Hello, and welcome to another episode of Inside the recording studio. I'm doing good, Jody. I am Jody Whitesides and with me as always is Mr. Chris Hellstrom. How are you today, Chris? How are you? I'm feeling sunny because I was out playing pickleball this morning and now we're here to record our newest episode, which is about what? We're going to talk about working on a short deadline today. And that's something that is a little Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
bit dependent on what it is that we're doing obviously. The way I'm thinking about this on the short deadline would be if we're submitting a track for any kind of media, if it would be for like a library or perhaps to throw your hat in the ring for a movie or whatever an opportunity might be. We're now talking about like a mixing thing. So we're talking, well we are talking about mixing, but not it's a deadline to supply mix.
talking about an end-to-end thing from either one person or a group of people Yes. working on a singular piece of music to get it done in what one day or less? What's the fastest deadline you've ever had? Well what's the or less? Two hours? One day or less. Or less would be... No, I think the fastest one that I actually ended up submitting for was I think less, probably less than 12 hours. Four hours? (silence) Right. Right. Right. And that was something that you and I did together actually.
Right. What we did, I think you had gotten the words, "Hey, can we do something like this by tomorrow noon or whatever?" And it was in the afternoon. And it wasn't like we had the opportunity to sit and work on that effectively until Don't forget. that deadline was going to come up. It was like, okay, this is going to happen both on our ends. And you had to write lyrics. We had to write everything. Mix it, master it, submit it by, I want to say it was like noon the next day. And we did that.
So that's probably the shortest. We also recorded it too. Well, of course, yeah, the whole process, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. Roughly six hours or less. Robert. Yeah. Calls me up like almost at midnight. probably the shortest like real live world example that I keep giving. So what about you? Have you had any other ones that were shorter than that? That you had to? Yeah? What was that? Okay. Was this the one with Robert? Yeah.
Yeah. Wow. 6 a.m. deadline. Wow. That's brutal. Yeah. All right. Oh, well, there you go. Oh, Hey, what are you doing? Driving home from a gig. What are you doing? I've got something that I need to turn in by 6 a.m. Can you help? (laughs) It was an all-nighter. We got it done just in time. I think by the time I got there, it was probably 12.30 and we got it done by 6 a.m. right on the button. That was, yeah, about five and a half hours in the middle of the night, yeah. It was pretty fast.
It was for a Butterfinger commercial, so, and it worked out, they used it. Yeah. they go. So it was worth it. But that's sort of like the premise It was. (silence) that I'm thinking about here. So when we're doing this, right, The process or the brief? let's say that you got a quick turnover, you have to submit this pretty quickly. What's the first kind of thing that you're thinking about? As far as like the process?
Sure. 'Cause the first thing you have to get is the brief and you have to know what it is. You have to write or record or mix, do whatever on the short deadline. Mm-hmm. So if you are the one-stop shop, Right. which essentially is what I tend to think of myself as, or you can do, and Robert, or a few other people that we know. The brief is the most important thing because you have to nail whatever it is that you're looking for. And that comes from experience, maybe.
So maybe, maybe, yeah, A brief tends to be a short paragraph, maybe we should drill down a little bit on that. As far as I would agree, for people that might not know what that is, can you explain what a brief tends to be? (mumbles) Mm-hmm. or even a couple of sentences that describe exactly what they're looking for musically speaking. Sometimes it comes with an actual like link Right, and generally also, to a song example, which you take in as vibe.
You don't take that in as, I'm gonna rerecord something like that. But the brief essentially tells you, this is what we're looking for, please deliver. Yes. Thinking just that you just mentioned that it's popped in my head because I actually That can have really minutiae in there as well. They needs to be this and this long. We're looking for this kind of instrumentation perhaps, but you're right in just wanna kinda like double down on this.
It generally is just giving you a vibe of what they're looking for. We're looking for an up-tempo rock track in the style of XYZ, whatever. That's the brief. So now that you have, yeah. Okay. actually got a brief to do a theme song for a cartoon. And it was, we need to have a rock song [laughs] in the style of Fred Flintstone. So you're going organic is what you're saying, right? I'm like thinking Fred Flintstone didn't have electric instruments. How am I doing this?
So that's a, I don't know why that just popped So you mentioned there as well, it's like leaning on your experience. in my head when you said that. Yes, you have to go organic rock on that, yes. And I think that's... And when you say experimentation, what are you referring to in terms of experimentation? as well as like leaning on your experience. And I think that's, I mean, if this is the first time we're doing this, we might not have any experience doing it. But the more comfortable you
get with what you know that you can deliver this gets a little bit easier. The first thing to do, I think, is to realize that this is not a time for experimentation. Up front, right? Hmm. I'm thinking of, you know, let's say that the briefers that they want in 80s dark synth pop track as an underscore, whatever, let's say, maybe this isn't the best thing to do. Okay. Okay. Oh, you know what? Maybe I should start coding my own instruments and do something that I could use in this.
Or it's like, maybe it's that new synth that I've never opened up that I bought on sale six months ago. Let's see what that can do. That can be a big time waster for me. ( ( I think you're better off going with tried and true stuff that you know, gear, and you can deliver because you don't have a lot of time. audio ) Right? And getting in the weeds too early is not making best use of your time. ( audio )
That'd be one way of looking at it. Now, let me give you an example and see how you would, quote, unquote, experiment with the writing aspect of this. You're given a trailer for a movie. I don't need resources to do it right. They don't tell you anything else. Just write music to this trailer. What do you do? How are you writing that? Let's go there for a second. 'Cause this is where I'm thinking experimentation and experience go hand in hand with this.
And let's just say that the trailer is Cloud Atlas for that movie. What kind of music are you certainly envisioning Well, I'm looking at orchestral, right? Possibly large percussion, percussive elements, that type at that point? - Mm-hmm. (gentle tapping) Sure. of a thing. I would listen for all that trailer and just see what makes that tick, right? Is it going to be a, well, trailer tracks tend to be a bit of a build, right? You could have like an Mm-hmm.
introduction and then the development and a massive ending type of thing, right? So that's the first things that I would go in for. I would probably not pick up Sure. my guitar the first thing I do with that, right? So to me it's listening for the Well, there's no vibe given to you. vibe and then going with an orchestral thing. It's probably gonna include if it's a... Right, but I'm saying the vibe of the trail... Oh, are you talking about you You're just giving the trailer.
That's why I'm asking. actually get the trailer with no music. Oh, okay. So then I'm Yes. Aha. Right. going to switch gears because that's that's a different animal, right? Right. So I'm thinking then futuristic, right? But I told you the movie. No, well, I'm thinking possibly atmospheric, a little bit of suspense, some mystery there. But that's, I'm going for by what I'll learn. the feel of that is, of the visuals, and then try to start Okay. Mhm.
there. I would probably still go with some sort of orchestral thing. But I would also listen for or listen, this is a little bit weird. And it sounds like hokey, but I would watch the Mm hmm. footage, and then see if there is a sort of temple that feels right with the way things are edited and cut. So that's probably where I would start. I would Yep. Gotcha.
probably start sketching out ideas. And I might even start sketching out ideas on just like a piano type of thing to give me an overall key or something that I can then build off of. That's how I would do it. What about you? Because I think this is a real world example from you as It is a real world example. as well, isn't it? Yeah. That's why I was asking you. Yeah. And your initial response was very similar to what I did. Mm-hmm. Cause I did a very much an orchestral thing.
It had multiple pieces to it. I had less than 24 hours to turn it around. Mm-hmm. And it was part of an example put on by a PRO to show how composers should approach doing a trailer. And the interesting thing about it is Well then... Hm-hm. I went with the vibe of the visuals determined the instrumentation that I did. And it built throughout the entire thing [ Pause ] and how to stop and big giant ending kind of thing.
And the interesting thing about it is when it was judged [ Pause ] compared to all the other trailers that were turned in, mine was the only one that was full blown, like big orchestra, slow build kind of thing that had everything moving based on the images. And the most interesting comment that came out was adventure music because it was considered kind of adventurous kind of movie. is very difficult to do and get right. [ Pause ]
Whoever did this, because they didn't tell who did what, they nailed this perfectly. [ Pause ] There were other trailers in there where people were doing very minimalist piano lines, simple guitar line, very minimal for a movie that is like epically large, especially with the way the trailer was laid out. So getting the vibe right is a very big deal and trying to go jump on the bandwagon of something if it's not what they're looking for and they don't really give you much information Yeah.
is probably not your best approach. Yeah. Because at that point, that was when a lot of trailers Yeah. were suddenly trying to go very, very minimal, but they didn't want minimal for this. They just wanted to see what people would produce in terms of this. It's a hard thing to think about when you're not given much of a brief.
You have to rely on that experience of things that you've done, take into account what people might be doing at the time, but also serve the image of the media that you're given. Does that make sense? Yeah, because that's the only tell that you have then. And that's, yes. It's the visuals and what that makes you feel. Yeah. Sorry, cut you off here. But one thing that I think we should point out, or at least what my mindset would be for it.
If there is no sort of guide given to what it is that they want, they just want you to score this. I think you have to live and die by what your approach to that would be. In other words, if you Uh-huh. Yes, I would not go so far as to say it's wrong being you. wrote something that was big and epic, like you did, and that was what they were looking for fantastic. But if your mentality is that no, this feels like a minimalistic synth score, perhaps,
right? Then that's what you have to do. If it's wrong, then it's wrong, but at least you're wrong being you, you know? No. The reality is that's what you came up with. They didn't give you a good enough brief to do something different. And in the case of the trailer that I'm talking about, there was no brief whatsoever. It was just the trailer without the music. You can't take it personal that they don't choose it. [BLANK_AUDIO]
You have to maintain that professional attitude of like, I did what I felt was necessary for this piece to work. And it didn't gel with what they were looking for Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, again, I'm cutting you off all day here. move on to your next project. Don't take it personal. That's what I would go for. And it's going to be fine. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Mike said something, Mike Green, when we talked to him as well, when he was doing an intro for, I think was like courtroom drama.
You know, he said, what you listen to, you see it. And it's like, no, that's just wrong. That's wrong for what we're doing. And it's just that it's not a reflection of the work that you did. It's just that that's not what the client is looking for. And when given a brief like you did that was very minimalistic. Right. Right. It's like, there's really no brief. It's like, here, do your thing. I would even venture to say that it could be that the client doesn't necessarily know
No, exactly. Right. And speaking of different directions, let's take a word from our sponsors. what they want. They just want to see and they would kind of know when they hear it. It's like, oh, I kind of like that angle. It has nothing to do with us as artists on a personal level. And so I'm like, no, fuck that guy, Jody, man. You know, it's, that's probably very unlikely to happen. It's just like, no, this piece is not right for this. Great work, but we're going to
go in a different direction. So it's certainly not personal. It can, it can sting. Yeah. Yeah. And we're back and we're going to move on to talking about the use of templates. If you do certain things very well or you do them over and over. Do you have templates? I do. Yeah. Anytime I do something for a particular library, if it's a certain style, I save that as a Right. template because it just saves a whole bunch of time. And I know I'm going to be in the ballpark every time I start something.
And it's also a time saver, right? I know that, for example, a couple of years ago, I did something where they wanted a strong 80s vibe, like synth popping. Blimey vice. (chuckles) Not necessarily like that. It was a little bit more of like an underscore type of thing. Mm-hmm. But then I had, okay, these are the drum machines I'm going to do. I'm going to lean on these synths, that type of thing, right? So they're already loaded up.
So having a template when I start writing in a certain style, this is the huge time saver. I'm not wasting time going through loading up instruments or trying out every articulation or whatever. So I'm good to go right off the bat. Mm hmm. Right. Yes and no. So that I think is something that's a huge time saver. You obviously have to set it up once before you get the template, but that's not the end of the world, right? You have that, so it's, you can pull that up again and again.
That's what I do. I'm sure you do the same thing, right? And I will clarify that by stating that I do have friends that are pretty big time composers. And I know full well that because they are more orchestral in nature, they have gigantic templates that have pretty much every one of their instruments all laid out in the way that they like them laid out. Early on, I used to do the same thing. Unfortunately, okay, my reality is is that I know what you're going to do now.
I laugh because I remember. (laughs) [ Pause ] I don't do that anymore. And part of it has to do with me wanting to internalize whatever the brief or the item of media is that I'm looking at to think about it ahead of time. Then I kind of take the approach that you mentioned, the first swing, if this is gonna be like a library thing or a full disc type thing or multiple tracks in the same nature, (silence) I will create a template of the instrumentation Thank you. that I'm going with with that.
[ Pause ]
Mind you, if I were to go into a lot more scoring (Applause) with just straight up, I'm just a movie guy, (Silence) I would do the entire orchestra, [BLANK_AUDIO] just like a lot of my buddies that do that do. Just because it saves a hell of a lot of time and they know where everything is at any given moment. But for me, being a little bit more free Right?
at the beginning of the project to just load up instrumentation, to me gives me the ability to be a little bit more chameleon-esque or think about, wow, what if I added this? It's like Mike suggesting adding banjo to things that don't make sense to add banjo to. But you'd sneak it in there and you get you [BLANK_AUDIO] as you're layering in the instrumentation. Now, if they're asking you to do multiples of this, yeah, you wanna create a template because at that point it becomes a lot easier.
Yeah, I wanna clarify when I said, started laughing there cuz I was thinking about I wouldn't necessarily say that I would rely on presets with those templates, but they can get you in the ballpark. Okay. something that you and I have talked about in the past with what we both did. The auto load of logic, yes. where early on in the days I would try to when I set up my what used to be called the auto load in in Right, and I was trying to foresee Sure.
Anything that I might want to use in this friggin project, right? Sure. You never get done working on your damn auto load, right? So you Yeah, you never get to the point of actually writing anything. Yes, exactly right so That's where you get trouble. Right. When I think these templates I am NOT somebody that scores movies for a living you don't say Yeah, right. but if I was gonna do a
More of a scoring type of a thing for a project or whatever. I would start maybe not with a Template that's gonna rival like junky XL or somebody right but but instead having something like okay well, I know I'm going to have, you know, a basic string set up or whatever. So I can get going quickly as opposed to doing all that. Yeah. Even if the template isn't super elaborate, it's a launching point.
So I think that's a really, really important thing to get going, knowing It doesn't have to be orchestral. with the tools that you're going to use. And this could be not necessarily a. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It could be just standard rock stuff. It could be standard jazz stuff. It could be country stuff. Exactly. It could be whatever genre that you're pushing. The reason why I would say that is I did a track Yeah. [ Pause ] for the Kardashians, not them personally, but for their TV show.
And that got used a lot. And then there were other people coming back, I would like you to do something similar. And I hate repeating myself in that regard. But I ended up taking that track and using it as the template, using the instrumentation and writing another 10 tracks similar to it for that very reason, because people coming back, I want something similar to what you just did there. Yeah. So it was very easy for me to take that Yeah.
because I already made a template, so to speak, by just writing that track in the first place. And that's how I tend to treat my templates. It's something I already created. And it's like, oh, I want something like that. Great, I can pull it back out. Yeah, here's the same soundscape. You got it, you know, right. I can write the new stuff, but I can use the same instrumentation or make small tweaks. And that's, yes. And part of that too, is that the next movement here
Yeah, because it right. Right. And I think that's also a thing in talking about short deadlines is you don't wanna get bogged down with the details of your writing and the details of your setup. That's like you wanna be moving. You constantly wanna get, okay, we need this in here, put it in there, move on. Mm-hmm. for the template. Obviously, you open up your template, you got everything right there. And now you can start with your writing.
So one thing that you and I have talked about, whether it's sort of writing for a purpose like this or just a song, like you're just writing for your next track or album or whatever happens to be, (sighing) Right. is to try to get the ideas out, sketch them out quickly, and then sort of refine. And I think when we're dealing with something like this, it's a quick deadline. You don't really have another choice. Mm-hmm. [ silence ] [ silence ] [ silence ] [ silence ]
Something that gets on my nerves a little bit one time is when artists talk about odd [ silence ] [ silence ] [ silence ] I'm not feeling inspired or I'm waiting for my muse or whatever [ silence ] Yeah, you don't get that option now buddy sit down and do your job type of thing. So [ silence ] [ silence ] My favorite line for that comes from the movie "Music and Lyrics." Okay, what's the line It is with Drew Barrymore and what's the actor's name? Hugh Grant, yeah Hugh Grant. Yes. Yeah, right.
Inspiration is for amateurs. I just need one line. And that's the perfect reality of it is if you are on a deadline and they are hiring you, they are going for something you already know how to do. And he's not wrong. Inspiration technically can be for amateurs. Now, is that 100 percent true all the time? No, but if you're working on a deadline, you don't have time for inspiration. Uh-huh.
And that brings me up to another point where it can sometimes be very tempting to feel like we have to, okay, I got to knock this out of the park and you do, but feeling that we have to do too much. Yes. Keep the basic idea simple first, get the whole thing out, and then possibly refine things as you get closer, right? Sure. Spending a whole bunch of time on automating a tambourine that's just going to pan a little bit on the left side of the speaker is probably not the best use of your time.
So doing that. The other thing that helps out a lot when you're on a deadline is having a team of people that you know that you can call upon and say, Hey, I'm working on something. I need your help, which is the case of like with Robert getting me in on the Butterfinger commercial. Yeah. Yeah. He recently redid a theme or was part of the New York Giants on their theme that just recently released. He isn't the guy that did everything. He was part of a collaboration of people that all did it.
That's delegating the task to somebody that knows what the fuck they're doing. Yeah, that was something for me in my younger days, that was very difficult. If you can't play guitar, well, hire a guitar player to come in, pay them a little money or buy them a few beers if they're really great friends, get them to play on it, move on. That's how it's done. And for no better reason that it was all just an ego trip. And a control of freakiness, not. Yes, that too.
But realizing that in sort of retrospect is kind of painful, but a huge lesson is that Right. nobody really cares if you did everything, right? But they do care if it sounds good and it sounds right. It doesn't matter exactly, and you're delivering on time. Yes. Here's my chord progression. Given like, let's say that you have to do this orchestration and you're not the orchestration guy, but Johnny that you know from past experience, he's amazing at orchestrating strings, whatever.
Hey, Johnny, what are you doing? I got this option. Delegate that. If you're... Right. Make it work, right? Delegating is huge when it comes to this. If it's possible, right? And This is my melody, orchestrate while I do other shit. Yes. Yes, it's always possible. it's always possible. Well, that or, you know, if it's people that can deliver, that you truly can It's whether or not you're too much of a dick to do it. Yeah, you need people that you can rely on.
deliver and they're available. Right. And that's the thing. So what about mixing when you're getting That's for sure. to this? So let's say that we've turned this piece, we've written it out and it's like, yeah, It depends on if I'm mixing it myself or passing it off to someone else to get it done while I think we're good. It's time to mix here. What's your sort of mentality? Well, let's assume that I'm continually working on some other little thing with it.
that you're mixing it yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And again, here's Listening through, I have to think of the big picture. I have to get the relative levels as quick as possible and I'm not going to overly extend a waste of my time dealing with very small minor details. I'm gonna get it right in the ballpark as best I can as quickly as possible. Presets, get an AI. something that I'm normally not a huge fan of doing this, but
this is a case where I absolutely agree with it. And And this is where dealing with presets. I was just resets that as well. >> Yeah. So it's recently submitting a bunch of tracks for hopefully a TV thing, right? Again, relatively quick turnaround. Here's one of those things where I had everything done. So I just pulled up presets. What was the sound that I used on the snare here? Boom, I used this, I used this. And it's not like I'm sitting down and going,
You know what? Maybe I need to lower the threshold a little bit. I know it's gonna work and it's gonna deliver, right? so again, we have to think big picture here and (laughs) >> [LAUGH] Sure sounds and everything do matter Again, it's a big picture thing, right? It's probably not gonna be one of those things where You know what the baseline there in the second part of the trailer. Can you just bring that down half a DB?
Well, in some of the we've had on the podcast, namely CJ Vanston, he's a huge proponent for you know, it's Getting it right and making it sound good is obviously really really important But the minor details are probably less so in my opinion So I think what you're using saying that the big picture I think is what's really important Is most of it replaced with a full structure So yes, M things that have the AI capability to him to get things done fast.
He's often working on deadlines and it's just like bang it out, get it done. Yeah Obviously he's also a brilliant fucking musician at the same time. But as a producer, oftentimes he's on a deadline and he has to nail things as best he can. And that's what he does. He plays a brilliant piece of music. He mixes it super quick with some AI shit and it's done. when he was talking about this and how he would use presets from synths, right?
Yeah. And so I'll do that and I'll tweak this really, really quickly, right? sometimes. The idea here that we're trying to get across is that if you're on a short deadline, it And here's a guy who could write a patch from scratch, no problem, right? But he relies on presets and small tweaks just to keep it going. So if it's good enough with CIGI, I think it's good enough for us.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's a good point because that's a way that we can sort of, even if they're not is not necessarily an excuse to submit material that lacks in quality. Practice this stuff. Put yourself on your own deadline if you're not there yet. Get your own experience on doing it. trailers for that matter if you want to get into trailer music. Remove the sound and build your own trailer to it in terms of the audio and see what happens and practice that stuff. That's how you get better at it.
Right. sort of even if they are self-imposed deadlines, Right. but we can practice writing under pressure and see where we are. And what you said there at the end, Right. I think is really important too, is that we can't use this as an excuse to go, "Well, I only had 12 hours to do it." Yeah, but it still isn't good enough. So it still needs to have that quality and prioritizing our time when we're doing it.
Like we mentioned, delegate in certain tasks if we have to, but we still need to do quality stuff. But these are some things that I consider important for me when I'm doing it, and you as well, I'm sure. And with that, we're going to move on to Friday finds Chris, what have you got for us this This is something I've mentioned in the past. week? Thank you. (no audio) There is a website called Piano Book. Thank you. [SOUND]
It's started by one of the guys from Spitfire Audio, where it's people that are submitting sample instruments and they're homemade samples (no audio) that are free to use for anybody. [ Pause ] There's a lot of really, really cool stuff there. Now, an artist that I've been getting into lately is a guy goes by Venus Theory, who does this soundscape-y kind of stuff. He's got a bunch of patches up there as well that are now free to download. You can donate to it, and I recommend that you do.
But Piano Book, if anybody is not familiar with it, should go check it out, because it's really, really cool stuff. So that is my Friday fine for this week. So, wait, I'm going with Serato, which is a name that I have not spoken in quite some Any of you, Jody, what do you got? time. I remember that name, yes. Yeah, they're still around. They still create software. Serato has new software, DJ software specifically, that is doing something quite similar to Music - Hmm. That's cool.
Rebalance by iZotope. They've just released an update to Serato DJ that allows you to on the fly isolate vocals, bass, and drums, and obviously probably other instrumentation as well, and allow you to mess with that and create stems on the fly. That's kind of badass. That's my Friday Find for today. - Yeah. - Awesome. While we've got your attention, [ Pause ] we ask that you go to inside the recordingstudio.com and sign up for our mailing list.
Doing so will get you weekly reminders the Tuesday tips when they come out and we'll make sure you don't miss any future episodes of this lovely podcast. Send us an email at goldstar@insidetherecordingstudio.com with the word deadline and you'll get something cool back in your inbox. If you have a topic or suggestion for Chris and I to explain in a future episode, contact us at the contact page. We'll put it into Have a good one Jody, now go finish some tracks people, thanks for listening.
consideration for a future episode. With that, I'll say, see you next week. Thank you. Thank you.