Folks, welcome to another episode of Metal Mastermind, Co
founder and Co host Jason Stallworth.
Also with me, Co founder of Metal Mastermind and Co host The
Great. Ken Candelas I always appreciate
when you say the great Ken Candelas.
That's always an honor. It just sounds like a royal
thing, like a cool, you know, I don't know, like we're Knights
and kings and stuff like that and hey.
You know, that's kind of funny because I, I saw a video
recently, it was on the Wired, I think, and it was about how do
you address a king and queen? And it's always the first time
you meet them or you, you address them.
It's always your majesty. But every time after that, it is
more proper to say Sir or ma'am. After that, you don't just keep
saying Your Majesty, Your Majesty, Your Majesty.
Yeah. Which if I didn't know that, I
probably would. That's true.
And that's a lot of syllables, majesty, when it's only three.
But yes, I guess it's better. Sir, ma'am.
Or, or back in the day, my Lord, or something like that, you
know. Well, and it's only specifically
to a king and queen, don't you? You, when you say it to like a
Lord or say you say Your Highness.
So you don't say Your Highness to a king or queen, you say Your
Majesty, that would be insulting to them.
Things you don't know, right? It's because we're an American,
right? We we say screw it to the kings
and Queens and the aristocracy. So yeah.
It is what it is. That's why we are where we are.
That is why, dude. Well, guys, we have some cool
stuff coming up for you today. We're actually going to talk
about Ken and I both are going to talk about some things in our
recent albums. Ken, I know you got a big
release coming up here in in September, September 20th, the
Homeric circle of dead children. I just had a release over Cometh
under my, you know, solo name Jason Stallworth me back in
December of 2023. And we were talking before the
podcast as we always do. We pretty much like, we're like,
why don't we just press record when we're having this
conversation earlier? But we want to share.
I don't want to say failures and I don't even want to say
mistakes, but things that if we had to go back and do these over
again, what are some things we may have changed now before we
get into this, I don't want this to be like, OK, well we're going
to beat ourselves up because we made mistakes and I wish I could
do things differently, but more so a lesson for going forward.
It's like, OK, I did this, I'm OK with it.
It's done. Can't can't go back.
You know, we can't turn back the clock, right?
But how am I going to approach the next project, the next album
or what? Guys, whatever you're doing in
life, you know, we like to to talk about things that can
benefit you as a musician and as a guitar player, as a singer,
drummer, bassist, whatever you do, songwriter, but also
concepts you can carry into really every aspect of your life
and just make it better. That's why we're here.
It's what we're all about. South Ken do tough question.
We got a lot of other topics too.
We're covering this going to help you guys.
But tough question dude, because this album's not even released
yet, so we shouldn't even be asking these types of questions.
But is there anything? Is there like one, maybe even
two things that if you had to do over again, is there something
that you would have done differently?
Oh man, over the course of the 10 years that I've been making
this damn thing. Maybe not take so long, right?
No. One, well, definitely better
people to be around. That is the biggest one, but
probably choosing to hire out for specific things along the
way. I, I think I took a little bit
too much on my own and you know, that could be just because I was
being a control freak about everything, but learning to let
go of that a little bit and just trust in paying people to get
certain things that you want out of it so that you could focus on
bigger, more important aspects. I probably could have done also
a little bit more with how I presented the material a little
bit, But I mean that that's kind of a double sided sword with it
because at one side it's, oh, you could have done this, but
the other side is, well, I didn't know about that.
So there's a, there's a whole con, you know, conflict about
that. I feel, though in the grand
scheme of things, you know, you just do what you can, you do the
best you can, right. And, you know, over the course
of the years, of course, things like in my studio, you know,
gear get better, my monitors or, you know, the best monitors I've
ever had in my life now. And yeah, I hear the problems in
my mix more. And it's like, OK, well it's
out. So there's nothing I'm going to
do about that. So but you just kind of live
with that and move on. I'm just honestly happy that
it's even getting out there. So we can only do what we can
and just enjoy the journey. So what about you?
That's a very, I, I like what you said though, about hiring
certain things out. And you know, some, some of you
guys listening, you might not think you have the money to do
it, but you know, honestly, if you, if you cut a few expenses
for like 3 months, you might be surprised.
Or if, or if you take on something extra, some side work
or something like that, or do some freelancing, man, we, we
live in a world of, you know, entrepreneurs and freelances.
Even if you have a job, a regular job to go to, you can
always find something else to do to make a little extra cash and
put that towards your music. And that's what a lot of us have
done. I mean, it can you know, our,
our job kind of as metal mastermind and you, you, of
course, you still teach at university and I, I play live
solo gigs. So you and I both, we have a lot
going on, but we still find time and resources to put towards our
own music as well. You know, we're not by any means
like multimillionaires. Maybe someday we will be, who
knows? And there there would be nothing
wrong if we were actually I, I think building wealth is, is a
great goal to have. Why not?
Don't let anyone let you make you feel guilty about wanting to
earn more money and building wealth and then doing that sort
of thing, right? That's a good thing.
The last thing you want to be is the opposite, where you're
dependent on other people or someone else.
So anyway, that's another conversation.
But you know, a few things that I would have done differently
with Masterpiece. For one, I would not have mixed
it myself, I think. I think that's always kind of a
weak area if you're creating music and then you're also
mixing it. I know I did hire Nick Z to
master it. So I'm, you know, I've never
mastered my own work. I know nothing about mastering.
I don't really know a whole lot about mixing, if I'm going to be
honest with you guys, but that that was 11 major flaw.
Another two other quick major flaws.
For one, one thing I did right is I recorded my vocals in
someone else's studio and meaning I had someone else.
They were, they were manning the console and doing all the stuff
on the computer and in the studio itself.
And I could just focus on singing guys.
I cannot tell you how much stress that relieved as opposed
to sitting in my own studio trying to record vocals, hitting
the stop button, going back and blah, blah, blah.
The next time I record anything professionally, you know, you
always do the draft in your own studio.
But the next time I record guitars, vocals, anything, I'm
going to be somewhere else. Either see either a I'll be in
somebody else's studio or I'll have someone come to my studio
and man the console so I can just focus on the one thing.
That's a very powerful lesson. I do wish I hadn't rushed
through the vocals and I don't know, I'll share why I did that.
But I I basically recorded all the vocals like three times and
took the best of the other thing that I did wrong.
I had all my guitar. Yeah, this is bad.
Well, this is not bad. OK, I don't Hey, I'll share this
real quick guys. So I I had all the guitar.
I recorded guitar tracks for this album multiple times.
I started out with a 7 string, but I just I was starting to
like 7 string just wasn't me anymore.
I don't know it's you. A lot of you guys know my stock
up between the seven string and me.
So I re recorded everything with a six string and that had me
actually rewriting some of the songs.
Fine, no big deal. I finally recorded all the
guitar tracks with an EVH 5153 amplifier.
The tone was just Immaculate. Perfect.
However, and some of you know, I, I had some sponsorships with
certain products with Black Star last year.
Well, I just got in a sponsorship with the HT Venue
Series MK3 amplifier. Great amplifier.
But I, I thought that well, and these are short term
sponsorships. It's not like I'm sponsored by
Black Star. It's a very short term, right?
They're product based so I ended up re recording all the tracks,
my perfect guitar tracks with the Black Star amplifier because
I was kind of rushing to get this done.
I didn't mess around too much with mic placement so I'm not
100% happy with the tone. The amplifier itself gives a
great tone, but I I could have done a much better job in
dialing in a tone. Or even better yet guys, I
should have just stuck with what I originally had recorded.
The reason I re record everything with Black Star, I
was thinking, well, maybe they'll help push my album.
Yeah, hey, I rerecorded all the tracks with your amplifier and
nothing ever happened with that. So that was a very powerful
lesson learned. You know, go with what you have
already have if. If it's already great, don't
redo it for the sake of you think this other thing might
happen. Yeah, there's a, there's a
really good proverb for that, which is, you know, you always
focus on the song. You know what's what does the
song need in this case? And sometimes we can get very,
you know, distracted by that because of circumstances and
wanting to do things. And you know, either in this
case, you were trying to make a sponsor happy and that kind of
backfired a little bit on the longevity of your, of your song.
So, and in this case, you know, your, your music was, was great,
but I remember you having your, your frustrations when making
this album. We would, you know, as we do, we
meet up every week and, you know, every now and then you'd
share and vocalize your, your frustrations of how your, your
album wasn't, you know, in a certain place at a certain time.
You're very passionate about that.
You know before Overcometh you've written 4 albums if I'm.
Correct, right. So.
You know, and I remember you making masterpiece.
That was a great album, still a great album.
I think it's one of your best ones.
And in Overcometh, I, I felt that energy and perhaps
Overcometh is, you know, part of that journey for you.
But we'll, you know, there's, there's always something that we
can take away from that, which is really the point of, of this
conversation is it's, it's important to reflect on what
you're doing so that you can improve.
And yesterday was actually the last day of the semester for one
of my classes. And I had this discussion with
my students too, which is, you know, to focus on, on making
great content and not to be too concerned about comparing
yourself because you, everybody's on their own Rd.,
everybody has their own journey. So really you should only be
comparing yourself to yourself. And I asked them, I said, OK,
you know, I know you have all these ambitions and it's easy to
look at what's now and what's in the what's in the future and
what you want. But a year ago, did you improve
right from when you started, you know, your education at this
place? And every one of them, every
single one of them was like, yeah, I was.
Like. That's what matters.
You know that you're still
moving forward, so it's important to look back, just
like you were saying in a sense, right?
It's a smaller mirror than the windshield that's in front of
you, right? So it's always important to keep
going forward. But, you know, look behind you
every once in a while and remember where you were coming
from, right? Because you know there's
something that's there behind you maybe you need to pay
attention to. And in this case, it's important
to remember that you know, your efforts have built you to the
point and you'll learn from every single one of your
experiences in making an album, right?
I certainly learned a lot from making this album and my
previous album and in between, you know, the releases of
Homeric, the original self-titled album, and you know,
this upcoming the Circle of the children album.
There's a ton of things that I've learned also now about
myself, but also about my skill sets, what I prioritize, what I
want to do in life. Actually, the, this past week,
I, I decided to leave a solo group in order to prioritize,
you know, my music a little bit more.
And, and I also talked to another friend of mine who was,
you know, doing a similar thing. And it's like, that's fantastic.
I'm so happy for you because you're choosing to elevate
yourself here. And we, we, we try to be, you
know, compassionate to others because especially in my case,
I'm, I was, I, I, I feel a sense of guilt when I get involved
musically with somebody and I want to leave because when I'm
in that position, I feel like my, my blood, my sweat, my
tears, right? I'm doing a lot to elevate
somebody's music, especially if it's somebody who's who I'm
close to, because, you know, I've been working with them for
a while and I want to do the best that I can.
And I want to help them because I generally really do want, you
know, people to, to, to grow. And I, I love seeing people's
music, you know, flourish, but that that takes a lot of energy
out of somebody. It it really does.
And you have to remember that, you know what their goals are
and what your goals are. It's OK if they, they cross
paths and they go in different ways.
We don't obviously disrespect the other person for it.
There's no reason to do that unless, of course, they did
something that was horrible to you, which in my old case with
home Eric, it definitely was. But you know, with something
like this, this was very, this was actually beautiful, you
know, parting of ways that we were actually so respectful to
each other. We were like, oh, dude, like,
you know, I'm glad you told me. I really don't want you to feel
that way and I understand where you have to go was the was the
vibe. And that was like, Oh my God.
Like I felt like this burden was lifted because you know what I
was contributing to the project in many ways was actually
offering an entire rehearsal space here in my home.
I had played on the album as a drummer and you know, it's like,
you know, you feel like it's sort of duty to that right
'cause it's like you're involved and it's like, well, after
playing with this person for like 5 years, you know, I'm not,
you know, it's, it's hard to just pick up and go.
So but I had to make the decision because at a certain
point I was going to start focusing more on that than I
wanted to really do on my side. And you know, those decisions do
come up and you just again, try the best you can.
But if you feel in a sense something similar to to either
what I'm going through or what Jason has gone through when
making over comment, that's just because we're human, right?
We have our flaws. We're not perfect and we're not
the most efficient things on the planet.
We're not machines, you know, we don't make the right decisions
every single time. So when we are trying to go on
this path of creating our best work, there's a lot of zigzags
and detours and all this kind of stuff.
And what we would change or do anything better, you know, it's
all a learning process. And that's why we call it
wisdom. You know, I think that's a good
point because I think your your best work really should just be
your best at the time. You know, like I said, Ken, you
might reflect, we've been talking about reflecting on some
things that OK, maybe would have done differently, you know, and
by no means am I beating myself up about that, Ken, You know,
you wish you would probably hired out some more things and
of course you've got better gear now than you had a year ago, two
years ago, whatever. But it I think it's about being
our best at that point in time. And I want everybody to
understand something that even putting your best out there, not
everybody else is going to perceive it as your best.
And they may not even perceive it as good.
But you will have some people, if you pour your heart and soul
into something and you do give it what you know to be your best
at that time, you will have people that will be fans of what
you do. I can almost promise you that.
And to me, it's not so much about trying to go after
everybody. And again, I've, I've suffered
from this man. I, I've suffered from wanting
everybody to like my music, even though most of the stuff is
metal, you know, even even playing these live acoustic
shows that do, I play 80s covers and I'll throw in some, I've
written a lot of acoustic stuff too.
I'm considering doing an acoustic album at some point.
You know, that might not please the people that like my metal
stuff. I hope they like it, but you
have to realize that whatever you're doing, not every, not
everyone's going to like it. They're not going to think it's
the best. And, and we had to just be OK
with that and not base our decisions off of what we think
people may or may not like. And I'm very guilty of that.
I'm like, well, if I, if I do this one thing, are people going
to like it or, or my fans going to like it?
The people that do like my music, are they going to say,
Oh, well, Jason's changing here, you know, And I think we just
have to have to cut that somehow, you know, and to the
point you were making earlier, too, about, you know, leaving
this project. I've said this before.
I had two bosses when I was in the corporate world that said
two very powerful things to me. One said, don't try to boil the
ocean. And the other one said if you
chase two rabbits, you won't catch either.
And those have stuck with me, man.
Those have stuck with me. You talked about the windshield.
And another friend of mine said that to me many, many years ago
when I was going through quite a rough patch in life.
We don't go down that road, but I was beating myself up one day
is probably almost 20 years ago. And he said, Jason, there's a
reason why your windshield is so much bigger than your rearview
mirror. And like you said, Ken, yeah, we
can look back, you know, every now and then say, OK, this is
where I, this is how far I've come.
And I can be proud of that. But we need to quickly turn
right back around and look straight ahead.
And and not only looking forward, guys, I think we also
need to embrace and cherish the present moment as well.
Yeah, because if you keep looking in your rear view
mirror, you're going to miss the car in front of you and you're
going to bump that, you know, bumper.
That's true, Yeah. You don't want to do that, man.
And I'll tell you now, with with with car insurance rates here in
Florida where I live, it it's insane.
It's it's almost criminal what these people are charging.
That's another conversation. But I mean, it, it really is
home owner's insurance here, guys, the property tax,
everything has gone up. I don't know how New York is
where you're at, Ken. I'm sure it's rough there too.
But in Florida they just it, it's like they're trying to I, I
don't know it again, another conversation, but it's just,
it's almost criminal how much these people are are just hiking
up prices. Yeah, actually, you know, funny
enough, on my wedding night, not kidding, my freaking wedding
night, 2:15 in the morning. We're up because you know, we're
still wired from the entire event.
We're like excited. We're going through all, we're
trying to clean up and whatever we hear this big crash, you
know, and lo and behold, somebody who was driving down
our street crashed into a car that was behind our car parked.
And it's sandwiched their car, my car and the car in front of
us all in one. And it totally collapsed the
silencer and muffler. And we had obviously some
damage. And it ended up being that the
damage that was done to the car was more than the car was worth.
So we actually have to junk it, dude.
That's obviously it was just like, we're not going to pay
more than what this thing is worth.
So yeah, yeah, yeah. And on my wedding night, I was
like, are you kidding? Me.
I didn't know about that dude. That sucks man.
Oh, man, you know, but in a case like that, honestly, it's like,
I'm just glad nobody was in the car.
You know, we can only be like grateful for those things.
But I mean, yeah, it's an inconvenience, you know, but a
car is a car, you know, we can, we can replace a car.
And luckily that's everybody is OK.
So, but those are those are the types of things, man.
It's like life will just always happen and you got to roll with
punches. Nobody is going to ever have
perfect streak for their entire life, you know?
And yeah, we, we, we just, we move forward and we always keep
looking forward. You know, obviously, like you
said, remembering where we came from, appreciating where we came
from, but that's not the focus. Our focus is to make, you know
strides where we want to go. Make strides and enjoy the
weapon. I I love what you said about
we're not perfect too. You know, we are human beings,
you know, we're talking about these things and we, we make
imperfect decisions. I don't know that I'd want
everything to be perfect and, and I'll, I'll flip back over to
the music site. It would be boring.
I, I love what Glenn Fricker says and it you know, I know he,
he's, he's quite the personality on YouTube, right?
And we, of course, we had him on the podcast here several months
ago and he really a really nice dude to sit here and chat with
him. You know, I didn't know what to
expect, but super nice, nice guy.
I enjoyed that conversation we had with Glenn, but he makes
this statement. He's made the statement often
lately is like perfect metal when you sync everything
perfectly. It's just boring.
And I don't want to get into because you, we talked about
this, Ken, you know, there are projects with orchestration.
You know, I know you have a lot of orchestration.
I love bands like Nightwish. They have a lot of
orchestration. So there are certain tools that
you will use to make that sound as epic as it possibly can,
because that's what the music calls for.
But just overall, in general, when we're talking about
rock'n'roll, rock'n'roll and we're talking about heavy metal
and we're talking about just a story, guitars and some
screaming vocals, do you really want everything, everything to
be perfect? Do you want it to be perfectly
synced or tuned or whatever? Right.
And it's not to, I want to be careful how I say this.
It's not to give yourself a free pass to to perform poorly,
right? You need to be, you know, you
need to be talented at what you do.
Or as Ken said earlier, if there's are parts you can't do
well, then hire that out. I'm a guitar player.
I'm a, you know, decent vocalist, I guess, but I'm not a
drummer. So guess what?
I hire a drummer. If you if you had me play drums
on my own album, it would sound just like murderous.
It'd be like, OK, what the crap is this, Jason?
You can't play drums clearly. So, so, you know, I, I work with
Cameron Fleury to pass two albums, you know, you know, Ken,
when we wrote our song from Metal Mastermind, you are your
master. I didn't record drums for that.
You're the drummer, dude. So, you know, and Ellie put some
beautiful vocals behind everything.
So, you know, we, we, we had other people do things that we
weren't good at, right, that we knew they were the experts in.
So there's a lot to be said for that.
But like, I know on my albums, and I don't want to say never,
but I, I, I don't ever plan to use things like pitch
correction, auto tune and, and I don't ever plan to perfectly
sync the drums. Now looks if I, if I made like a
techno or trance album or something like that.
And I went through a phase of that many, many years ago.
OK, yeah, let's, let's line everything up to the grid
because that's what people expect, right?
But in any case, I want to, what I'm saying is, is I, I want to
have those slight nuances of imperfections because I think
that they, I think they give a different life to the album.
You and I were talking about this too, Ken.
We're talking about music sounding epic today using these
tools. But what about all the great
music that was recorded, you know, 20304050 years ago?
They didn't have anything like the tools that we have today,
yet they created some really epic masterpieces.
And I just sometimes I wonder where, where are we lacking that
everybody feels the need? And again, I'm not talking about
like some of the the premium orchestrations that we have out
there, like Nightwish fans like that, right?
But just in music in general, somebody making a rock'n'roll
album, right? Just a raw rock'n'roll album.
Like where's that missing link at?
You know? You know.
I was watching this interview with Alan Parsons, who was the
engineer for Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and he was
talking to Rick Biano. And you know, I love Rick
Biano's channel. I know you watch Rick Biano.
It's great. Yeah, he's great.
And well, he was talking, Alan was talking about, you know,
well, how he got started, which was as a tape operator when when
he came to The Beatles. So he was an Abbey Road and, you
know, he was hired and he was able to he he got the job.
And a lot of that job was archival work, right?
Knowing how to do all that and organize all the tapes so that
at any point in time, you know, they could recall a session.
Of course, obviously they had an entire library, literally.
So organization was key. That was that was a job of, you
know, people who were hired for engineering in the first time,
right? That's that would be the intern
role, essentially. And so he would learn and he
would just operate tape for these sessions.
And you know, when you see things like, of course, like The
Beatles coming in, they started off with four tracks, you know,
so they had not a lot to work with and we had to make it sound
as good as they could. So on Let It Be, which was, you
know, some of the early stuff with The Beatles, you know,
those 4 tracks you literally had, you know, one microphone
for the drums, one microphone for the bass, one microphone for
guitar and vocals, right? And that was it.
That's all you had. And you have to make it work.
So the entire editing process was not really that existent
because it was just 4 tracks and everybody was playing together
at the same time on those tracks, so everybody had to get
it. Right, Everything's being picked
up too, right by this, you know, you can't isolate the drums, for
example, because you've got ripples in that mic, so.
No, you, you, that's just what you had.
And when it came to something like Dark Side of the Moon,
which came out later, which I think was on a 16 track, you
know, not a lot of tracks to work with for such an epic
album. You had again, very similar
instances where, you know, maybe you only dedicate 4 tracks to
the drums, right? So your mic technique had to be
spot on. And you know, if you listen to
that album, those are some of the best drums I've ever heard
in my life. So, and the difference between
it, it's like when I, when I was like listening to this
interview, you know, Alan was not really also a, a, a big
advocate of using a lot of compression on drums.
So the drums, he actually intentionally left them
completely uncompressed where, where he would only compress
things like bass and vocals. So there's a lot of dynamic
range, right? So part of the production
process was in order to createspace, we had to not limit
the dynamics of space. So using that as a, as a tool
right for for creative expression was, was also really
pivotal. Those are like some just things
from this interview that I was like, I was really, really like,
wow, OK, we definitely lost a lot of this mentality along the
way. Because when you go to something
like dark side of the moon and if you look at the two track
master, there's actually quite a bit of splicing going on between
different takes. And, you know, making sure that
even those takes married well together was like a shot in the
dark because you couldn't, you know, you know, unless you
wanted to risk ruining what was a great performance, you'd have
to take the reel off, put another reel on, record that new
take, splice the take, put it with the other old reel and hope
to God that it lined up well. Like, that's insane.
And, you know, in today's world, that's insane.
And now we have, you know, this magical thing called undo, and
we can do all the takes that we want and we can keep everything
and we don't. And everything's non
destructive, which is amazing. But it definitely removed a
barrier that in those instances you had to persevere through.
And you know, so when we say, you know, a lot of certain magic
in music is gone, it's because, well, there's no risk.
There is no risk. So having risk and making music
dangerous to even do, like imagine you were always on it.
You had to be because if you did it, you just screwed up.
One of the best takes that will never get ever again.
Wow, that's, that's crazy, I'm saying.
So would you say Ken did? And I don't want to do a talent
versus then versus now type of thing.
But I mean, I guess, I guess back then you really had to be
married to your craft. If you're a musician and you're
recording this epic music, these songs that are timeless, that
are, I'd say a lot of the older stuff is played more and listen
to more than the newer stuff out there, man.
But you really had to be. You really had to have a
different type of passion for what you do as a vocalist, as a
guitar player, drummer, bass player, right then, then what's
out there today? I mean, you certainly had more
challenges to overcome. Just even learning music, you
know, there was less information going around than there is
today. So, you know, picking up a
guitar at a young age, there was a lot of risk to that, you know,
'cause who are you? And, you know, you don't know
anybody. So you stumble into, you know, a
place like Abbey Road and you hope you make something of
yourself, you know, even as even trying to be an engineer, you
know, because who who came before you, you know, this we're
talking about like Miles Davis. Do you have Frank Sinatra?
You know, all these like people that were in the 50s, the 40s,
the 30s, twenties, 10s, you know, those are, that's the era
that you had to work with and all those challenges that
everybody in those times had to work with too.
It, it really is, you know, such a unique time that we live in
now, which is of course changed the entire face of the music
industry moving forward for the rest of the time.
But that pivotal moment of, you know, when the computer came, it
completely set the course of the recording industry for what's to
come. Yeah.
Everything was a risk. Learning guitar.
You had to be committed. You had.
That's all you practice. I mean, look at Envy Maumstein,
you know, like when he was a kid, that's all he did.
That's there was no YouTube. There was just I have guitar and
I play guitar and that's all I do.
Even guys like, you know, rest his soul, man.
Alexi Leho he. Was a kid when he was a.
Kid, he was great. Lock himself in the room and he
would just play all day. That's all he would do.
That's all I do as a teenager, man.
Yeah, he. Was a he was a boy genius for
it. And so, you know, yeah, I mean,
we don't we don't get a lot of those opportunities anymore
because everything is so interconnected now.
But the reason why they were so great was because they really
didn't have as many distractions and they just focused on what
was at the time, what was fun for them and it was inspiring
for them and it made them great. And keeping that alive.
Is is, is, is, is a challenge today because of so many things.
We got Netflix, we got Hulu, we got YouTube, TikTok, Facebook,
Instagram. We got all this stuff that
distracts us on a day-to-day basis.
Gosh, it's just no wonder. It's no wonder.
Oh yeah, I had to, I had to put my phone to the side.
I want, I want to back up real quick because this, this would
probably be taken out of context by someone.
When I, when I mentioned that the old musicians had more
passion, I, I don't mean to say that today's musicians don't.
I don't want to say that today's because there are plenty of you
listening right now. You are ultra passionate about
what you do as a musician and there are a lot of you out there
that are making great music. So I, I don't, I don't want that
to be taken out of context. Yeah, I guess when, when I said
that, I, I mean, in kind of like overall, and maybe maybe I'm
pointing towards, you know, the genres of music that, well, stop
metal. I'm talking more of like stuff
you would hear on the radio versus what, what iTunes and
Spotify throw at you on their home page now.
So I don't want to offend anybody by saying that musicians
back then were more passionate, I think in the mainstream genres
or radio friendly stuff. I think that might be the case
versus today. But when we're talking about the
the metal community here and even set a lot of the Rock You
guys out there and the new stuff that's that's coming out there,
there's a there's a lot of great stuff.
I want to say that I know some of you are in bands now and you
have some phenomenal stuff. I know, I know our our friend
Vincent, by the way, we're going to put out a post.
I'm going to write this up on our YouTube channel Now on the
community post, I want to ask you if you're in a band to list
the name of your band. I want to ask you guys to do
that. So stay tuned to our community
post. We put this podcast out on a
Tuesday, so you'll see that community post out there.
Look for that and let us know what band you're in so Ken and I
can go listen to you guys because we'd love to, would love
to maybe even showcase. We can't play it here because
we'd get copyright strike. But you at least mentioned some
of you guys that are part of metal Masterminds.
We appreciate you being part of this.
So I just want to make that clear.
I didn't want that. I didn't want that to be taken
out of context. But yeah, I, I kind of like the
idea of, of recording a full pen like that.
You know, Ken, hopefully it's not premature in me saying this,
but I know you're working with who's now your wife, Ellie.
She's got a project, a new album that she's going to be working
on. And you had mentioned to me
earlier that that you wanted to record that as a band.
Is that right? Yeah.
So our production process has been kind of very sparse in some
ways over the course of several years because, well, Ellie's
journey through her own production is, is another story.
And, you know, I kind of came into the fold.
And one of the reasons why Ellie and I became so close in the
beginning of our relationship was really because also I was
helping teach her how to use a dog.
So that's, you know, to see her not knowing a lick of what it
means to use logic or Pro Tools to now her creating her stores
is an amazing journey. And I'm so proud of her.
And in this current moment in time, you know, during that
course of, of, of years, we've, we've done some demos and all
this kind of stuff. And now we're kind of at a point
where we're amalgamating all this all the all the music has
been written. Now it's gonna be put into more
finessed sheet music so that session players can come to the
studio, knock it out. So about quarter one next year,
we're looking at doing a full recording session, you know, at
A at A at a larger studio that has better equipment so that we
can get the fidelity that we want on the record so that this
thing can see, you know, it's best self.
So that's our goal. And yeah, it's been a long time
coming. Actually.
Ellie's been working on this, you know, album a lot longer
than I've been working on the circle of their children.
I think when she was she was working on some of these songs
since she was like 16. That's crazy.
Two now. So yeah, there's there's a lot
of time spent on on somebody's music.
And I'm sure like some of you guys out there are also on a
similar journey. I think that we forget, or maybe
this is just because we're kind of a new sample in the entire
history of recorded music. But when you had, you know,
people like Frank Sinatra or whatever, any of these greats in
the back in the day, you know, who had so many records, well,
you know, there was funding for that.
There was an entire thing called the record label that would pay
for sessions and there was a business model behind it that
people would buy records and, you know, they'd recoup those
losses. And we don't have that model
anymore. There isn't such a thing as as
doing stuff like that. I mean, there is, but you know,
let's be real, there's not a lot of people doing that.
So most people are doing this on their own.
And what does that mean? It means that, well, unless you
got a lot of money to keep doing it so frequently, you probably
have to save. You probably have something else
in your life that you have to attend to, like a job or family
or whatever, and you have to exchange instead of money, you
have to do it for time. So it takes us a lot longer as
indie musicians to do the things that we want to do at the
quality that we want to make them.
But, you know, if, if this is something that you do, then this
is just part of it, right? It's we, we, we're going to
accept it. But don't forget that, you know,
like, it's totally normal now to see people take a really long
time to create something like an album.
That's why I think a lot of Indian musicians just decide to
do things like singles, you know, or, or EPS, because doing
a whole album is a concept and there is there's a lot of work
behind that. So I just want to, I want to, I
want to iterate that because I think it's important to
understand and remember that, you know, we talked about like
Pink Floyd and, you know, being in Abbey Road and they had 16
tracks and they had limitations, right?
But we also have limitations. They're just different
limitations. And we just have to, you know,
remember that we have to overcome anything in this world.
And the reason why, you know, something is great, just because
there was a lot of hard effort that went into that.
You can't get something great without having to overcome
something. That's why it's great, OK,
Because it's hard to do. It's hard.
And you know, don't forget that. You know, great things take
time. But we need more great content.
We need more great content, and we don't need more crap.
So content is king. That is true.
Yeah, that is true. And you know, you can you guys
know that Ken and I, we share some of our our shortcomings
with you for that reason. So like the things we shared
today talking about our albums, what we might do differently.
Well, you guys can think about that as like, OK, well, you
know, Jason wish he would done this.
So let me just skip that mistake that the Jason just shared with
me, you know, so hopefully, hopefully you get some value out
of that, you know, because that's, I mean, that's why Metal
Mastermind exists. You know, Ken and I, we are
musicians just like you, we're, you know, releasing music and
putting stuff out there. And I know that not all of you
are really crazy about releasing music.
Some of you just play music for a hobby and that's perfectly
fine. That's a, that's a good outlet
to have, you know, so that's perfectly fine if you're not
releasing anything. But for those of you who do want
to take that next step, well, we're here to help with that as
well. So we've, we've got, you know,
we'll do our quick plug here, Ken, we've got production
courses out there. Ken, you've got you've got a
course out there on professional studio design because you and,
and you actually have a professional studio in your home
like you, you know, I wish you guys could see it, but maybe
we'll put some videos out there. We've got to do a Ken studio
video here pretty soon on metal mass for my YouTube channel.
But you show people how to do that by getting into, I mean,
dude, you nerd out on like the science of building, the science
of sound. So if that's your thing, that's
way over my head. But if that's your thing guys,
and do check that out, Metal Studio designer.
We've got courses out there to help you on metalmastermind.com.
And we don't have any subscription type things for our
courses. We may have some kind of like
some kind of other thing that we get into later to help musicians
that might be based on that. But our courses, our courses,
you can just grab those at an extremely affordable cost.
And those are out there. Once you get access to it, you
have it. We don't charge any
subscriptions right now. So I just want to put that out
there. Metal mastermind.com.
So, Brother Ken, do you have a metal song for the week?
Yeah, well, I love this band. Been listening to them for a
while and I'm actually choosing this song because I think if I
remember correctly it's Michael Romeo's favorite song from
Symphony X. It's a Electric Messiah or the
from the from the album Iconoclast.
I know Iconoclast is definitely his favorite album out of
Symphony X, but I think Electric Messiah is one of them too.
So one of the songs on that album at least.
So check it out. It's a great tune, very, very
catchy, great melody. And honestly, I think it is
definitely one of the better produced albums from Symphony X
as well. And I think Iconoclast was kind
of inspired by the idea of the matrix.
So very, very cool concept. That's awesome, man.
Goodbye you man. I came across a band as you
know, like when you're listening to iTunes, Spotify, if if you
got on like a radio based on a song and you get all this cool
stuff. So I based a station off my
friends band must not kill. You guys know I've had Brad
Mader on the channel I've had he's the creator of must not
kill. He was an all out war way, way
back in the day. And I'm good friends with the
guys in the band there. I've had, I've had Will their
drummer William James on my Channel 2 here, but I came
across and listening to the radio station based on them,
they started playing some other stuff, stuff I've never heard.
Came across this band called Swine of the Descent, and they
only have one album out there that was released in 2020 called
An Uprising. And I listened to the entire
album, like, you know, later that day and the next day and
it's like, man, this is pretty cool.
I don't think they've released anything since which of their
Facebook and Instagram and all that.
But yeah, Swine of the Descent, DISSENTA great album again from
a band I've never heard of. I'm like, wow, good stuff.
You know, I stumbled upon a band that I never heard of, but I was
actually really doing just some research on Homeric just to see.
I was like, I was typing in. I was like in Google, I open up
a private browser just so that I don't have any cookies.
I said, let me just see. You know what happens when I
type up Homeric? The Circle of Dead Children,
Right. And there's actually a band
called The Circle of Dead Children.
Yeah. And I looked into it.
It was actually some pretty freaking, like, metal stuff.
I was like, this is thick. It's like slam metal.
It's awesome. You know, just something that I
just wanted to throw out there because you know, when you find
something like a gem, like an indie band like that, it's just
so cool. So that that's another thing
real quick for you, kind of another lesson for you guys to
think about, not not necessarily in your case, Ken, but when
you're coming up with like with like a band name, and I know you
guys probably do this already, but research that as best as
possible. Good example, I'm wearing my I'm
friends with the guys in the band Siren, the guys that were
Tampa heavy metal band that's been around since the 80s.
I'm wearing one of those shirts right now.
But if you type in Siren, you have all kind of bands called
Siren out there. It's just like, OK, so for them
I always type in Siren US band or Siren, their latest album of
mercenaries, Fate. So.
But yeah, it's home. Eric is quite a great name,
dude, Because there's nothing else.
And then of course, being first, there's a lot to be said for
that too. So yeah, a little tip there.
Be careful with the band names, brother Ken, dude, another great
session today, man. We want to say thank you all you
guys for listening and being a part of Metal Mastermind.
This is a the most amazing community here that we have with
you guys of, of metal musicians. So we really do appreciate you
guys. Folks, as always, don't forget
to check out Metal mastermind.com for more
resources and we've got our courses out there for you as
well. And until next time, create your
own sound.