Guys welcome to another episode of Moodle Mastermind, your Co
host, Co founder Jason Stallworth and also Co host Co
founder the great. In.
Dallas, we're doing a virtual Cheers.
I'm holding my coffee cup up. You got water today guys.
We are going to give you something extra special today.
I mean it's almost it's always almost it's always extra
special. But this one has like a couple
of cherries. Maybe some beer flavored
cherries on top. I don't know where I got that
from anyway. Fermented cherry, say that's
great dude. That could be like a wine man.
Wow. I think we we may shift gears
here. Middle Mastermind winery man.
That would be cool. So as as we get in this guys, I
got one very, very short story. I just interviewed this dude
named Will James. I call him Sir William James
because it just sounds cool, you know.
But he's the he's the drummer for the Tampa extreme metal band
Must Not Kill. I interviewed him a couple of
weeks ago That's been out there by the time this podcast comes
out. That's probably been out for
over a month. But Long story short, he's not
just a drummer. This guy is a multi
instrumentalist. He brought his guitar, his bass,
his acoustic and of course his drumsticks, even though we
didn't play drums in my studio. But I'm like man, you got a lot
of stuff you're bringing over. He's like, well yeah, I play all
these things. So anyway, he's a multi
instrumentalist. You know, you look at it, you
look at an extreme Ken, you're an extreme metal drummer.
I mean you're you're a drummer, right?
You're a metal drummer. I mean, you can, you can play
all styles, but you can attest to how much skill is involved in
playing drums, percussion, in death metal, extreme metal, even
rock. I mean there there's a guys.
I'm just going to go out here and say I'm going to take off a
lot of guitar players like myself here, but I'm going to
say there's more talent involved in drums and playing solid drums
and and those extreme styles and almost any other instrument.
Well, that, you know, I mean there's a lot that is demanding
of drummers for one, independence amongst your limbs
is a big one, which I think guitarists, if I remember
correctly, they have two limbs they got to.
Worry only two. I got double that so.
You got double that too, but I my drums.
Are firing and it gets kind of crazy, man.
It does do just a lot. And and I say that I don't mean
to take off the the guitar players and and and the bassist.
I'm a guitar player. You guys know that and I don't
mean to take off the vocalist. You know the the people who
unload their gear and don't really have to do anything
because it's just a mic. OK You want me to help you carry
that amp sight? I'm going to go set up my mic.
I only say that guys and this guy sings too by the way.
Yeah. Will James, death metal drummer
for Must Not Kill. I say that to say this.
He's a multi instrumentalist and one of the points he made on on
my show Ken was that when you pick up another instrument, it
helps you with your current instrument.
So it really kind of changed my perspective.
I mean I play bass too and I sing, I play acoustic, but you
know I don't I don't play drums. I mean you don't want to hear me
behind a set. I can keep a steady beat.
I think if you're a musician you can keep a steady beat.
But ask me to do double bass and I'm probably going to fall over
on the set or something. You know what did?
It really just kind of shaped my perspective of not saying you
should learn everything. But if you're a musician, I
think it's good to at least, if you're not going to be
proficient in everything, at least dabble in some other
things. So with that guys, we want to
talk about everything that metal mastermind has to offer.
Offer you guys in regards to education.
I know a lot of you have our courses, but most of you just
have maybe 1-2. Some of you have like 4 and five
courses. And thank you by the way.
And honestly guys, this is not a sales pitch.
I'm, I'm not saying you need to buy all metal mastermind
courses, you probably don't. But I don't think a lot of
people are aware of what we have out there.
So guys, we we got guitar, we've got bass, multiple guitar
courses, bass, we've got vocals. Drums are coming down the
pipeline. But we have mixing.
We have Fury that I mentioned, vocals.
We even have a studio build course because I I don't think
many people know about that. So we just just wanted to give
you kind of a fun rundown of you know, who these courses are for
and how this can help you. And again, just kind of make you
aware of, you know, of what we have out there and we're going
to give you plenty of helpful tips as we go through this guys.
It's not going to be like, hey, this is the course we have
goodbye bro or or sis. It's not going to be bad.
It's we're going to we're going to share some really valuable
things that I think even if you did not buy any of our stuff,
again, this is not a pitch. If you didn't buy any of our
courses, I think you'll still get a lot out of this show.
Ken, I'm going to kick it off, dude with actually, I was going
to ask you to kick it off with with your theory course, dude.
Yeah, I don't think a lot of people know there's a music
theory courts. Out there, Yeah.
And now music theory was kind of designed from the ground up as a
way to be very approachable by anybody who was not any at any
level profession at music theory.
But I also took it to another place where I wanted theory to
be something that whoever did already have some theory they
could elevate what they already knew.
Some people will will kind of rush through some of the basics,
which I actually even if you're proficient at music theory, I
actually really encourage you to go again through the basic,
because sometimes it's kind of like math, you know?
After a while, if you haven't done like high proficiency math,
you kind of need to take a couple steps back just to review
some of the basics that get into some of the more advanced
formulas, you know. So this is kind of like one of
those things too. And I like it.
You know, I I kind of actually put it designed to so that when
you are going through the course I I make a lot of ties between
basics into the more advanced stuff.
So as you're walking and through the advanced stuff, you're
having some references on what I've talked about in the basics.
So that's why I say it's always important to go through the
basics of what I was teaching in metal music theory into the
advanced. Yeah, and metal music theory is
a lot of fun, man. It's, it's, it's a lot of what
I've always wanted to do when it came to writing music and
learning what kind of ideas I could create that weren't
obvious to me at first. And so going into things like
modes or even like counterpoint and how that can be used and
also giving like my own examples of my music from Homeric, that's
very, very dense and it's very, very applicable to something
like this. I also show you what not to do
when you're writing for other musicians.
And we'll talk about different types of instrumentation.
Like you know if you're into symphonic metal like I am, I
talk a little bit about the orchestra, how to think about
engaging with session musicians that too these are all really
important metal music theory is just it's bigger than just only
you know learning some notes. I actually discuss really how
you're applying it in the real world as well.
That's I think that's like all of Module 6.
How does it apply in the real world?
So it's it's a very important phase of a musician's life to to
understand. It's like you got, I mean some
people will make the argument that you know you don't need
music theory, which you you really don't.
But the tool of having music theory in your back pocket is
it's kind of one of those, like, Swiss army knives that you're
just like, wow, I'm glad I had this, because then I could fix
this problem really easily. If I didn't have this, this
would have been like 10 times harder to figure out what to do
next. So yeah, it could be a a way to
shortcut through some obstacles that you might have in your
songwriting. You know, it's a great course,
dude. And and and most of you who
who've been following me for any amount of time, you know I am
not a theory buff. I don't preached against it.
I've never said once to anyone, well you know you shouldn't
learn music theory. Never said you should.
I'm just very neutral about it. What I've learned and in my new
career as a full time musician and in my years of playing
guitar is you still learn theory inadvertently along the way.
If you're not, then you're probably not practicing enough
because you're going to learn what the basic chords are.
Well, those chords you know, just knowing where to go on the
fret board, right? Those are based on music theory.
You know, I do think it's important to at least I'm not a
skill person. You know, I'm I've never been
one just to play skills. I don't practice that way.
I'm not saying you shouldn't but I do think it's important to at
least learn the the minor and major skill because once you
learn one skill, you can play it anywhere, right.
So and what what it will help you do is to learn where the
notes are that sound good and practically any key once you
learn that, which again this is all tied to theory, can also
open my eyes by sharing the circle of fifths.
I used to hold up a cross sign. No I don't want to lose this
wheel of like gibberish but then I looked at it.
You know Ken, you and I talked about it and and you guys have
seen on the Metal Mastermind YouTube channel, we have a
prominent video on the circle of fifths where I break that down
here. I am a non theory guy able to
turn something around like the circle fifths and simplify it
because it really is simple. It's just a little map that says
hey if you're here then these are the things that surround
will probably fit well too. So it's like OK well that that
makes a lot of sense. So and can the way you explain
theory, something that may not make sense to other people or
they may not think it makes sense?
You make it make sense because of the way you present it.
So I it's it's a course. We're even if you're not a
theory buff like myself. I've gone through Ken's course a
couple of times because I went back and added some guitar parts
to it and what went as going through the course.
There's a lot I didn't know. But there was a lot I did.
I'm like, oh, OK well, I actually had no more theory than
I thought I did. But no great course, guys.
Metal music theory. Let's go on to to some of the
guitar courses, Ken. So if you're a beginner, not so
much a beginner guitar player, but you're just starting out
playing metal guitar or. Or if you need to revisit the
basics. I know I talked to people
almost. I say not daily, but on a weekly
basis that laid down the guitar twenty 30-40 years ago and just
starting to pick it back up. You guys saw my interview with
with Drew from the Drinking with Drew show.
He was on my channel, just picked up metal guitar after 20
years. So if you if you're that or if
you're new metal guitar, Apprentice is a great place to
to start. I teach that course guys.
I break down the basics, you know the power cords of palm
muting, the the types of picking, all that good stuff.
I keep it very basic. But you progress, you, you
gradually progress throughout the course.
So you don't just learn the stuff.
You're actually applying the stuff, right.
You're actually applying what you know and the risks will kind
of build on top of that. By the way, all of our courses
have bonuses in them. We won't go through the bonuses
because that would take forever. We give a lot, Ken.
We. Try to We try to always add more
value wherever we can. You know it it's not often that
we we we we raise our prices or anything like that.
We we really try to say you know if if people need more just
let's just give them more In that regard we we just believe
in in more information for the common person.
It's just that's what metal mastermind was kind of built
around. I was kind of built around the
indie musician. So yeah, and Metal Guitar
Apprentice is actually pretty, pretty solid.
I think I've seen a lot of people, you know, if they really
walk away with metal guitar printers, really helping them
out. That's what we want, man.
That's. Yeah, everything from basic
guitar methods, you got metal progressions, metal riffs, you
even go beyond you extend what those progressions and how to
use them and you know you have writing your first Rift and home
recording basics even in that kind of you know, course and
it's it's got a lot of juice. It's it's it's great for the
beginner guys. Now if you're if you're at an
intermediate level guitar player and you're 1 to expand on your
riffs, you know we're talking about riff writing and that sort
of thing. Metal Riff Master, that was our
first course we released can. You know, it's been over a few
years ago now, and that was quite the journey.
But I had been working on that for a long time.
And that's that's around the time Ken and I, you know,
decided to let's do a course platform.
You know, I was looking to release Metal Riff Master and I
built that course around what my YouTube audience asked for.
I'm like, well, let me, you know, people actually asked me
to build a course. I'm like, OK, well let's do it.
You know, And we just turned this thing into this whole
something I wanted something that was bigger than just Jason
Stallworth. I wanted something that was and
Ken and I both did. You know, we already had Metal
Mastermind going, doing our lives on YouTube to an audience
of like three or four people before she started their videos.
And then we started a website and blogging and then we started
the course platform, what tell that story on on another on
another podcast, maybe our three-year, three-year
anniversary. But anyway, Metal Rift Master,
if you're at an intermediate level, that's a great, that's a
great course over 80 riffs. They're not all in the same key.
They're not all chugging away in E minor, right.
So that's that's a great way to expand your riffs and just give
you some new stuff to practice, guys, There's some riff writing
involved in there. I've got a lead module And then,
you know, as far as the other guitar chords that we have right
now, you know, Ken, we've got Alfred Potter's.
If you're like want to get to the more advanced level, we've
got Alfred Potter's sweet picking master dude, That's a
phenomenal course, man. Well, he goes.
Alfred is a is a master of what he does.
The. Guy.
The guy looks like he flies on a on a fret board.
It's actually quite magical if, if you ask me, I actually, you
know, put Alfred on to my my, my own album because he was so good
at sweet thinking. I said Alfred, I I really, I
really need you to do your thing here, man.
He was just like, Oh yeah, okay, man, he didn't.
He's so laid back about it, right?
He's so chilly So. Laid back, he's just like, Oh
yeah, you know, it took me a second to just figure it out,
but then here you go. It's like what?
He's so humble about things, man, you know.
Super humble and and he's really, I mean he's an educator
first when he comes he he loves to teach people and Alfred has
just a gift when it comes to presenting his information.
Very very clean, clear, detail oriented and he'll give you all
the the tabs, the you know, the resources that you need, the
backing tracks and he'll go through each type of sweet
picking pattern from 2 string to three string, 4 string, 5 string
up to six string. Not only that, how to write
composing parts with the sweet picking involved and applying
that into music and that's such a great part of the course.
I really enjoyed watching those. Yes sweet picking master is a is
is a gold mine or anybody who wants to take their guitar
playing and and really become like a lead guitar player with
with an additional skill that is quite honestly it's it's own
like category. That's why we made Sweet Picking
Master its own course, because it is such a technical base and
it's very it's like a very unique part of metal, I would
say, and it deserves its own time and place for it, that we
were just like, OK, yeah, we need to make a full on course
just for this. And Alfred was the perfect guy
to do it. He's so knowledgeable about the
stuff. That's a technique that requires
focus. You know when we've talked a lot
about that here, Ken, about how it's so important, when you're
when you're really wanting to get good at any one thing, you
kind of have to cut out the noise surrounding that one thing
and just like like Micro focus on that one thing and you just
hit it. You know that technique on
guitar that does require immense focus.
It comes easier to some than others, but I think it requires
a lot of focus. So I want to, I want to move on
to something. I encourage every musician to do
this. You guys know I focused mainly
on guitar players and such, but I encourage guitar players.
A lot of guitar players say they can't do this and I say you can.
You just have to find your own and that is vocals.
I'd like to highlight our course called Metal Vocal Virtuoso.
This is taught by the one and only Elizabeth.
The Deus can. Can I say wife yet?
Or or we're? Getting married next year It's
it's happening. That's awesome.
But she's she's phenomenal man. I mean, you know, I've heard her
work. She does some awesome artwork
too. She's done the artwork for my
last two albums. By the time this podcast
released, I will have already released Overcometh.
So that artwork you see on my latest album that released on on
December 1st? Overcometh.
She did the artwork I got. I got the photo taken at A at a
pro, had a pro photo shoot for that with just a blank
background or whatever, but she did the surrounding artwork,
the, the, the like, just the monsters and all that.
Just so freaking cool man. And she did the artwork for
Masterpiece. I'm getting off topic, but she
says she's an amazing vocalist she recorded.
If you want to hear her vocals, go look up Metal Mastermind as a
band, right? Because we were kind of that
too. Look up Metal Mastermind.
You are your master. The song is called You Are Your
Master by Metal Mastermind. We got some more releases coming
out in 2024, by the way. We haven't talked about that
yet, but we're going to release more stuff.
But that's Elizabeth. She does multiple types of
vocals and her course, she teaches you the proper way to to
warm up and care for your voice, the breathing and all that.
She goes through all these these techniques and things and this
is I have learned this is very important as a vocalist.
I don't consider myself a great vocalist but I'm a dude who just
loves to sing and I've always had struggles with with certain
things and I've I've learned to overcome some of them but she
teaches you how to do that properly And also I love that
she shares the fact that you also want to embrace your
natural voice and that's kind of what we we teach on metal
mastermind. You know, we're pretty pretty
die hard about what? Creating your own sound.
So she goes to that, she goes to the multiple styles, so we say
metal vocal virtuoso. And yes, she does cater it to
metal towards the end of the lessons.
But learning how to sing properly, no matter what style
you're singing you, you've got to learn the proper basics.
So her course, Yes, great for metal singers, but I think it's
great really for any vocalist. Yeah, and if you didn't know,
Elizabeth is also a coach on metalmastermind.com.
And if you're the type of vocalist who wants to really
take it seriously, you can go to the next level about that.
That's what those coaching sessions are for.
They're one time and you can you know continuously book a coach
and you know get more out of what you what you did in vocal
virtuoso. So that's the whole point
because I mean it, let's let's be real, Jason, right.
Everybody is different, right. And we we talked about creating
your own sound and metal vocal virtuoso was meant to be able to
establish a foundation for vocalists.
But for people who have a specific need and want, you know
that's going to require one-on-one time with a real
coach. That's why we decided to have
Elizabeth as a coach on our platform as well.
And we've already had a couple students take her up on the
offer inch. They've been very, very vocal
about how it's helped them a lot too.
She's a great teacher and she she really, really knows how to
bring out your particular voice. Actually, fun fact too.
I mean on my own record, I I haven't sung on my own records
before but because of metal vocal virtuoso, I actually
decided I was going to do that. So yeah it was it was a game
changer for me too. So it it it's it's it's got it's
merit man. You've you've got all of you
have it in you to sing. If you if you're already a
vocalist I can I think I still think it's a great course to
take and to just enhanced you know schedule one.
On one quick note though guys, if if you take the course, I
recommend you take the course 1st and then determine whether
you want to take that next step and and go one-on-one.
But if you take the course to actually get a discount, code in
the course for one-on-one. So just a yes on that.
So brother Ken, can we talk about the great Nick Z.
So by the way, this dude we're about to talk about his course,
he actually mastered the album, overcometh he.
His mastering skills took it to the next level on a level that I
I could not have taken it to on my own.
I'll probably have him mix my future stuff.
I mix my own album this time around.
I was just kind of in a time crunch and and I kind of knew
what I wanted to do. But he in all honesty, if I'm
going to and I shouldn't say this, but I know he probably
could have done a better job had I just handed it to him next
time, Nick. But anyway, he mastered the
album. I know you've worked with him
extensively over the years, but Nick Z has a course called Metal
Producer Overlord. So Ken, what?
What all does that entail, dude? Metal producer Overlord.
It's basically a run through of everything from the point of
post production in music. So in this case, what am I
saying? After the recording stage, which
we we have plans of introducing the recording stage into
producer Overlord as well. So stay tuned for that kind of
stuff. But the current course as it
stands has four different types of examples that we can work
with. I believe you have like
progressive death metal, you've got symphonic metal, you've got
Hard Rock and then you've got some power metal.
So all of that put together is kind of just giving a variety of
genres within metal to get the core concepts down.
And so that you can actually see that going from one genre to
another in the metal community, there are slight differences,
but there you can see a similarity of certain concepts.
And that's what it was meant to illustrate, right, That at the
core foundation of mixing principles are always going to
stay the same. You know, there's always a, a, a
sort of thing that that a universal thing about mixing and
and sound, right. Because at the end of the day,
it's a physical thing, right? So if we're treating sound as a
physical thing and not so much as, oh, it's just always unique
to this one type of application. Yeah, not really.
Right. So that's what we're trying to
demystify with metal producer Overlord and show you also
workload tips on how to be better at your efficiency so you
can get things done better, faster, you know, and you know,
with more proficiency. So metal producer Overlord is
really important to a lot of people.
I think, especially for someone who decides that they want to
take the independent route, you're going to see how much
it's going to help elevate what you're already doing.
You might be doing things right, and it might just mean that, oh
man, I never thought about working like this to help make
it work faster for me, right? And sometimes like even like an
experienced mixer like myself too.
I learned a couple things from Nick Z, and you could always
pick up like a golden nug here or there to help better your own
workflow. It was a great experience, and
Nick Z is so much fun. He's.
A.
He's a no bull crap kind of guy. So.
When you're watching, when you're watching Nick Z, he'll
just tell you, yeah, don't do this.
This is this is not what you I was like.
OK, I love his approach though. He doesn't dance around.
He's like just this is this is going to work better for you and
I, you know I'll say this about all our instructors and us too
can you know, we we care about the result.
We care about your result and the value get out of it.
And you know, Nick especially, you know, you can tell he truly
cares about what he's doing. He wants you to do things easier
and more efficiently and This is why he doesn't he doesn't do the
whole BS thing and skirt around stuff.
But I I love this style of of teaching and it's like you're in
there going through the courses like you're sitting in behind
the console with him. You're like you're right there
with him. So it's it's really cool.
One thing I'll say about that course, Ken, is that, yeah, you
want to be able to mix your own stuff.
That's just going to help you in the long run.
But for those of you who want to take it to the next level, as we
know, just being a musician doesn't pay a whole lot.
So you want to venture into other areas.
If you learn how to mix other people's stuff and master,
because he has a bonus on mastering, you can actually make
some change doing that guys. So that's, you know, there's a
multiple different reasons why I would say consider going through
Nick ZS course metal producer Overlord Ken.
I'd like to chat briefly about what I consider our flagship
course, man, and that is metal Songwriters forge.
You and I put that together a while back and that's the course
for songwriting guys. What I will say to that is that
we're not telling you how to write a song.
We're not saying, well, this is how you write a song, OK,
Because I've had people say, well, who who are you guys to
tell somebody how to write a song?
Well, let me stop you. We're not telling you how to
write a song so real quick. You know, Ken, you've got a
somatic, cinematic, somatic, cinematic metal project.
Homeric, you've already proven yourself.
But you're about to reprove yourself again with this next
release coming out next year. Plus you've worked on so many
records and with so many artists and that sort of thing in your
area, you work, you work closely with with Michael Romeo and
you've gotten some songwriting tips from him from Symphony X.
Yeah. Alice Skolnick.
I just released my fifth album. I've worked with many other
artists. I'm not saying we're big shots,
guys. It's not where I'm going with
this. But we're not just two dudes
that like, hey, we just wrote our first song yesterday.
Here's a course we've we've been doing this for a while.
I I I do this for a living. You know what I mean?
Ken Ken's a full time. You're you're your full time
income is revolved around music, is revolved around what you do.
So you know, and again I'm not bragging, but we wanted to put
this together to help you guys with the workflow of songwriting
and just give you some ideas, some different perspectives and
just some different ways to think about things you know.
So hey, well, why don't I try this right?
And we even show you how to expand on that.
That that course was is really special in near and dear to my
heart too, because that was something that Jason and I
collectively it came up with as a way to provide a lot of
inspiration for people who were trying to write their own music.
One of the things that we did was we wrote You Are Your Master
because we wanted to give the context of what are we doing
when we write a song so that what can you take away and maybe
you can learn from and maybe that's something that you want
to apply to your own music. Again, like Jason says, it's not
like we're telling you, OK, this is the only way how you write a
song. Bop, bop, bop, bop, right.
You know it's not, it's not like that We we act.
We do give what some, you know, typical song forms are.
But at the end of the day, when you're writing a song, I mean,
you're kind of tapping into your own creativity to do that.
So what we wanted to do was give some some guidance as to, you
know, whenever you stumble upon a roadblock or something like
this, how can you get around that and continue moving forward
in your songwriting? OK, you're you're, you're stuck
on the melody. Let's let's pivot and switch to
riff face stuff or let's pivot and switch to the drums.
Let's pivot and switch to lyrics, you know, and maybe this
is going to inspire something here and then you can start
collaboratively like sort of building your song from that
too. I will say this too.
There's a really cool part of metal producer Overlord that we
added in the more recent update, something called the Cycles of
Inspiration that that Nick that Nick designed, which is, you
know, you you when you're programming something like
drums, that can help feed off of maybe a riff that you were
writing and you can rewrite your riff to new drums that you
wrote. And then, you know, you might
adjust the drums a little bit to what you wrote with the new
riff. These sorts of things is what we
call the cycles of inspiration. So it's a really, really cool
part of it. And yeah, metal songwriters
Forge is kind of filled with a lot of that kind of stuff too.
So we really use metal songwriters Forge as like the
heart of of metal mastermind, because really our entire
mission is to get people to write more music, to write songs
that are unique to them, less about, you know, trying to mimic
other people and all this kind of stuff.
Although there is a place for that, right?
You know, we all love a good tribute band every once in a
while. But when you have a original
project, many people are daunted by how much work and can be to
do something like that. So metal songwriters forge is
kind of like, in a sense to me, it feels like the bonfire where
I can always kind of come back and feel warm and just be like,
OK, this is a core part of songwriting that maybe I want to
implement in my next piece. I need some inspiration.
Let me come back to songwriters Forge and see what we did here
that might help foster some new ideas here.
We cover every aspect guys, when it's not just a guitar course,
you know, because I know a lot of metal, a lot of musicians we
get are guitar players, but dude, we we cover drums.
Like real drums, because Ken recorded real drums, you know,
with a real drummer, Ken being that real drummer in a real
studio. But we also share stuff on on
program, John, so we share tips for for writing bass lines, you
that you go through, orchestration, Ken vocals,
lyrics, all that good stuff. So kind of want to move on to a
course that I don't think many people know that we offer.
And it's the one you created a while back and it's one I've yet
to truly implement. But I'm looking at doing a whole
studio rebuild here in my tiny 10 by 11 space next year.
But you've got a metal studio designer.
Tell us about that course. I don't think many people know
we have that. Yeah, I mean this one's not as
obvious of a course to many folks 'cause I think for most
people, building a studio is not really something that is in
their budget. Quote UN quote.
But actually what Metal Studio Designer was meant for is to
provide you a a a true understanding of how sound
works. Because if you are understanding
sound on a principal level and you're you're you're you're
you're adamant of like trying to really, really take it to a
physics level. Like that's what I do.
I really take it to a physics level.
I do because this is actually quite literally like a college
course that I I designed, which I teach all these concepts to,
to my own students at three different universities.
So metal studio designer was meant to to give you the
information on a physics level so that when you are going to
build your own studio, which I also show you how to do, of
course, I mean that's what it's about, right?
So but I show you how to plan your budget, how to plan the
type of gear, how to map it out layouts with the floor plan with
how much acoustic reverberation you want and calculating that.
I show you a different examples of studios and and and
ergonomics and layouts of how they're built.
I've also, I even have a couple of student examples that you can
see of how you know people have taken my my course and have just
learned from it and built their own studios out of it or planned
at least to build their own studios.
And if anything, if it's not something that you have the
money for right now, it's something that you can work
towards, which is something that people forget, right.
Building a studio doesn't have to be all at once.
It can be overtime. I'm I'm certainly always trying
to add stuff to my studio every once in a while.
And it gets better and better over time.
And, you know, people forget that.
It's like, oh man, you know, if I show you a picture of my
studio, some people would say, oh, Ken's lucky he's got the
ability to do a studio. Yeah, but guess what?
This is like 15 years in the making.
It's not like I I built this all in one day at one shot, you
know? Two hours, man, and it's done.
Yeah, no, exactly. People forget that.
So Metal Studio Designer is a is a slow burn for a lot of folks,
but it's there to give you the power to be able to do it on
your own. And just honestly, you're
speaking to a guy who's on the forefront of like doing
immersive audio. I've got Dolby Atmos in my
studio now because I've taken this stuff seriously and I can
be on the front lines of making music that no one's heard of or
experienced, like or, which is really exciting.
So you know, and honestly in the beginning for me like I was a
technician like I was, I've already built 3 Dolby Atmos
studios for for colleges and of course my own personal studio.
So I'm already here at a point where it like I I've got some
experience building some studios.
I've been involved with all the technical aspects of routing
analog consoles and all that kind of stuff.
And you can do that too if you want to, but you don't have to.
There are ways of a modern studio being very similar to the
quote UN quote horsepower of an old $1,000,000 studio.
I mean, think about all the plugins we already have.
Geez. I mean, like it's crazy.
So yeah, that. But you know, you might say to
yourself like, well why? Why?
You know, try to build something like $1,000,000 studio?
Because you know what? In the case of acoustics, I
mean, you could have the best plugins in the world and all
that stuff, but if you can't hear it right, you're always
going to make the wrong decision, you know?
And that's super good point, dude, man.
That's, that's what it's about, you know?
So it's about eliminating that variable of error and making
your life a lot easier, more enjoyable.
I mean, if you could listen in your studio and say, yeah, I
know that that's an accurate sound and then you can make any
change you want because you're hearing everything that you need
to hear. Like imagine how much power that
would give you in speeding up your workflow.
Like it's just it's super important to have a good
sounding room. I would actually rather have a
good sounding room with crappy monitors than really good
speakers and a really bad room. That's a good point, dude.
So I mean you know you could you could get Studio Designer Metal
studio Designer get set up or at least if even it's a slow burn
right even if you did 50% of it and like OK I'll I'll gradually
build then take next course right studio metal producer
Overlord then you're you've got the perfect storm for mixing and
mastering. So that's a great that's a great
addition there. The last course we have guys was
not the last course. We got more coming, we'll
discuss that. But we've got Metal Base Master
that is our most recent addition to Metal Mastermind and that is
dude. We've just gotten so much good
feedback from that. It's it's been released for a
little over a month now I think can and Rich Gray, yeah, he is
the real deal. He's a professional bass player.
He's actually the basis for the metal band Annihilator and a
band called Aeon Zen. He is also a producer and he's
just really well, well respected in the metal community.
I'll give you just a very quick story on How I Met him.
I was. I'm good friends with the guys
in Siren the fan. The metal band here was just
hanging out with Doug, Doug Lee, the vocalist, and Eddie Bourne,
the drummer, and they let me hear their new album before it
was released, A Mercenaries Fate.
This was released back in 2022, so I got to hear all the raw
tracks before we went into Morris Sounds studio and and did
the mixing and mastering, which that's a phenomenal studio, by
the way, which then shows you how to build a version of that
in your own home, regardless of the room size and in your
course. But that's How I Met Rich.
He recorded bass for that album. They hired him because I was
like, I was here in the bass. I'm like, holy crap, who's your
bass player? Like, I, you know, 'cause like,
well, we hired this guy named Rich Gray.
We just found him online and then come to find he's the.
He's also the basis for an isolator.
And Zen, I'm like, man, please get me in touch with this guy.
So Ken and I talked to him and like, man, if you'd, if you'd be
most gracious to do a course because our, our community would
absolutely love to sound like you and play like you.
So yeah, Metal Base Master is out there and I love Rich's
presentation. He is just so organic at
teaching and like all our instructors you know we we take
you through the baby steps 1st and you you may or may not need
those but we we have it there because again if the foundation
you know we talked about this the last podcast and if the
foundation's not solid. If if the foundation's a little
Sandy, you can't really build on top of that.
So you always have to have that foundation.
It's it's like weight training. You know no matter how how in
shape you get or big you get or whatever you know you still need
your squats. You still need your your core
lifts, right. You still need that foundation
to always be solid. It's not like you build the
foundation once and then you forget about it.
So all our courses recover the basics first and it's good to
revisit you learn things by revisiting the basics but we
also expand on them and Rich just does a phenomenal job it
taking you from A-Z. He even goes through.
His his metal based tone, which his tone dude, like Oh yeah,
it's growling at you. It's like it's like, but it's so
smooth. It's like a smooth grout that
makes sense. I mean he shows you how to get
different tones or whatever, but I don't know, it's just I can't
say enough great things about metal based Master.
I'm really, really happy we have that.
So guys, all of our courses on our own metal mastermind.com.
What's coming up next? So I've been promising you guys
a lead guitar course and it's going to be more along the lines
of two things, melodic lead guitar, like news specific for
like melodic rock and metal because that's just the style.
I'm I'm not a Blues player, I'm not a jazz player.
Those styles are great, but that's, you know, we're all
about metal here. So this based on melodies, there
will be some shred and the course absolutely some shred
guitar in the course. But it's going to be a mix of
that and melodies and really the course is it's not going to be
learn these skills or anything like that.
It's going to be how to create your own guitar solos because
that's what we encourage here. So that's coming out.
Can you also have we we we've talked about you creating the
Dolby Atmos course? Yeah, I mean that's on the
forefront of immersive audio. So you can expect that Metal
Mastermind will also be putting out how to approach immersive
audio in in this, you know, day and age.
I mean now, you know, it's kind of funny because we were talking
about Atmos a while ago. But you know, if you really
think about it, this time is a very important time in audio
history because nobody is really, I mean immersive or it
just surrounds sound, never really has taken off in music,
and now things are changing. And so we need to be able to set
an example for future generations on what does it mean
to create music in an immersive format.
So Dolby Atmos is definitely, you know, going to be one of
those formats that I think will be here for a long time.
So I'm I'm going to be making a course about that and how you
should be thinking about creating an Atmos and I'm going
to go through all the different types of scenarios and you'll be
hearing my upcoming album which releases next year through that.
So it'll be it'll be a really, really fun way to learn
immersive and give you really some important insights about
what's important when creating an immersive.
That's awesome dude. Lastly, we are talking to some
drummers because we would like a metal, a metal drum course, a
course on that and that of course it will you know start
with the basics and such. But we're we're in the works on
that. So that's all that.
I don't know if we can expect all that next year, Ken, but
we'll see, we'll see how this goes.
So at least half of it will get out.
We'll have like 1 1/2 courses, but who knows, we may be able
to. You know, let me say something
Jason, real quick because it's like you were just mentioning
how oh it's harder to be a drummer.
Well, here's a great example. It's so it's hard to, you know,
creating a drum course is not easy because you know you're
going to need all the microphones, all the set up, the
drums need to be in a good sounding room, right.
Like it's it's not easy to create a drum course.
So we're we're working at it though we're we're getting
there. We'll we'll hopefully build
something by next year to do something like that.
But yeah, we we are absolutely wanting to do something along
those lines. Actually Jason, I wanted to ask
you let's let's talk a little bit now in terms of the mission,
the entire mission of Metal Mastermind because we've just
highlighted all of our courses. But like why?
Why are we doing what we're doing?
Because like in in the case of you know where, where did metal
Mastermind come from, right. Why are we focusing on the
Indeed musician so prominently in in this, and why are we
seeking to be that resource? I'm I want to hear it a little
bit from you and what your thoughts about that are.
I mean for me it it, you know, I could give you a long spill, but
for me it it's summed up into just one thing and that's we
want to help you create your own sound.
What I found in musician, being a musician and just life in
general is sometimes we get, we get caught up in trying to copy
what's already been done. And me being 48 years old, I
hate to put my age out there. Like, hey Jason, man, you're old
dude. You're like going to die
tomorrow. That's kind of morbid, Like
Morbid Angel. I'm full of jokes today, no, but
me being at my age, I I run across a lot of people and I'm
guilty of this as well as like well, the good old days of music
are gone. And look, there was something
very magical about I wasn't so much in the 70s, but I love the
80s. But you can't really recapture
the past. And I was, I was having a
conversation actually withdrew the drinking with Drew show that
is, I'm on sometime. And we're like, you know, we
don't want to recreate the past. We want to create what's what's
you know, what's that next thing for us, You know what I mean?
And and even with modern music, you know, we see a lot of just
people copying. It's like, well, let me play the
same shred pattern. Let me play this and let me seem
like this person there. So we want to kind of break away
from that and have you just think outside of just what
you're currently listening to or think outside of what you think.
You need to sound like, you know, we get constant questions
or I get constant questions all the time.
Well, how'd you get that tone? And I I'm not a jerk about it,
but I'm like, it doesn't matter how I got the tone, you know,
because you may play through my tone and it might sound
different because we have different styles, right?
I've had so many times people dial in this exact tone that I
gave them or they got from someone else.
Like I don't it in exactly. I'm playing with the same
guitar, but it doesn't sound anything like that.
Well, the style is different, guys, so I'm not against you
learning other people's songs. I I I used to learn songs all
the time, you know, growing up. And I also play cover songs.
You guys know I play aside from metal, I play live acoustic solo
shows. I play two to three live shows a
week. So new, you know the the
wineries and breweries I play at an event, I play at, they, you
know, they want to hear cover songs.
But here's a caveat. I play my own version of them.
I don't go so far off the beaten path where you can't recognize
it, but I still have my own style, my own version of that
song. And This is why I say, even if
you learn, let's say you learn the latest Megadeth tune or or P
cells or whatever, you learn, right?
Why not expand on that? What if you added notes here?
What if you played in a different key, right?
What if you played it on frets? You're not used to playing on
your guitar or bass or whatever. Add your own flavor to that.
And this is how I believe you expand into your own musician.
I always say this on my guitar channel.
I'm like be your own guitar player and can I thank you and I
would say be be your own musician and that's the premises
of metal Mastermind. Can you talk about being an
indie musician just now? An indie musician is is not a
copycat of the latest and greatest band out there or a
band that was popular 40 years ago.
Indie musician is all about creating what?
Creating your own sound. So that's that's my my personal
vision for metal mastermind. Yeah, you know, I I totally
agree. That statement alone not copying
others and being your own sound is a very really late, very
prominent like statement. And I want to just expand on
that and just also add that when we started Metal Mastermind, we
were trying to keep each other accountable first.
That was our initial goal. We used to meet up on Zoom every
two weeks or so and we would say, hey, you know, what are you
doing in your music and. Those are the days.
Those were the days and we were just trying to be accountability
buddies. And we called our sessions a
metal mastermind. And when we started to create
our YouTube channel, we kind of came to a point where we were
saying to each other, you know, like the stuff we're talking
about probably could help other people and maybe we should just
make some content about this on the Internet.
And we started to do that and we started to notice that people
were looking for content like this and a resource where they
could learn from and you know, being educators.
You know, Jason, you've been teaching people how to play
guitar for many years on YouTube.
And I've been an educator in universities.
And we were just like, you know, let's like marry the two types
of education here. You know, nobody wants to just
stick to YouTube and just learn on YouTube.
And many people don't want to go all the way into a university
and learn all this stuff. So we wanted to say, you know,
what's the best, the best of both worlds, right.
You can learn at your own pace at in a in a in a sequenced
scheduled like sort of outline so you can keep yourself on
track which is the benefit of being at a university.
But then you have the online accessibility and no not the
amount of money that you'd pay for university with you online
resources, especially if you were doing it from YouTube.
It was free, but we're doing at a very affordable cost.
So, so you don't have to feel like it's so much that you got
to shell out and be a dead, you know, for so many years.
So that's where metal mastermind kind of came and filled in a
little niche spot where we said, you know what, this is special
because the modern metal musician, they need a specific
resource that they could always call home and that's what metal
mastermind has become. It's become a network, a place,
a hub for people that want to do metal and do it in a way that's
going to effectively give them results.
And if you're not a part of our Discord, you should absolutely
go to metalmastermind.com and click on our social media links
and join our Discord page. You'll find Emily and Brydon,
our moderators on that platform to be a really, really welcoming
host. And you can talk to so many of
our people and there's places where you can, you know,
establish collaborations or, you know, we got, we share funny
memes. It's a it's a community of where
we got a lot of really people who care about quality metal
music. And you might find that, you
know, there are some really cool metal music that you never heard
of before. So just go ahead and check it
out and become a part of our community if you're not already.
And for those of you who already are, you know, we really thank
you. It's it's a pleasure to have you
and our team. Yeah guys.
So when you do, do check that out and join the Discord and you
know, go to metalmastermind.com. Also click on courses.
Go back to our courses guys. And there might have been
something we mentioned today that you don't have and you're
interested in. Well, hey, it's out there for
you to wrap things up. Ken and I usually like to end
with a song of the week. Do you want to go first?
You want me to go first, dude? Go ahead, you go first.
So I've actually Ken's looking this up.
I forgot exactly what I was talking about.
Oh man, I actually have an album that I want to highlight here.
So some of you may have heard, and actually this is not the
band I'm just giving you a little back story about about
the album and the artists here. Some of you may have heard of a
band called Primal Fear. They're a German.
I don't want to say German power metal band, more like a German,
just a German heavy metal band. Maybe a little bit of power and
progressive, but more melodic if if that makes sense.
So their guitar player for Primal Fear.
His name is Magnus Carlson and he has a solo album out released
this year, 2023, Magnus Carlson's Free Fall.
And the song I'm looking at right now is their first track
called Hunt the Flame, which is really, really cool.
And that might be actually that's the name of the album as
well. I'm sorry.
So that's the that's the album title track here.
But again, the band is called Magnus Carlsen's Free Fall and
the album is called Hunt the Flame and he's got different
vocalist on there. I just like his style of guitar
playing too, because he does shred.
Yes, he's a fast player, but he also, he also puts plenty of
melodies out there as well, which I I really appreciate
that. It's just a preference I get.
I get tired of the constant shredding.
It's like I love shred, but it's like, OK, we get it, you can
play fast. What else can you do?
Captivate me and he does just that.
And again, that's just a personal preference type thing.
But yeah, Magnus Carlsen's free fall hunt, the flame.
Very. Cool.
I'm going to take you guys back, actually, to when I first found
Rich Gray. This is another band alongside.
When I first discovered Aeon Zen, the band called Seventh
Wonder and their album here is called Mercy Falls.
Unbreakable is the song. It's very, very cool.
It's got like it actually. I think if I remember correctly,
it plays in a Phrygian mode, which is.
It sounds glorious. I love Phrygian.
And then as you're hearing it, it's got some time signature
changes. There's even a bass solo that I
really love. So check it out.
Yeah, Seventh Wonder really, really melodic progressive metal
type of tune. And you know, when I was in my
kick on progressive metal from, like Dream Theater and then of
course, Aeon Zen was part of that, This was a band that
influenced me quite a bit too. So yeah.
Awesome man. I'll check that out guys.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of metal mastermind Ken and I
truly appreciate you. Again, our goal is to help you
create your own sound and and just be part of something that's
that's cool. I mean, in layman's terms, we
just want to be, you know, part of something that's cool.
Nothing too cooler than metal, right?
So guys, thank you once again until the next episode.
Guys, take care of yourselves and always create your own
sound.