like great thank you

12:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah. 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 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

13:21 Luke F. Walton So thank you. Thank you for supporting my music and I can't wait for you to hear it actually on physical vinyl. Enjoy the rest of the episode.

13:29 Sam Moses But anyway, you know, you get a measurement of the final product. So now it's a matter of how do we go from A to B. And that's where to me the skill set of mastering comes in and the actual technical side of, well, you know, how does compression impact RMS? How does, you know, EQ impact all those things, RMS loss, you know, true peak.

13:48 Sam Moses And so there's a lot more that goes into it that I explain in the book and we don't have time today, but essentially I have honestly.

13:56 Sam Moses made mastering into a very simple process that if you can figure out where you start and you know where you need to end which everybody pretty much does and you kind of do the due diligence of measuring and then you learn the skill set which is the hard part the 10 000 hours to

14:13 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

14:14 Sam Moses get you from a to b it really makes a lot of sense to me and it's not very complicated 14 15 years into it i say that's not very complicated you know i kind of approach mastering and that's circling back to like the first question of you know when a song comes in a single whatever it's it's keeping all that in mind so the first song that comes in from an artist i make those measurements where's it at dr rms lofts true peak you know

14:40 Sam Moses and i'll write that down in logic and then that becomes kind of like our starting point you know i'll have a conversation up front are there more singles do you think it's going to roll into an ep you know a record and usually they're like oh yeah we yeah that's our goal you know

14:53 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

14:53 Sam Moses we may not have the money or we don't know what that looks like but yes you know almost every artist of course they want to keep making records you

14:59 Luke F. Walton Totally.

14:59 Sam Moses know why not that's why they're doing it So, you know, that becomes kind of like for me that context and boundaries are rules in which I know I need to stay within. So we get that first song through the door. It's usually very close to the reference they were chasing and then I'll write that down and then that becomes my point A and B.

15:18 Sam Moses So anything else that comes in, I know, OK, I don't want to overshoot point B, but

15:23 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

15:23 Sam Moses next song that comes in, I'm not going to make even louder.

15:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

15:27 Sam Moses like you

15:27 Luke F. Walton Right.

15:28 Sam Moses know we're not gonna make it super bassy when the first one's not unless there is very specifically sometimes you will have artists and this is kind of shifting where they just don't care because we really do live in a a playlist type of like industry there's this kind of wrestling right now i see where people are making records again where it's like top to bottom intentionality meaning they hit they want you to hit play and go through all 12 songs you

15:52 Sam Moses But then there's also this rub of like, well, the consumer, usually we have a lot of data, they don't listen that way. They do playlists, they do curated playlists, you know, they're going Spotify and Spotify will say whatever, you know, your mood or here's your songs and it's 30 random artists. and that's how we know usually new artists get discovered is

16:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

16:12 Sam Moses via or you know organic

16:13 Luke F. Walton Has that affected the way that you think about mastering? Especially if you look back across this 15-year career,

16:19 Sam Moses yeah

16:20 Luke F. Walton that wasn't really the case 15 years ago.

16:22 Sam Moses right correct

16:22 Luke F. Walton It very much is the case now. Has that changed any amount of just like the way that you think about it or listening to it in that like 12-song playlist maybe of references?

16:30 Sam Moses yeah i mean it it changes in that most people Whether they know what they're saying or not, at the end of the day, they want the song to be very competitive and loud, you know, and whether that's good or bad. And when we say loud, we're just talking about compression. We're saying a song is more loud more often on average.

16:49 Sam Moses That is essentially what compression is doing. It's lowering the peaks and it's raising the valleys to more of a brick. That is compression. It's not really volume. It's actually at the end of the day, compression and or limiting is making it quieter because it's lowering that peak that what was loud up here is now down here. It's just we all use makeup gain or auto gain so then it cranks it back up.

17:13 Sam Moses So then we think it's louder, but what's really it's just all more louder and more consistent all

17:20 Luke F. Walton Across an

17:21 Sam Moses of here. Sorry.

17:22 Luke F. Walton average,

17:23 Sam Moses Right.

17:23 Luke F. Walton yeah. Yeah.

17:24 Sam Moses So technically it's actually quieter, but that's another day. and that's all fine like i'm not i make really compressed records all the time that's what i grew up on listening didn't have a problem with it before i knew what that was you know so it's not a problem now i always honor the art if they want dynamics and they know kind of what that means we do that if they want to blend i know where that lands you know if they want compression i know where that lands they want loudness so to answer your question yes i usually lean more compressed and loud because it's probably going to end up on a playlist

17:56 Sam Moses that is also by usually other engineers or mixers that have already compressed it because people like the way that sounds they like the energy they like the consistency it's what they grew up listening to a lot like me and so anything that's way far different often feels quote unquote wrong it's

18:14 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

18:14 Sam Moses not wrong but for someone growing up who listened to lots of compressed records and for a lot of time like i listened to illegal downloads you know just the worst encoding so like distortion is just how i thought songs sounded and then social media really reinforced that especially tiktok because early on in tiktok and i should measure this again it's been a while but tiktok would just auto gain your your song when you would use it

18:37 Sam Moses So I genuinely have this theory where I think TikTok actually shaped the distorted hyper pop 808 sound because

18:44 Luke F. Walton Cool.

18:44 Sam Moses when people started uploading their songs that were not distorting in the bottom end when TikTok started, you would play it back on TikTok and it would automatically just fuzz out because they added like a gain clipper to enhance it or something. And I genuinely think like that. This would have been like six, seven years ago. There was a dramatic shift to where I think people were so unaware.

19:06 Sam Moses that songs can sound different from your social media to if you listen to it if you have the original wave it's not distorting but on social media it's distorting so then they go well that's cool so now i want my 808s to distort so then they distort it in that then it go through tiktok again so now you've got like distortion on distortion and that really i think shaped where we are with like hyper pop and a lot of kind of the low-end 808 distortion sounds that are in pop and rap i genuinely have this like

19:35 Sam Moses It's conspiracy slash I feel like proven theory that TikTok has shaped sonically the record. so you know i believe you know most people have the best chance when we compress the record so when i think about where they're gonna be consuming records or the audience it's probably going to be on spotify and

19:54 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

19:55 Sam Moses it's always so funny because my clients like 99 of them only talk about spotify like never not never rarely apple or youtube even though youtube is like i'm gonna this will be probably a misquote but i thought i read somewhere like youtube was actually the most consumed to place for music like in the world because of internationally it's easier to get youtube than spotify you

20:16 Sam Moses I understand that. know people are always concerned about spotify so i feel like i've become an expert in spotify and what it does you know in the coding process of normalization and how that interacts and you know they're always shifting things so i'm always measuring things you know i think that's all important that's part of a master engineer's job is to know these things in order to bring peace of mind to the client that when their song comes out

20:39 Sam Moses out it's gonna still be intact and

20:41 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

20:41 Sam Moses represent as close as possible to what we were all hearing and knowing what that algorithm is probably going to do to their song and when i earn the trust and explain that to people you know they're cool with it and then it comes out and they're like you're absolutely right like sounds great it's louder than most which it technically isn't but it's just i know how to make songs pop out and i want to say too at the same time

21:06 Sam Moses i have plenty of big songs that are quiet you know like it's important but not important and i always tell the client like the most important thing is a are you stoked on the song like because if you're not you're not going to sell it like you've got to be confident in the song so that's always my number one goal is like

21:24 Sam Moses you know confidence over like sonic perfection so in my gut if i'm like oh it's a little muddy but like oh my gosh it's exactly how i want it this is the song it's good it sounds great everywhere in all my systems you know then i am stoked and in my gut i'm thinking you know yeah where it is it's gonna sound good pretty much everywhere it's their art i'm just the medium i want them to be stoked on it and you know then they'll sell it and then outside of that it's you know you got to have great marketing

21:52 Sam Moses You know, great marketing, pushing the song always. I will always take like a great marketing plan and a decent song over, you know, a great song with no marketing.

22:03 Luke F. Walton interesting i've

22:03 Sam Moses If you want.

22:04 Luke F. Walton seen a lot of people spend a lot of money on some pretty bad songs i feel like there's a there's at least a a floor that

22:11 Sam Moses Yeah.

22:11 Luke F. Walton you have to meet like an entry fee of the song needs to be at least at least not necessarily like great in the like it could stand up against hotel california or something like that

22:21 Sam Moses right

22:21 Luke F. Walton like it's

22:21 Sam Moses right

22:21 Luke F. Walton a classic it doesn't have to be like that it can be goofy as hell but

22:24 Sam Moses yeah

22:24 Luke F. Walton it has to have an it factor to the song

22:28 Sam Moses it

22:28 Luke F. Walton something

22:28 Sam Moses has to have something sticky or marketable i would almost be like well they probably then had bad marketing because like a lot of money doesn't equal good marketing we know that yeah you could drop 100 grand into a song and it go nowhere but you spent it with a bad pr company you put it all in a music video that wasn't important instead of doing 100 five second tiktoks like

22:49 Sam Moses to me money doesn't always uh equivalent to good marketing you could have great marketing with a thousand bucks that can go a long way especially knowing social media is free you know to create the content so but yeah i mean it's got to be got to be something that the general public would be interested in and that usually does i mean at the end of the day there's something cool about it if it's sonically or there's a catchy lyric or it's viral or it's shocking that's a lot of shock you know we

23:17 Sam Moses you know we've we've moved into a lot of lyric shock you

23:20 Luke F. Walton i

23:20 Sam Moses know

23:20 Luke F. Walton think

23:20 Sam Moses over time

23:20 Luke F. Walton those shock songs though are pretty ephemeral it can launch somebody it can it can turn them into a career but

23:25 Sam Moses 100

23:26 Luke F. Walton like somebody that like lil nas x somebody might say is shock but like those are good songs produced

23:32 Sam Moses oh great song

23:32 Luke F. Walton in interesting ways and like you know what i mean like

23:35 Sam Moses yeah i'm not saying shock is negative all

23:37 Luke F. Walton yeah i

23:38 Sam Moses of them

23:38 Luke F. Walton am

23:38 Sam Moses are shock

23:38 Luke F. Walton yes

23:38 Sam Moses was I'm not here to it's not my art I'm

23:41 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

23:42 Sam Moses just one little medium filter in which hopefully to bring peace of mind to tell you when your art comes out it's going to sound good everywhere that's

23:49 Luke F. Walton Love that.

23:50 Sam Moses my only goal

23:50 Luke F. Walton Yes.

23:50 Sam Moses whether you want to say I mean there are times where I've drawn the line where for me I'm like it's a razor yeah yeah

23:56 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Right.

23:57 Sam Moses and

23:57 Luke F. Walton Right.

23:57 Sam Moses in my gut or sexist thing where I'm like I can't like I'm not gonna do that so I just I don't even comment though like I just say you it's not a good fit find

24:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

24:08 Sam Moses someone else

24:09 Luke F. Walton Nice.

24:09 Sam Moses i would get that i

24:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

24:10 Sam Moses don't i have a mantra in my life that has taken me very far in all of life but mastering which is like engage or manage so i've filtered everything through engage or manage do i want to engage in this which means like heavy investment

24:24 Sam Moses you know reconnoissance question or do i just need to manage this meaning like it's a top view i'm not emotionally invested i'm not judging and 99 of the time everything is managed like rarely do you need to engage and bring in your personal in my opinion my my personal beliefs at the end of the day 99.9 of the time do not play a factor until

24:43 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

24:44 Sam Moses something comes across the desk which is only like three or four times in 14 years where it's like I can't touch that like

24:51 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

24:52 Sam Moses it is so far offensive or insensitive. that i just i can't support that and

24:59 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

24:59 Sam Moses it's probably still art to somebody but at this stage like point zero zero zero zero zero one percent you know of what's come across my desk most what comes across my desk is awesome and the people are awesome there's nothing cooler than music well than art because these songs don't exist and then they appear like out of the abyss people pull them out of the ether or from the lord or the universe or wherever they believe it comes from

25:22 Sam Moses um

25:22 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

25:22 Sam Moses that they're pulling things that didn't exist then we you know tangibly put music to instrumentation and then i get to be a part of that and then it's like you know as far as i know it's it's just always there forever it's eternal and to play a part in that whether it's a brand new artist or a bigger artist now like

25:42 Sam Moses every song to me is so so so special that I get to participate in that creation process and know that forever and even now I have two kids like it's they'll get to know like these are the records dad worked on

25:55 Luke F. Walton Yes.

25:55 Sam Moses you know and and like that is very special and I think it's important to participate in things like that in the creation process I think gives a lot of fulfillment to me and others and that's why I still get stoked like 14 years into this

26:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

26:10 Sam Moses you know a lot of people ask like what are you so excited to work on and I'm like anything anything

26:15 Luke F. Walton Dude,

26:15 Sam Moses yeah

26:15 Luke F. Walton that's one of the things I'm most jealous about for a mastering engineer such as yourself.

26:19 Sam Moses oh

26:20 Luke F. Walton You're able to work on so much music. You have like the

26:23 Sam Moses yeah absolutely that's yeah

26:24 Luke F. Walton best perch imaginable

26:25 Sam Moses it's kind of

26:25 Luke F. Walton for

26:25 Sam Moses crazy

26:26 Luke F. Walton music.

26:26 Sam Moses it's just I love finishing things so like i i can see it now like when i was a kid i loved like checklists and like school is just like i would beg the teachers can you give me a syllabus for a whole year like just let me just plow through that

26:39 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

26:39 Sam Moses you know most of them wouldn't but you need to you know go through i'm like no just give me every book every project like and in six weeks i'll be done like let me just be done and some when i got to college teachers were more like here's the year syllabus and i'd be like sweet see in two months like the whole year is going to be done outside of tests And some like group group projects that I can't do on my own.

26:59 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

27:01 Sam Moses you know when i got into mastering i was like it's probably a dopamine hit on some level for sure of like oh i get to be at the end and finish a record every day and

27:10 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

27:10 Sam Moses then it's like it's something new it's a new team every day and over the years like i built up consistent clients and labels so there's similar teams but you know the personnel behind it changes new producer new writer new artist new songwriter and yeah for me it's like never boring there's never a dull day in mastering like it's

27:27 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

27:28 Sam Moses always

27:28 Luke F. Walton yeah.

27:28 Sam Moses shifting it's always you know i feel like i've always got to be doing due diligence of studying the records that are out and and one of the biggest joys as i've done this longer because i'm like an old fart now it feels like because i'm i turned 37 which is young but i'm old in music years especially for artists a lot of time you know there's so many clients i have that were like

27:51 Sam Moses you know 10 years old when i started you know they didn't exist like i tell people that all the time within my business you know like you get really concerned you know it's important to build a client list an artist and blah blah but like at some point seven years ago i went through this transition where like a lot of my clients just quit they had made their three

28:13 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

28:13 Sam Moses records they

28:13 Luke F. Walton yeah,

28:14 Sam Moses were 37 it

28:15 Luke F. Walton yeah.

28:16 Sam Moses worked as far as they wanted to they had kids and they're done and then i was like oh wait a second i see this kind of like ripple and

28:23 Luke F. Walton Yep.

28:24 Sam Moses even studio shutting down not even because they went out of business just when i met the guys they were 50 and now they're 62 and they're retiring you know so they shut that's a whole book gone of business so now a lot of my clients you know like i didn't know them five years ago and they weren't even making records like some of the young belmont students that i love working with they're 18 you know like that's

28:46 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

28:46 Sam Moses great like i can almost be their parent you

28:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

28:49 Sam Moses know

28:49 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

28:49 Sam Moses i'm like i am what 19 years older than them which is crazy to say out loud

28:54 Luke F. Walton Yes.

28:54 Sam Moses but you know like these young young they're adults young adults i hate calling kids because they're not they're smart and smarter than i was it keeps me young on some level but keeps me having to do due diligence and they're always sending me references this is what's

29:10 Luke F. Walton The

29:10 Sam Moses fun

29:10 Luke F. Walton best. best yes the

29:11 Sam Moses i'm

29:11 Luke F. Walton best

29:11 Sam Moses like who's

29:12 Luke F. Walton yeah

29:12 Sam Moses that you know like who's you know when i talk about hyper pop i'm like so deep

29:16 Luke F. Walton yeah

29:16 Sam Moses in hyper pop

29:17 Luke F. Walton totally

29:17 Sam Moses you know it's kind of relatively new and it's gained speed and then it's kind of bled into all the genres but you know i discovered a lot of that six seven years ago via tiktok via some young clients that i got connected with and forever grateful because it's always just like oh wow i didn't know that was possible you know i never thought about

29:36 Sam Moses and they're doing it on accident pushing into digital clipping or whatever plug you know there's no rules ever really i mean there's techniques that seem to yield a certain end product so that's kind of good to know but then out of that it's like go create yes

29:49 Luke F. Walton yeah well and and luckily those techniques that yield that end product are fairly flexible like you can incorporate

29:54 Sam Moses they

29:55 Luke F. Walton a

29:55 Sam Moses are yes

29:55 Luke F. Walton digitally clipped 808 and

29:57 Sam Moses yes

29:57 Luke F. Walton then like have a really crisp vocal too and it's like hey this now this sounds like top 40 like before it might not have and that sounds like i've been watching the hyper pop where it almost is less of a genre now and just is part of pop like it just like

30:11 Sam Moses yes

30:11 Luke F. Walton the beast swallowed it

30:12 Sam Moses i mean i love what i do i still love what i do talking about mastering i just adore it like it's i wake up every day just so so so dang grateful to have work to have anything come across the desk and i've been doing this long enough now too where some of the bigger artists you know or some things that have won awards like I started with those artists when they were zero,

30:33 Sam Moses Yeah, you cool. know, like they were that came across the desk, no following, no, no first song.

30:41 Sam Moses you know and they do a song and then they do three and then we do an ep and they're gaining oh and now a label's entering now distribution and then six years later you know the record's gold the record platinum blah blah now they're nominated and now they're writing co-writing so now their circle you know and we've kind of all done

30:56 Luke F. Walton Yes.

30:56 Sam Moses this together and the mixers we've all done this that's why i get excited about anything that comes across it's almost like a lottery ticket every day i like work on something like oh there's another i just bought another ticket you

31:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

31:07 Sam Moses know like you just never

31:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

31:07 Sam Moses know there's some songs that you know got real big that I'm like

31:11 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

31:12 Sam Moses I would never

31:12 Luke F. Walton yeah.

31:12 Sam Moses pin that to be that way not

31:15 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

31:16 Sam Moses a negative way just like it is so unpredictable for

31:20 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

31:20 Sam Moses the most part of what will pop off and that to me is kind of fun i think for artists that frustrates the heck

31:26 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

31:26 Sam Moses out of them and

31:26 Luke F. Walton right.

31:26 Sam Moses i try to help my clients i think that's why my clients come back they they know i'm playful you know like i'm curious about the process i'm always learning i'm always engaging i'm always like yeah let's think about that let's try that let's dial that in uh you know i always tell my clients know like the no leads the yes that's my other mantra of like

31:44 Sam Moses if you want to run a v3 with more bass we're doing it and if you go back and go no v2 was it or v1 was it you know sometimes i had it today my client was like oh i'm sorry for being such a pain in the butt i want v1 and we ran v3 you know three and i said no to know that we ran went down those routes and i and i tell everybody like v1 when i send it back like i'd be so proud for it to come out

32:08 Luke F. Walton Mm.

32:08 Sam Moses I will not send something back that I am unsure on because to me, like if you are guessing, you're not mastering. Like I really believe that and that kind of.

32:19 Sam Moses confuses people sometimes like well how do i start then and it's like well start studying records like start doing the work you know so you're not guessing how do you not guess on any other thing in life you do the work you start putting in the reps you talk to people you learn you fail if we do like a v3 and we circle back to v1 like with a client day she said i'm such a pain in the butt i'm so sorry no absolutely not like this is the fun part that's the other thing i'm always like we're at like 98

32:46 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

32:46 Sam Moses like I get to be a part of this fun two percent or sometimes it's like 15 percent but most time it's like we're pushing it a little bit and you know I always tell the client like this is the fun taste this is you know in food I love food I love cooking like what type of salt are we using you know is it tasting salt is it coarse salt is it sea salt because it all pushes it a different direction your experience and taste

33:09 Sam Moses and that's to me a bit of like i deliver v1 that i'm stoked on i feel like it is showing off the mixes doing well i feel like it translates and competes and then from there we're tasting we're

33:19 Luke F. Walton Yes,

33:19 Sam Moses and sometimes like what if it's a little more spicy i'm like great and they're like oh it's way spicy you blew out my palate you know like

33:26 Sam Moses step back or you know actually i don't want this song to be spicy we'll go back to so anyway that's where my brain goes there's a high correlation of food and and

33:35 Luke F. Walton It's good.

33:35 Sam Moses music for me

33:36 Luke F. Walton I see the through lines. 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.

33:52 Luke F. Walton screen right you click on the dot dot dot on spotify under there it says rate show and you go and you click it five stars if you could do that for me that's the best way for the algorithms all this stuff to share it out with the world i know that it's a lot to ask but if you could please please please just please just hit those three dots and a five star would really help us out and helps us you know get the get the word out and spread the love of music so thank you if you're listening on youtube you know what to do like subscribe all that good stuff

34:19 Luke F. Walton Thank you so much. And here's the rest of the episode. So you can't dangle out the carrot of studying Spotify without me picking that up at some

34:26 Sam Moses Yeah,

34:26 Luke F. Walton point.

34:27 Sam Moses right

34:27 Luke F. Walton I'm really curious about, you don't have to give any secrets or anything necessarily, but the mindset, the methodology, like how do you go about saying, okay, just like probably somebody who's writing for chamber music went into the chambers and listened to their music. It's like, okay, this is what I probably should do for my next composition or whatever. The analogous thing, how do you go about it?

34:48 Luke F. Walton What have you been, what is it that's like differentiated?

34:51 Sam Moses you know shout out in theory to iStop like RX11 came out with stream preview and I was part of that beta testing and and giving ideas to that and I brought a large body of work and education to that testing of saying like hey and Bill we had him on my old podcast he's a big fan of kind of the work I was doing and whatnot you know I love Bill he's awesome and he helps develop amazing tools and then

35:17 Sam Moses And then brought me on for beta in this latest stream preview. I brought a lot of my, you know, 14 years of observations, you

35:24 Sam Moses Yes. know, because I really grew up on a Spotify. most my music's on spotify not on cd like or vinyl so

35:30 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

35:30 Sam Moses digital is really my expertise on some level i just brought to the table to them like when i measure this song on a playlist it's measuring this but on the artist page it measures this and on the single release it measures this it is not linear normalization is not linear

35:48 Sam Moses And then when you get into third-party apps that don't even have normalization, you throw in a curveball. So that's like TV, you know, web apps, Sonos. There's so many third-party apps that don't even do normalization.

35:59 Sam Moses so that really should make you at the end of the day go i'm gonna run this song essentially as hot to zero as i feel comfortable doing which is usually to zero and then i'm going to compress it so it's more loud more often so when it is on all those very public devices like restaurants grocery stores sonos it doesn't use normalization so like if you are subscribing to kind of

36:24 Sam Moses a lot of the the noise that has been on the internet about master to this level and this or even if you unfortunately if you follow spotify's guidelines because they'll say like we play back negative 14 fs try to do that and try to not over do negative two db true peak if you turn in songs that way

36:45 Sam Moses at that level and don't let them normalize it down to that level so you know your song's gonna be like probably anywhere from eight to ten db lower you

36:53 Luke F. Walton Whoa.

36:53 Sam Moses know playback instantly

36:55 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

36:55 Sam Moses if you were to follow any of the loud voices on the internet like

36:58 Luke F. Walton Right

36:59 Sam Moses just

36:59 Luke F. Walton into

36:59 Sam Moses yeah

36:59 Luke F. Walton the background of that restaurant.

37:00 Sam Moses yeah

37:01 Luke F. Walton You don't exist anymore.

37:02 Sam Moses and unfortunately that happened um and there's a lot of fear around those sorts of marketing you know type of things people selling plugins and ideas but i feel like sometimes honestly honestly spotify doesn't even understand its own normalization um you know and what it's doing and you know how it impacts songs but you know with rx11 stream preview

37:21 Sam Moses The long story short of that is I was observing all these things and told them and they kind of implemented that and then Dale Becker was doing some similar work with that and I had reached out to him and we kind of all connected the dots to each other and connected each other. There's something happening here that's nonlinear I'm observing.

37:40 Sam Moses So I say all that because I noticed that was happening. So your song could be in a playlist one spot and sound louder than the others and the next playlist sound quieter.

37:49 Sam Moses lighter than the surrounding songs or in the artist page for single page so that kind of impacts just a framework for clients so sometimes clients will say hey on this playlist i'm on my song sounds quieter than these or louder than this if they're really studying i always kind of know like i let's first let's validate that concern yes you want your song to be loud and competitive like i get it

38:14 Sam Moses if i had that happen to me i'd kind of be like what the heck happened here but at the end of the day i know like it's within like one loss like

38:21 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

38:21 Sam Moses like the normalization is really good at the end of the day it really is pretty accurate

38:27 Sam Moses And then I also know that they are in their own echo chamber of songs or the playlist that they've created. And

38:34 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

38:34 Sam Moses then when they say, well, it's louder than this song or quieter than this song, I also know they're not actually A being in a list.

38:41 Luke F. Walton yeah

38:41 Sam Moses They're hitting play, stopping. you know going to the next course of that song hitting play stopping then going to there is hitting play you know moving it to 232 and it's that's such an inaccurate way to really go is it louder and then usually it comes down to something specific well the vocal is louder

38:59 Luke F. Walton Yes.

38:59 Sam Moses or the drums hit harder so then it's a reframe

39:02 Luke F. Walton Or a different arrangement or something

39:03 Sam Moses yeah

39:04 Luke F. Walton like

39:04 Sam Moses different that. arrangement or like I could then go, you know, early on I would help educate a bit more and now I have a template in my email that really explains it well, so it still gets asked, you know, once a month. I could go to the song, they're like, well, this song, Lil Nas X.

39:17 Sam Moses louder here you know and compared to my song and then I could go through that Lil Nas X song and be like but your song is actually louder here than his song so

39:26 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yeah.

39:27 Sam Moses we can't that's almost always how it is you know they are hyper focused echo chamber to themselves and it's valid because they want it to compete which is what I want I want to compete so I always help them reframe well it is competing

39:42 Sam Moses for these 30 seconds you're beating little knot sacks as far as loudness are you unwilling to acknowledge that like

39:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah

39:47 Sam Moses oh i never thought about you know and then i reframe too like i've said before we have a history of songs that range in such a wide you know almost like an eight db of dynamic range for the last 15 years of hit songs you know they're drastically different in final level and compression

40:07 Sam Moses And so I say all that to kind of give context to how I view Spotify and with Spotify there is a diminishing return to how loud you make something or how bright you make something or how dynamic you make something and what you will gain off their final peak output. And this is all in the context of you have normalization on in the normal default setting.

40:30 Sam Moses so if you move it to loud or soft that all of its data gets shifted and

40:34 Luke F. Walton Okay.

40:35 Sam Moses it's really weird then but i think the data something like 80 some percent yeah

40:39 Luke F. Walton Don't touch it.

40:40 Sam Moses don't you know it's default normalization normal playback blah blah so that's what i always i always default to what are most people doing in

40:48 Luke F. Walton Yes.

40:48 Sam Moses the industry i am in that's where i want to put all my energy i don't want to

40:52 Luke F. Walton Right.

40:52 Sam Moses i'm not interested in spending 90 of my energy on the fringe one person who listens on the super loud and they're messing with messing with the eq curve

40:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

40:59 Sam Moses like that's just not my concern at

41:01 Luke F. Walton yeah,

41:02 Sam Moses the end of the day so

41:03 Luke F. Walton yeah.

41:04 Sam Moses you know that's the context of this normalization normal so it's playing back at negative 14 ifs in theory and then

41:11 Sam Moses with a dynamic range so almost all of us are uploading songs that are way beyond that luffs you know so like a lot of pop stuff is like negative seven negative six luffs you know and usually the dynamic range coincides or correlates very closely to that and the rms will be which is total voltage of a song root mean squared rms is really impacted by low end luffs really impacted by top end dynamic range is really impacted by mid-range and so between those three you can see a ratio usually of

41:39 Sam Moses way of how a song will sound without even hearing it if you study records i'm giving away all the sauce here but anyway you know knowing that then i could study records and i'm not going to give away all the sauce but you can see patterns and things and when you hear a song that's extra loud you can measure it and be like oh they have this relationship see when i measure you need to measure with normalization off so

42:03 Luke F. Walton Okay.

42:04 Sam Moses you actually get the full Right. audio now for anyone out there who's going to be frustrate with me i know that spotify's encoding adds some gain to it like

42:13 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

42:13 Sam Moses it's going from your wave to basically an mp3 in that encoding process it's adding gain basically over samples clipping and so what i'm measuring in theory isn't still the true wave form but it's pretty darn close and i'm okay with that once again i'm okay with that it's very close it's not perfect

42:34 Sam Moses So through that, you know, you measure with normalization off, then you can really see what a song is doing. You can see where their compression was within the dynamic range, you can see the RMS level, you can see, you know, the LUFS, and then you can see true peak. You know, most commercial songs, including mine, are true peaking over zero.

42:50 Sam Moses That's because the encoding process, we're not following Spotify's recommendation, because most people like distortion at the end of the day. And so even on Spotify's... faq i think it's the section called like my uh my song's not as loud as others or something literally like the section you

43:08 Luke F. Walton it's probably

43:08 Sam Moses can go look

43:08 Luke F. Walton one of the

43:09 Sam Moses it

43:09 Luke F. Walton most

43:09 Sam Moses up

43:09 Luke F. Walton clicked

43:09 Sam Moses yeah and it's always changing like i've been reading the faq in spotify for like 10 years and like every six months they change a little bit a little language a little little thing a little word and now they do say if you're basically running your song up to basically zero zero you're not following our true peak you're gonna have distortion distortion does impact how we perceive loudness in the overall

43:29 Sam Moses the overall energy so

43:30 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:31 Sam Moses a song that can read the same almost on rmsdr andlus but one true peaks that say like plus one

43:40 Sam Moses you know because it's not doing any true peak and but then you have the same song with true peak on meaning it's basically limiting the limit it's basically limiting the samples that are going over it's going to sound quieter by almost a db you know same song just true peak on true peak off because the other one's not only is flying over zero but now it's distorting which is adding even more energy perceived loudness than the other one that might sound or dull in comparison so i take all that within spotify i say all that because the diminishing

44:08 Sam Moses return is really i messed around with this a lot of uploading songs that i'm never going to tell what they are because they're all pulled already but experimenting same song at different levels outputs ranges dynamic range lust and

44:19 Luke F. Walton and actually

44:20 Sam Moses just uploading

44:20 Luke F. Walton try it

44:20 Sam Moses it yeah

44:21 Luke F. Walton to spotify to be

44:22 Sam Moses yeah able under

44:22 Luke F. Walton to get it

44:22 Sam Moses an artist name that nobody knows about but like two people and just measuring i've done years and years and what i found is if the big conclusion is if you

44:33 Sam Moses it's not a sexy answer if you try to play the system and game it and try to make a really dynamic song or really push the top end in hopes of perceived loudness if you get outside of like a few db range of competitive you do not see any benefit your song is just quiet like i wish it

44:53 Sam Moses i don't even wish that's just how it is Yeah. so a lot of times people are like oh make it more dynamic it's going to be louder yes it is louder it is true it is peaking with normalization on louder but it's those peaks are only like five percent of the total song so it's a snare hit in the course but then 95 percent of the other time that song is quieter than the brick say you have a scale between zero and ten this is just sam's fake numbers

45:19 Sam Moses zero and ten units and I have a really compressed song that on average is at seven it's just at seven like pretty

45:28 Luke F. Walton whole way

45:29 Sam Moses much seven the whole time you know six to seven six to seven and then I have a really dynamic song that now can take advantage essentially of Spotify's normalization output so say that song goes to nine you know but in the verses it's a five So it's lower in theory than the other song most of the time.

45:50 Sam Moses so you've got like two songs running see this video the same race let's say this is the loud one it starts louder intro

45:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah, intro,

46:00 Sam Moses first one loud

46:01 Luke F. Walton intro chorus,

46:01 Sam Moses here

46:02 Luke F. Walton yeah, why not?

46:02 Sam Moses we go we're just doing this and chorus hits oh boom

46:05 Luke F. Walton Boom.

46:05 Sam Moses but then it does that you know so they're doing this you know and

46:09 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

46:10 Sam Moses it's most the time lower where this one's not moving really it's doing this and this one's under here and then it goes like that you know so a lot of those people on the internet go well look at this look at this it's 40 db louder look at this your song is down here look at this it's like it's you're correct 100 true can't deny it but then go five seconds later look at this look

46:33 Luke F. Walton Yes.

46:34 Sam Moses at that you know and that's what's happening that's the confusion of all that loudness and and normalization and what's happening and more dynamic songs are louder and it's like sometimes yes but most of the time no

46:46 Sam Moses I say all that within the normalization for people listening is you can learn a lot by just doing our Celebin stream preview that is like so many people's research beyond me in a nutshell like it's worth the money just to then study records because you can upload your wave in there it'll spit it out in Spotify's normal playback and you can then measure you can even play that out of RX 11 right next to Spotify and see

47:10 Sam Moses How it's going to compete against X, Y, and Z song in

47:13 Luke F. Walton Yep.

47:13 Sam Moses theory. But the problem is if you go from playing that song on Spotify from playlist to album mode to single, it's going to do that a bit.

47:22 Luke F. Walton That's bizarre.

47:23 Sam Moses I

47:23 Luke F. Walton That's

47:23 Sam Moses say

47:23 Luke F. Walton so what crazy.

47:24 Sam Moses I want to really

47:24 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

47:25 Sam Moses wrap that up into is. At the end of the day, none of it really matters.

47:29 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right.

47:30 Sam Moses I went down the weeds, the rabbit hole, found the other hole of the rabbit, you know, I just kept going down. And even in this RX thing, like.

47:41 Sam Moses it's important but i really summarize it as like i found like wow normalization is pretty pretty great it

47:47 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

47:47 Sam Moses is doing a really good job and it gets it seems to get a little bit better with the way it does it between songs and playlists and whatever and i'm asking them to do an insane thing like the infinite variables normalization has to calculate of sourcing the fact that it does get it within like one most the time is bonkers.

48:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

48:08 Sam Moses And then I always tell people the consumer doesn't care. For the most part, they

48:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

48:13 Sam Moses are your

48:13 Luke F. Walton 20

48:14 Sam Moses music

48:14 Luke F. Walton %, yeah.

48:15 Sam Moses is background music.

48:16 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah.

48:17 Sam Moses I don't say it in a negative way,

48:18 Luke F. Walton Uh

48:18 Sam Moses but like

48:18 Luke F. Walton -huh.

48:18 Sam Moses my wife is a perfect consumer. She plays it on headphones and it stops and looks at a social media video and it's in the car and then it's on a JBL Bluetooth speaker

48:26 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right. Jump

48:27 Sam Moses and calls

48:28 Luke F. Walton around.

48:28 Sam Moses her or texts her, pauses song. I've never met a consumer who goes, well, I listen to the chorus of this song and the chorus of this song and that one's louder.

48:35 Luke F. Walton Right, yeah, right.

48:37 Sam Moses that's That's true. never been Yeah. and there could be a subconscious thing Yeah.

48:40 Sam Moses of like you Yeah. know That well course really hit. Yeah. yeah it really hits that's why they love it and yeah i'd be like yeah there's probably validity to

48:47 Sam Moses Yes. that not an idiot but we get stuck so often in mastering mixing artists in this echo chamber of our side of the world and we all want for the most part to be consumed by the consumer

49:01 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

49:01 Sam Moses who's

49:02 Luke F. Walton right.

49:02 Sam Moses going to pay to

49:03 Luke F. Walton Yep. In the best possible way.

49:04 Sam Moses the tour the subscription the patreon and so we need to blend but i always try to tell people now especially the more label work i do and seeing how focused they are on consumer and that's spotify is all about consumer how do i keep you on the platform longest your focus should be heavily if you want to make money in this industry and whether this is good or bad i don't know or disrespectful to art or the nature of art

49:27 Sam Moses that's how it works currently and if you don't want to participate in that that's fine but you have to accept the reality that you are going against a very uphill

49:36 Luke F. Walton Yes.

49:36 Sam Moses like it's it's rough if you don't want to try and participate in that game i want people to make records how they want to make it go study records i'll use audio hijack i don't get paid by them at all maybe if they listen but i use audio hijack for all my measuring because i can load all my plugins and routing to my meters

49:55 Sam Moses and you can play back spotify and run your meters on it but measure songs and learn where the the hit records actually land because

50:01 Luke F. Walton Yes.

50:02 Sam Moses even when i talk to other bass engineers they might be like oh this song sounds so loud and i'm like yeah it's a negative 5 dr they're like what's dr it's like you don't know what dynamic range is like you mean

50:11 Luke F. Walton Yes.

50:11 Sam Moses loud okay

50:11 Luke F. Walton We always have one final question that I have to ask all of my guests. So this show is called Love Music More. And this is the final question I'd like to ask you. Why do you love music?

50:20 Sam Moses I love music because of the community and the creation process, as I described earlier, like that is what I like. There is nothing more for me in my life and experience like spiritual divine communal life giving than participating in something that didn't exist in theory or maybe it existed somewhere and someone grabbed it being

50:40 Luke F. Walton Yes.

50:41 Sam Moses that come into tangible and then seeing that impact lives. Turn the frown upside down, you know with with the it's the power of music as cheesy as that is

50:51 Sam Moses but that's why i love it that is why i love it why i still get passionate about it because there's so much power in it to impact people especially stuff i work on i feel like will be around forever it's on hard drives it's on networks it's on dsbs you know of like i the work i've worked on is eternal and maybe bajillion years from now none of it exists we're all gone but for the foreseeable thousand years it will probably like the work i worked on will probably be around

51:18 Sam Moses And I think that's really cool. And the final thing I'll say about it is for me as I get older, like every song and record is a timestamp and it's really special to me to be able to look back and with most people you can attach a moment or an emotion and as I get older I get nostalgic.

51:33 Sam Moses I'm like, oh man, that was that first label record or that was that one time that did something or that was that one artist that sent me cookies or something, you know, like. That is the power of music. It's like the power in the song and then it has this giant ripple effect into your life forever and being able to participate that in every day and get paid for it. It's crazy.

51:55 Sam Moses People pay me. So thank you, people out there. I love you. As cheesy as it is, I posted a while ago, like, you pay for like my children and I'm forever grateful that like you keep the tubes warm, you keep the fridge full. And I do not take that lightly. That is a massive responsibility when someone gives me their hard earned money to help them cross the finish line with a record.

52:20 Sam Moses It is always special. It always gets 110%. And there's no greater joy for me pretty much than to participate in that. And that is why I love music. Okay.

52:30 Luke F. Walton Well put, Sam. Thank you so much for joining the show.

52:33 Sam Moses Of course.

52:33 Luke F. Walton Where can people find you?

52:34 Sam Moses The best place to find me is on Instagram, Moses Mastering. You will find me. I am there. That's where I'm most active. I post five times a week usually. I respond to my DMs, but just go there. And then usually people that know I have talk, so we'll email or whatever. Just, you know, I'm a talker, so that's why you can't tell

52:56 Luke F. Walton It was great. We're all the beneficiaries. Well, thank you so much, Sam.

53:00 Sam Moses Of course.

53:01 Luke F. Walton Until next time, my friend.

53:02 Sam Moses Thank you. It's been a gift.