Mixing Engineer Manny Marroquin Video Chat

We SoundBetter. How's everyone doing? Thanks a lot for joining this live webinar chat with super star rock star mixing agent here Manny Marroquin. The top of his game, the top of his v-game these days, half the sounds you heard were mixed by him. Thank you all for joining at all these strange hours from all over the globe, we know you're sitting in your pajamas, it's OK. You know what bottom wear you got going on. Anyways, thanks a lot for coming, I want to thank Manny for his time so much, he's time is so valuable, and we're really honored that he's such a good friend of SoundBetter and he's ready to take your questions. We're going to pass it over to Manny Marroquin over at Larrabee Studios, thanks to SAE and Point Blank for being a part of this. Thanks Manny, questions on the left, just feel free to hit us. We pass over all the popular ones, all the quality questions. Here we go, Mr. Manny Marroquin.

Hey guys, thanks for joining me. This is awesome, I can't believe we're doing this, this is great. First, I want to thank Shachar, thank you for making it happen. Of course, Point Blank and SAE. Listen, thanks, this is my room here at Laramie in LA, I've been here for a long time. This is my home-away-from-home, I've been doing this for just a few years there. I breathe and live this, and I hope that all you guys do the same. I'm excited to be doing this, I'm excited to answer any questions you guys have, whether they're technical questions or not, we are going to rock. You know what? Enough about myself, because I really want to get to as many questions as possible. I'm going to call my lovely Delbert, hey buddy, I lost the window where I can see the questions, so we're going to just ... let me see, yeah, check it out. I'm going to definitely answer, I'm going to get to all the questions. Is that it? Here, you can get out of that window. Sorry guys, I just lost the window. Yeah, close that. What's that in the back? What's that? No, that's not going to be there.

While Manny's working on getting that question window back, we just want to say thanks again for joining. I see we've got people here from every country. Hello from Columbia, hello from Los Angeles, hello from Boston, this is really cool. We can't pass over all those hellos, but we love you, Manny, he's going to see all those at the end of this thing. We're going to pass them back to Manny right now.

Guys, I'm still ... Shachar, the window disappeared with the questions, so let me see maybe if you can ... Can you see the questions on your end?

I can see the questions. You know what Manny? I'm just going to read them out to you, how's that?

OK. Yeah, maybe do that while we get this figured out.

Sounds good. First of all, you got Pensado [inaudible 00:03:29], you got hello from everybody here, I'm going to bring your window back up. OK, let's check out some of these questions here. We got some questions about the low end, let me see here. Any tips for getting that amazing low-end, like on the latest Kanye West record?

Listen, low end is really interesting. For me, it's one of the hardest things to get because I always say that you got a lot of information down there. You have your 808, your kick, your bass. You got so many things down there, so what I try to do is I set [inaudible 00:04:14] when we mixed 808s and the Heartbreak. Kanye West, it was all about obviously the 808s. What we ended up doing on that, which was really interesting, my approach to ... I actually don't EQ it or do that much to it, only because I feel like I want to color around that frequency. Say it's the 808s or the kick ... if something is getting in the way, maybe the bass is getting in the way and the 808 should be the priority, then you got to EQ the bass out of the 808.

There's different tricks, sometimes you compress it a little bit. What compression does is it'll give you a nice punch, but it will take away some of that sub information that you have. You got to be really careful with that. Once you get the punch going, then you add some low end to it, some sub information with EQ or anything that will add sub to it. I think that you guys should try not touching the 808 next time you do something and just color around the 808, actually bring the 808, have that be the loudest thing in the mix. Then, slowly start bringing other instruments around that. If anything, at any point, you bring anything up and it gets in the way, then either EQ, do a level thing, or whatever it is that you can fill that information with a low end, anything that gets in the way, just get rid of it. The next time you do something with an 808 or bass, whatever takes priority down there, EQ around that, so try that.

I got my questions back up, woo hoo! This is a great question from Phil: Manny and Shachar, do you look ... Oh man, my window disappeared again. Anyway, Shachar, it was what do I look for in interns? Yeah, the window disappeared. That's another good question. What I look for in interns, maybe do the same thing. First of all, they have to have a great personality. I feel like we're in the generation of entitlement, meaning that a lot of people, nowadays, feel like it should be handed to them, and that's not the way it works. I do care if you know your chops, if you know your shortcuts on tools and all that. I'm cool with that, but if your attitude sucks, I don't want to be in the room with you, and I don't want you to be in the room with me. Personality, number one. That will get you through the door and that will get you through the bad times.

My intern has to be able to have a good personality. I've got a lot of artists coming in and out and I've got to be able to trust them in how they react and how they act around artists, producers, A&Rs, managers. I got to be sure that they have the right personality. If you guys got a bad personality, work on it, you definitely got to work on that. All the technical stuff, all this, tools, and the board, all that's going to come with time. I'm going to teach you that, and you're going to learn from all that. You cannot have a bad attitude and you cannot come in the room thinking you know it all. You guys got to remember this is art, there's no such thing as right or wrong. It's just all subjective and you have to be open minded to everything. My assistants, my interns, they all know that you go to have the right attitude and the right personality to be in the room. Everything else just falls right into place. Shachar, as he's getting me another computer to look at the questions, do you mind reading off another question?

Sure, we got a lot of good questions here. Do you mix with your monitors full blast, or low?

Monitors, I'll show you guys. I got those, good old NS-10's. I've got some KRK's with my fancy filter, and you can tell, some tissue, to soften up the high end. OK, monitors. If I'm mixing a song that I know is going to be a club song, for example, if it's something that ... I just mixed a DJ Khalid, which I know is going to be in the club. I don't know if you guys heard the song Bugatti, "I woke up in a new Bugatti", that song obviously is a club song. I will go upstairs, and what I mean upstairs, is I go on the big boys. Once I do the big boys, I want to get all that low information out of the way, so I want to make sure that my sub, my kick, all that stuff is not fighting each other, so I will listen to it loud, because it's got to feel right. It's hard when monitor's soft and feel right.

Towards the end of the mix, then, I lower it, I go to my NS-10s. If it's a club joint, 80 percent of the time, I will monitor off my NS-10s. On my NS-10s, I have a sub, the sub is probably at one and a half, just a tiny bit, more for ear fatigue. When I do listen to the NS-10s loud, they're harsh speakers, they're hard on the ears. With the sub, it makes me feel it a little more than actually working the drivers. I do listen to stuff loud in the beginning, then when I start doing some vocal rides and more intricate rides, levels, balancing, and EQs, I like to monitor soft because it just gives you a better perspective for the outside world. Monitors, NS-10s, those are my main monitors, and I do monitor soft the majority of the time. Shachar, give me another questions.

All right, let's keep those speakers up. How do you make mono guitar sound wide?

Get a doubler. If you have one single guitar, a trick would be to copy it onto another track, do a 12 millisecond to 40 millisecond delay, and you can pan them hard left and hard right. You have this one mono guitar just go super wide. Now they key here is you got to pan them in, because they're going to be too wide and they may cancel each other. If you do go mono, not that anyone listens in mono anymore, but they will cancel each other out. They will be wide, so what I try to do is maybe I'll EQ the one on the right side completely different than the one on the left side and vice versa. I'll compliment both of them so that it's not an obvious drastic EQ on one side, but it's enough for you to feel like there's some width to it.

Now, take your pan and bring the pans in a little bit. If you're 100 and 100, bring them in to 60 and 60 and see how much width you want, that's really the best way to do it. A doubler will double your guitar as well, but it will give you a certain tone and color that you may not necessarily want. Sometimes, it's a cool effect, and if you're going to for that effect, great. If not, then it's best to copy it onto another track, delay it a little bit so it doesn't cancel out, and work with the width. I hope that answered that question. Shachar, shoot me if you have another one.

We got to pick here, we got so many good questions. Was there ever something you mixed that when you were done, you sat back and just say, "Wow, that was a [inaudible 00:13:11], that's amazing."

I'm so lucky to be working with some of these artists, man. I'm truly honored, blessed, humbled, and everything. Anytime anybody comes to me and asks me to do a mix, it's honestly an honor. I treat it like it's their baby, and I want to obviously take good care of their baby. Having said, that I'm really lucky to work with some incredible artists. There's been a lot of times where I've heard stuff back and thought, "Oh man, this is heaven." You take something and you make it ... When I start with all my faders down, I start bringing faders up, and all of a sudden, the painting starts to make sense. You work on it and work on it, then subconsciously, all of a sudden, something just clicks. It feels right and it just feels perfect, and you can't describe that feeling when everything just falls into place.

You're wrestling it the whole time because you are wrestling, every song I've mixed, I wrestle with it. Some of them are easier to wrestle than others, some of them are sumo wrestlers that kick my ass, but for the most part, you're wrestling this song to see what the essence of it. Is it the feel of the song, how are people going to feel when they listen to it. All those things you think about, and you really make sure that you get the essence of that song. Our job is not to create the best reverb on the vocal, my job is not to give you the best kick drum, the best snare sound. My job is, "What is the song telling you? What does that song do to your emotions?" Those tend to last the longest.

Stuff that sounds good is like short lasting bubble gum, you put it in your mouth and 30 seconds later, you want to spit it out. As opposed to longer lasting bubble gum, where you can just leave it in your mouth and you can chew it for hours and still tastes good. My approach is that I want to try to make that song come to life, if it's not there already. Whatever I can do to help it come to life, and hopefully live for a long time. Yeah, there's been many, many times that I just wanted to pinch myself and say, "Wow, this is so cool that I'm even in the same room with this guy, and we're actually communicating on some other level musically." That's a great feeling. I think we're getting, what do you think? Shachar, why don't you give me one more question? I know Del here is almost done with it.

OK. Let's see here, we got so many good questions. What's your favorite limiter at this point for hip hop songs where you have the issue of loudness?

My favorite limiter, gee, that's like having 20 kids and say which one's you're favorite kid? I don't know , I like different things, I love the Avalon 2044 on kicks, and also vocals actually. I love the TubeTech C01B is such a good vocal compressor, as you can see right there. I love the good old Fairchild 670, I do a lot of parallel compressing on it with drums, sometimes guitar, keyboards, it just works on anything. I just tried it on a vocal, I'm working on The Weeknd from Toronto. I used it on his voice on one song and it just sounded so good. I'm doing this other thing with Babyface and it sounded so good on Babyface's vocal. I don't know if I have a favorite limiter that's outboard.

Plugins, I still like that Art compressor, it works on everything. I like that CLA 1176, that's the homie, I love that. The Kramer, too, the Kramer sounds good. There's so much stuff right now, there's a lot of plugins that don't sound as good. My suggestion is just play with them, and whatever sounds good, store that, come back to it, and you pretty soon get to know the personality of that plugin or hardware unit. Store it up here, and next thing you know, next time you feel like you need that color, you'll be like, "Oh, I need this compressor to help me with this color, and boom." That's how you'll really get to know your plugins and your hardware.

OK, I got some questions here. Thanks Shachar for helping out while we were figuring it out. What was it like to mix for The Weeknd? I got to say, this album The Weeknd, that's about to come out in September, I forget how many songs I worked on, but I worked on a lot of them. I got to tell, this guy Abel from the The Weeknd is incredible. If you guys are not familiar with The Weeknd, please. For me, it was great because he's such an artist, I just love working with creative people and artists. He was such a pleasure to work with, it says something about big drums and big reverbs. It seems like nowadays, everybody wants big drums and reverbs. There's a great reverb out there called the Manny Marroquin Reverb that's really awesome, so you guys should try that out. We worked really hard on it, I use it on a lot of my mixes, I would say maybe 80 to 90 percent of my mixes. Big reverbs, there's a beautiful plate on there that you guys should check out.

Let's see, I'm going to go for more questions, you guys got some good questions here. This is from Myek [inaudible 00:19:50], I don't know if I just killed your name. "Does he prefer to use reverb or delay to create a room in the mix?" That depends, I like short rooms on vocals, it just adds a third dimension. Try a tight, tight room on the vocal that ... Say you have a vocal and you want it to be really intimate, but you don't want it to be dry. You're like, "How is that going to work out?" Next time, try a really short room with a tiny bit of pre-delay, and you EQ the return so that it doesn't get in the way of the vocal.

In other words, if your vocal has a lot of 3K, EQ 3K out of the room and bring it up until the vocal goes from being in the middle to doing this. Without adding reverb to it, you're not going to hear it. You're just going to feel that vocal get really wide. If I want to create rooms, I do a lot of tight reverbs. Delays work sometimes, but if you do a really short delay with no feedbacks, it kind of gives you a sense of depth. When you start adding feedbacks in there, it just sounds like a delay, so it doesn't sound like a room. You should definitely try tight rooms. How am I doing Shachar?

You're doing awesome, good. You can just scroll through those question, pick out the ones, I know it's hard.

Yes. Let's see. What's that? Sure, yeah. Comment from Arliss Production, do you and Spike Stent hang out? No, I like Spike, I would like to actually hang out with him, but no, we don't hang out. Props to Spike. Gus Vella, do you always start mixes with drums? Yes, yes yes yes. Every mix I have ever done, I start with drums. I always say that even if the song doesn't have any drums, I still start with drums. The way I have it set up, here, let me show you guys my board. I don't know if you can tell, but all those faders there are drums. I start with my drums every mix, maybe because I used to play drums. I wasn't a very good drummer, but thankfully I wasn't that good, because then I'm in the studio.

I don't know, I always start with drums. I get them sounding, feeling right. Whether it's a ballad, whether it's a pop song, whether it's an alternative, full key, whatever it is, I start with that. I may jump into some keys and some vocals, but then I'll keep referring back to the drums. I want the back beat, the foundation of the song, I want that to be right. That inspires me to start coloring around that. Sometimes, even if the drums are the focal point on the song, they still got to be a certain way. My drums just have to be tight, they just got to cut through, so I do. Delbert, do we have another question?

Yes. Adrian asks, "Do you have any tips for us guys who don't have a perfect mix environment? How do we get better mixes?"

If you don't have a great mix environment, like I said, I'm so blessed to have this incredible room. I've been here for a long time, so I really know my room. The thing with environment, it's like monitors. You just really got to get to know your room, you got get to know your monitors. You could have a $10,000 monitors in this room, or you can have the NS-10s, which I think are, I don't know, $500 bucks, maybe even less, when they came out. It doesn't matter what monitor you have, you just got to know it. How do you get to know your monitor, or in this case, your room? You go to listen to a lot of music in that room. You got to go in the car, headphones, "Oh, the sub on Radioactive is like this, and the car sounds like that. The club sounds like this, and this record store sounds like that." Then, you take it to your room, even though it's not treated, at least you know what you're getting out of it.

Of course, you try to treat it. If you don't have a budget, there's those egg cartons that you can put on the wall for nothing, or you can do anything like that that doesn't cost a lot of money, but it just helps. Knowing your room, knowing how your width, your low-end, and the harshness of the room is super important. You just go to listen to records, if you got a favorite mixer, if Michael Brower is your favorite mixer, then listen to all his shit. Analyze it in your room and just make sure that you're copying what he does in a way. Pretty soon, you'll know your room. People may go in there and and go, "Oh man, this room sounds weird", but it doesn't matter. All that matters is what you know about the room, and that's it. Just play, play, play, play, play, play all kinds of different genres of music as well, so you get to know your room. Delbert, next question.

Several people have asked, "What's going on on the master bus?"

Oh, master bus, yeah of course! I'm not a fan of processing the stereo bus. If I have my SSL on, I use my SSL a lot, here. Let me show you guys, where is it? There it is, it's thing right here. This, that is my favorite compressor in the world. I don't do a lot of processing on the stereo bus, I'm not a big fan of multi-band compression on the stereo bus, I feel like that always gets me in trouble at some point. When I feel, with multi-band compressors, I feel like I lose a lot of the heart and soul of that song. Yeah, it sounds better, I think. Cleaner, not better, it sounds more even. It sounds nicer, and sometimes you don't want to sound nice, you don't want to sound safe. I go not for the safe route. Some pop songs, you got to limit the crap out of the stereo bus, and I will use a combination of my SSL on the board.

I'll do a tiny bit of an L2, but the funny thing using the L2 is just for punch. When I'm saying a tiny bit, if I go one or one and a half, that's pushing it. Other people abuse that thing, and that's the sound, and that's great. I don't do that much. Sometimes, I'll put a widener on the mix, but you got to be careful with that. What happens when you do that, you take the middle away. Once your center disappears, the [chaste 00:27:56] disappears. It's like how much salt, how much pepper you put on, so you got to be careful with stuff like that. I feel like the number one rookie mistakes are over-processing the stereo bus, so just be careful with that. I'm not doing anything special on my stereo bus, I try to do it on every instrument. If I want more width, I have to find what gives me width within the song, and I try to exploit that. Delbert?

There's several questions about how to go about to go about mixing vocals to make them bright in pop.

Hang on, can you guys hear him when he's asking? Shachar, can you hear him?

Yeah, we can hear him.

Okay, great.

There's several questions asking about how to get bright-sounding pop vocals with them being too harsh.

There's another plugin by Manny Marroquin called a Deharsher that's pretty good. I'm not selling plugins guys, I promise. Those are mine, for my use. It's tricky, harshness is really ... I feel like the low-end is the toughest thing in a mix, and the second toughest is vocals and how harsh. What happens is when you have a harsh vocal, it kills your ears, you can't turn it up. When you take the harshness out, then you kill the artist, you kind of just take away their life, you suck it out of them. You got to be really careful. There's a couple tricks, some de-harsher type of thing where you take the mids and you compress some of the mids. You do some parallel compression on that, too, where you remove some of the mids without taking the middle out, the mid frequencies out.

You got to know your compressors. Some compressors warm up certain vocals, and you got to find the magic combination of "OK, on this vocal, if I put in 1176, I know that 1176 has this frequency, and I know that if I add that, then I take it away on my EQ, then it's more musical." Now, you're taking away on the EQ, but you're adding that frequency from the compressor. Still sounds a little bit harsh. Let me de-ess some of the words on top, then let me, after the de-esser, let me add a different band so that it's still bright. You got to play around with the mid, whether it's de-essers, deharshers, parallel compression, side chains, multi-band. Some great multi-band compressors nowadays work really well. You just got to focus on what the problem frequency is and compress that. It's tough, if had a plugin for that. Yeah, play around with that and see if that helps. Delbert?

Marcus asks, "Do artists ever want to get involved in the mixing stage of the record, and how do you go about this?"

Do artists want to get involved? I feel like the majority of artists definitely want to get involved. They may not show up all the time, but they definitely want to be involved. This is their baby, this is the last stage before the world really hears it. Yeah, there's mastering, but mastering not such a creative process as mixing is. There's still some creative stuff that goes in here, and you can really make a good song great, you can make a great song a classic with an incredible mix. You can also kill the mix, but if you kill the mix, then they'll go to someone else to remix it. What you have to do is when you have artists be really involved with the mix, at the end of the day, I always say, "Their name is on the front, and your name, sometimes, is somewhere inside that big." It's not your record, it's for your to help them out. When artists get really involved, you just go to pick their brain and see what they're trying to get out of there. That's your job, my job is to hopefully get their vision come to life. Hopefully, when it comes out of those speakers, we've achieved that. I would say artists are very involved. Delbert?

Along the same lines, Jared asks, "Do you prefer them to be in the room?"

Do I prefer artists to be in the room? That depends on who. The way I usually work, all these artists and producers are very respectful. They send me their files and they go, "Look, take it to where you think you can take it, and when you can't take it any further, call us and we'll come in, or send us what you have." They're very respectful, they leave me alone. They want to let me do whatever that "my thing" is. Then, they'll come in and they'll give their input. Sometimes it's almost nothing, and other times we work on the mix for a while. Every artist and every song is different, but I prefer to work alone in the beginning because that's why they hire me, to bring a fresh perspective to their song.

SongMusic asks, "Hi Manny, from Spain." [inaudible 00:34:02] English.

Spain, woo! This week!

Do you think there's a future in this business?

Do I think there's a future in this business? It's interesting how he said business. Do i think there's future in music? 100 percent, 180 percent. Do I think there's a future in the business of music? Yes there is. I feel like we're in a transition state now, where labels are trying to figure out how to monetize the streaming, because that is the future. Until they figure out how to monetize, I think they're still ... Listen, music is not going anywhere, it's just the business of music. It's just different, it's up to us to evolve. This is just an evolvement, we have to adapt to the change, we have to evolve. Music business is not going anywhere, music is not going anywhere. Some of us that get down a little bit, "Oh, man, this is a different business today."

Embrace it, because if you were in the 40s, you'd be pissed off that the 50s came along because stereo kicked in, and you're like, "Whoa, we like mono records!" Take the sound of tape, it's still great, but if you didn't adapt, then you're probably not going to be in the business. The key here is that I do believe that the music business will get better, it's just evolving, and we have to adapt. The good old days may not be so good, so now you got to figure out what the future good old days are going to be. For those of you that always ask questions like this, just look at music history, the business of music history. You'll notice that this is nothing new, this has happened before. We're here, we're surviving, and it's not going to go anywhere. Delbert?

SoundSkills asked, "Hi Manny, thank you for this great Q&A. What inspires you?"

Great question. You know what, man? Just other music inspires the shit out of me. Today, I'll give you my morning. I woke up and I put on Savages on, it's an old girl punk band from the UK, I believe they're from the UK. They're not old punk, but they're alternative punk. I played that for about an hour an a half, and it's really awesome. Then, I got in the car and I listened to Mozart, The Mass Requiem, I listened to that for about 10 minutes. Then, after that, I was listening to Billie Jean, so that's my morning. That inspires me. Yesterday, it was El Gran Combo, which is salsa music. The day before was James Blake, so I suggest you listen, listen, listen, listen, listen to all kinds of different genres, styles. Different volumes, listen to background, foreground, whatever it is, just always listen and always be aware of why you enjoy that and what catches your attention. From Mozart, what captured my attention? Oh, the way that those strings sound very big, but yet not harsh.

I'm already thinking how to EQ modern day strings with a Mozart sound, not that I'll ever do it, but my mind is always engaged, I'm always working. This is a 24/7 job, this is not an office job where you come in, you leave, and your life changes. I'm constantly thinking in my sleep, whether it's in the background, anywhere, I'm always looking for inspiration. It first comes from other genres and other artists, and second comes from just every day from art. Art inspires me a lot, something as simple as sculptures. I suggest you find anything that you're passionate about, and that's it. I had a producer here that his passion was cars, that's an inspiration. Another guy said architecture. For me, it's just listening to other artists and genres and stuff. For you, it could be something else, but just find that and exploit that. Keep working on that because that's the one thing we do need, we do need inspiration constantly. At least for me, it makes me a better mixer.

Another Manny asks...

Another Manny? Shit!

How different is the process from artist to artist? For example, Kanye West and John Mayer make very different music, so how do you approach the projects differently?

How do I approach different genres? Again, it goes back to I grew up playing drums in a semi-rock band, then I grew up with a bunch of hip hop kids. Then, when I went to a music school, we listened to jazz and classical in high school. I believe I'm part of that iPod generation where I listen to all genres, I think everybody does nowadays. I feel like the future mixers are going to be able to mix other genres because we grew up listening to everything. I'm able to jump ... It's so funny, you say John Mayer and Kanye, because we did go from Black Skinhead, then, the next day we went to John. The new John album is pretty cool, but pretty mellow, definitely very different from Kanye. It just takes a little getting used to, I've been doing this from, I feel like a long time now, that I'm able to adapt.

Again, that word comes back, you got to be able to adapt. Some of the things I would do in an alternative record, I wouldn't do in a hip hop record. Just knowing that that's subconsciously what you're doing. For me, that keeps it exciting because I don't do the same thing every day. Even if it's just levels, it's a different approach. How do I do that? It's just listening to a girl punk band this morning, listening to Mozart. Listening to what's the focal point in Savages, "Oh, they got their bass." Whatever they're running their bass through, I want to duplicate that sound next time I have a song that kind of sounds like that. You just do what I call this photographic memory with sounds and tones.

Just storm in your head, so next time you have a punky song, like Linkin Park had this really cool punky song called Victimized on their last album. If you guys get a chance, listen to that. It's so aggressive and it's so mean. I remember, I don't know why Nine Inch Nails came to mind mixing that. I didn't reference Nine Inch Nails, but it was in my head. My perception of that helped me without having to listen to it. I feel like sometimes if would've listened to it, it would've influenced me differently, sometimes that's not a good thing. Knowing your genres and knowing what's the focal point and what's important in each genre helps me every day.

To roll a couple questions together, how long does it take to mix a song? When do you know when it's finished?

I get this asked a lot. Back in the good old days, when I used to walk 20 miles to go to school. In the good old days, they would give us a day to mix a song. They're like, "Here's a day, 12 hours. If you go over, it's overtime." I think all mixers kind of got used to this one-day-a-mix. Sometimes, they would have big budgets and they would be like, "I want to mix it in two days" and that was such a luxury. Nowadays, it doesn't work that way, we're adapting to this new business model. Nowadays, if I get a song and I mix it in two hours, it's done in two hours. Some songs take me a couple days. I don't like to limit myself and say I'm going to mix this in one day. The reason why I can do that is the two part question, which is how do you know it's done? I don't know the answer to that, except you kind of close your eyes, you feel it, you listen, the process goes through you head, "I got to make sure that the choruses are like this." Maybe 20 things go through your mind as you're listening, you're checking off all those things that are important to you. Each song changes, every song is different.

Just by doing it so much, what's that the 10,000 hour, what is that? When you do something for 10,000 hours, you become an expert? I'm not an expert mixer, but I've been doing it a long time to know and feel when I'm done. For me, it's about the feel and, of course, the sonics, but it's got to feel right, not necessarily sound right, if that makes any sense. If I close my eyes and I listen to it, whether they're closed or not, if you really listen from the creative side, your right side of the brain, it'll kind of tell you when it's done. Listen, again, I don't believe any mix is ever done, but at some point, you got to walk away from it as well.

If you're mixing for a long period of time, to roll into another question, how loud do you listen, and how do you take care of your ears?

How loud do I listen? That was asked earlier. In the beginning, I kind of listen loud, then I monitor soft. How do you protect your ears? I feel like I can listen to things in my room and not affect my ears as much, but if I went to a club, a bar, or even a restaurant that doesn't have good acoustics, I feel like my ears get damaged more going to see a show and all that. For the most part, I wear earplugs when I got out, because their not controlled environments, and that just will kill you, those frequencies bouncing around will not be cool. In here, I tend to listen to stuff loud, short amount of time, maybe one pass or two passes on the song. Then, I monitor soft. What you got?

Several people wanted a tour of the gear, but before that, what percentage do you think is analog and in-the-box in your mixing?

I would say maybe 50/50, only because I'm on the board. If I didn't have the SSL, I think the numbers would be maybe 80/20. The fact that I have the board, I have a compressor, parallel compressor, EQ, dynamics, gate, routing, effects, all here. If you count every hue that I use on the board, compressor, parallel, and all that, compared to what I actually add, I would say I'm even more analog. I may not use a lot of the gear all the time, but I would say it's fair to say 50/50. Look at this beauty, why wouldn't you want to use this? It's my girlfriend. OK, a mini tour of the gear. These are my Neves, they're 1066s, but modded to be 1073s. There's a tape Beco Pendulum, and that's all you get. No, I'm kidding. More, more!

I got to show you guys my new toy, thanks to the wonderful mastering engineer Dave Kutch, which is the Culture Vulture. Should we show them ... Yes, that is a Fairchild 670. Let's see, let's show them some more of this stuff. Motowns 1176s, the stressors, even tides. PCM 42s, TC, AMF delays and reverb. EQP IAs, some of the best in the world. 2055, lunchbox, more Avalons, Massive Passive, more APIs, Quad-8s, 1073s, 2254, VacRack you can use in compressors. That one's going to the shop. 32264s, more distressors and Transient Designer, SPO, 902 de-essers, TLAs, gate state levels, 160Xs. What else? The Blonder Tongues, Day King, The Moog, let's see what else we got. Mercury EQ, of course you got to have those, everyone must possess some of those. Manley Summit, DCL 200, and another 33609, and a CL1B. Yeah, that's some of my toys. What do you think, Shachar?

Gear porn, he says.

What's that?

Gear porn.

Gear porn? Woo hoo!

It's great, it's great so far. How about we take maybe one more question?

OK, cool. Let's take a couple more.

All right, let's do it.

Let's do it.

Let me know when you're done.

Advice for rookies.

Advice for rookies, oh man. I'm going to sound like a broken record. You got to listen to different genres of music, it's that simple, that's the best advice. Second is if you want to become a mixer, just find things that you can mix. Find friends, do it on spec, and just mix as much as you can, even if you fuck it up. I have learned more from my mistakes than I have from mixes that people actually enjoy. It's OK to fuck up a few mixes, but definitely learn from them. Then, listen to a place like Pensado is great. The audio community right now, I feel like is at its best.

A couple years ago, even I wouldn't be doing this. I think that the one thing you'll find from the audio community is they're about sharing, too. A lot of people are into secrets, "Oh, no I'm not going to tell all my secrets." For me, there's really no secrets. It's like handing someone a piece of paper and a pencil and say write a book. There's no secrets, there's tools. We all have these tools, and you just got to get to know your tools. Whether you're doing it in tools, or logic, just know your tools and that's it, man. My advice to the rookies is you just go to mix, mix, mix, mix. If you want to engineer, go record, record, record. If you're a producer, make beats. If you're a songwriter, write a song a day for the rest of your life. That's my advice. Want to go one last question?

Maybe we should see if Shachar has a last question?

Shachar, do you want to do the last question here?

Everybody's going to hate me if I do that! All right, actually I like the last question here. Do you have a specific person to who you usually show your mixes first?

No, I don't. The person I show the mix to is the artist, is my client, whoever wants to listen to it. If it's an artist that needs to approve the mix, they'll listen to it first. I got to the point where I can see where the question comes from. Do I play this mix to my buddies and see what they say? Look, if you have someone you respect, why not? At the end of the day, you got to remember that everybody, we all have an opinion. Everybody will have an opinion, so just got to go with your gut, man. If you like it, if you're passionate about it, it doesn't matter what other people think if you're doing it.

The question before, if I'm a rookie and I'm doing this. If you love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love it, then it doesn't really matter what other people think. I've learned more about myself that if I love a mix that I'm doing, I tend to do well. The moment I'm not sure, whether it's direction, or this, or that, if I start questioning, that's the moment you can hear it. The great thing is that those speakers will not lie, it's just that simple. They're just not going to make something up for you. Just make sure that if you love it and if you've got someone that you trust, sure, play it for them.

Learn how to not rely on other people, learn how to be yourself and learn how to be a good mixer to yourself. You can sell an Eskimo a fan, and only you can do that, you're not going to hire someone to do that for you. You'll be the best seller, and you'll be the best seller by really really enjoying it because it comes from the heart. Listen, thank you again guys for hanging out. Shachar, maybe we can do this again, and maybe next time, we can do an application here. Maybe I can have a mix-up that I can play. We'll think of thing, and of course, I'm a social media whore, so you guys can follow me everywhere. Periodically, I'll do a few tips here and there. Hopefully, we can do this again.

Let's do it again, Manny!

Thanks to everyone that hung out, and I hope I was able to answer some of those questions.

That's amazing, this is one of the best webinars I've seen, and I'm trying to be objective here. Really really great, amazing. Thanks so much. We're going to do this again, so everybody, follow Manny, follow SoundBetter, and we're going to hook up another one of these.

Again, thank you SoundBetter, you guys should definitely, if you're not hip to it, please do. It's so incredible what SoundBetter is doing, so you guys should check it out.

Thank you everyone.

Thank you guys!

Thanks everyone for logging on with all the amazing questions, sorry we couldn't get to all of them. We're going to put this up on the SoundBetter Facebook, and Manny's probably going to share it on the SoundBetter website. That was amazing, all the great insight by Manny, so thanks so much for his time. Stay tuned for the next one. Thanks a lot everyone, see you next time.