Latest / 52 Cues - A Production Music and Sync Podcast / How To Think Like a Publisher (with Jason Rudd)

Transcript

How To Think Like a Publisher (with Jason Rudd) · 52 Cues - A Production Music and Sync Podcast

• 0:29
  Speaker 1: This was a job that I really feel like I was cut out to do.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: It merges a lot of my skill sets.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Essentially, what my responsibility is is that I need to drive the vision for what type of content the catalog offers, which speaks to exactly which niche is in the marketplace that we're chasing business in.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I have to develop that catalog at a expected level of quality.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Clearly, I can't master everything, so I have to lean on people that I can trust to do work at the level of quality that I expect.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: What is happening, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the 52Q's podcast, your weekly insight into all things production and library music.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Whether you're simply curious about the sync industry, learning to write better cues, or maybe you're ready to pitch to publishers, you're in the right place.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: My name is Dave Croff and it is so good to be with you today.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: And if you find this video helpful, then why don't you give it a thumbs up here on YouTube or a five-star review in your podcast app?
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: And be sure to subscribe, because I talk about library music every single week.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Today's episode wouldn't be possible without the incredible support of our member subscribers at 52Q's, who not only keep the community alive and thriving, but as members, they also get access to extra features like workshops, live streams, office hours, queue breakdowns, zoom feedback sessions, hundreds of hours of video archives and opportunities to submit to real music libraries.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: So if you're feeling stuck, or maybe you're finally ready to take your sync career to the next level, then head over to 52Qscom.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: It's free to join and membership start at around $4 a month.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: You know, as composers, we are just half of the equation when it comes to the production music industry.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we write the music itself.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: But there's a whole other side of this business, run by dedicated people who get our music on TV.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: These publishers and library owners play a critical role in finding homes for our cues, and building relationships with these folks is absolutely essential for any sync music composer.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: So today I sit down with Jason Rudd of Level 77 Music, who shares his journey from mastering guru to executive producer for an award-winning catalog, and he offers a unique perspective from the other side of the business.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: I am so happy to be joined by Jason Rudd, executive producer of Level 77 Music, and we share the same barber and the same love of chunky glasses and pristine shing off our domes.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: I don't know I'm being goofy here, but it's so good to have you with us today here on the 52Qs podcast.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Welcome.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Dave.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Appreciate you giving me honor.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was really cool meeting you at the PMA the Production Music Association Virtual Networking Events and friends.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: If you're watching this and you have not joined the PMA, first of all you should support the organization because they speak for us in areas that we don't have a guild, we don't have a union, and so the closest thing we have, at least here in the US, is going to be an association like the PMA.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: So we should support them.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: But they put on these virtual networking events and that's where we met and I'm like you know what we should have you on the podcast.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: And so, jason, how long have you been with PMA and I know you've won some PMA awards.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Tell us about your experience with Production Music Association.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Well, in all honesty, I've only been active with the PMA for two years since I left FirstCon Music to join Level 77 Music.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: It's a great organization.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: They do a lot of advocacy on our behalf and I realized that I had lived my way into having a lot to provide and felt obligated to do so and to give a little bit back.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: In case there's composers I can help out or just anywhere that I can jump in, because, again, it's a great organization.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, again, it was a really nice meeting you.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: And here we are.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Here we are today, Well before we get into your role at Level 77,.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: One of the things I love to hear from folks who come on is how they got into Production Music and how they got to where they are, because you are, for many of our viewers and 52Q's community members, you're one of those decision makers.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: You're one of the people that composers like me send music to to hopefully get into a catalog so that we can get on TV and start having royalties and being able to make a living making music.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: But I'm guessing you didn't just show up one day with your spreadsheet and your headphones and say I want to be an EP.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Tell us about your career path into your role as executive producer of a music library.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: It has been a strange ride for me through a quarter century of production music history that I just kind of stumbled into.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I in the 90s I went to college and I went to the University of North Texas, first to study music and I was a pretty capable musician in my small town.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: But when I landed in North Texas I found out exactly how good those cabins are.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: I was in drumline in college.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Unt was like S tier drumline.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Those were all the dudes that marched DCI and everything.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Those were that.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they are beasts.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Well, and I had actually started playing guitar when I was about 15.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: And my great uncle enrolled me with a university in North Texas teacher that was a one o'clock lab band player and I remember my takeaway from my first month of lessons was like oh, this guy is a task master.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Like this is a beating.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: This is not as fun as I thought it would be, but now I'm very glad I had lucked into that background.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: So I went to North Texas myself for a year and realized that, while I would always have a love for musicianship and for performance, that I really wanted to work in the studio.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: So I changed schools.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I went to the Art Institute of Dallas and they had an associates in music business degree and so that's what I did.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I got that two year degree and then began working around Dallas.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Dallas, a lot of people don't realize, is kind of the jingle epicenter of the world.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Most of the really good jingle production companies are located in Dallas, like jam productions specifically.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: What do you think it is about Dallas?
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: I would have thought maybe Nashville, or I would have thought New York, but what is it about Dallas that becomes kind of the epicenter?
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: It's just so corporate.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: It just has a corporate soul.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Frankly, it's just who the city is.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: And First Comm was again started there as a broadcast services company.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: So early on they did jingles as well.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: They had long moved past that business model by the time I joined on board.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: But so I learned a lot.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: When you do post production at a jingle studio, your mastering game has to be several clicks higher.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: In fact, in that era I was burning CDs to a standalone CD burner and you'd have to manually add your in and out times.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: If you messed up, you know you may be 75 songs into a CD.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: You make a mistake, you've ruined that CD.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: In that era those CDs were $10 each.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: But long before you bought like a spindle of them for like 20 bucks.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so different era, but that's how.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: That was my first taste of mastering.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: I first became aware of production music as an industry at my first full time job, which you may find this humorous, but I was committed that I was not going to do anything to pay my bills other than music or audio production.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: And my first full time job was recording telephone on hold messages and I did that for two years and recorded.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Also like people would come into the studio and say hi, you've reached whatever, and if you would like to wow that, when was that either the line Ask about our specials on widgets and gadgets.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Did you have to engineer them and put all the music behind them and everything or absolutely?
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: So, and you know, we obviously weren't a very wealthy company.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: So we had to really make do with production music to get good music behind the content.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: And early on I used a company called Gene Michael Productions I'm not sure if they're even in business anymore and then we also started sourcing from DeWolf, which they were a wonderful company to deal with.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: They were so easy going and they had, you know, a massive vault of music, and so it made selection pretty easily.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: And that was the era where I first became familiar with Firstcom and sent one of their demos to me in the mail and I'm like, oh my God, I want this music, it's going to make me look really good.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: And my boss just like, oh, we can't really afford it.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Now, what was it that they couldn't afford the individual license or just like subscribing to the catalog?
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Because I mean, the industry has really really changed from now versus what it was back then.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that would have been.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: What was it that was so expensive?
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: That would have been about $97, $98, to be honest, I mean this was a guy that ran an on hold messaging company.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: He wanted me to transfer.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: He had some music from the 70s that was on reel to reel and he's like, oh, you know how to work tape machines, why don't I transfer all this music in and we can just reuse it?
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: We probably could have afforded Firstcom if he really wanted it, but his justification was the price was a little high.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: So back then, was it essentially buying CDs worth of music and you bought that and then you could basically use whatever was on there, or did you have to track cue sheets and all of that normal business?
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: We didn't have to bother cue sheets Since it wasn't broadcast.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: There's no tracking or recording really for a telephone on hold message.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: So the Wolf was.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: I still don't understand how that business model worked, because they would basically say, hey, use the CD and use it up, and then whatever productions that's synchronized with those are covered, moving forward.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: But when you exchange the CD and you can no longer use that CD for additional productions, god, if you had put it on your hard drive, which at that time people hardly did because it was still prior to CD ripping, which was a phenomenon in the odds.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: But yeah, we would just trade the CD back to DeWolf and get something fresh.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: We also had.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: There was another business model at the time, which was a very strange business model.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: There was a company called the Music Bakery and they would sell the CD itself for and I'm guessing here, but I think it was probably $100.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: And then that CD was your permanent perpetual license and you owned it outright and could use it in perpetuity.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: So that was another business model that I saw and still don't understand how they make money.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds more like stock music Netflix, right, you get a catalog, you use it and then you ship it back.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: That's a great analogy Back in the disc days of Netflix.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great analogy.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: In 99, I saw the ad for a mastering engineer at First Calm come up and I applied for the job and I was a pretty fast editor of music at the time and that's what I think got my foot in the door.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: So I was interviewed in the spring of that year and waited all summer and finally I gave up.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: And then, as soon as I gave up, I got the call from the universe.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: So, before we move on to mastering because I have a lot of questions, because mastering is like the dark art that really terrifies people, but we'll circle back to that.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: As far as being a music editor, what does that mean and how exactly?
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: What does a music editor do, or did they back then?
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: I think the important thing for a music editor is to.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: It's like a form of puzzle solving.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Each piece of music is so different and so you're not going to cut two different pieces of music the same way.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: I think the important skill that I had was being able to look at what the length of the spot was going to be and that I could very easily find the right cutting points to make a compelling arrangement that would fit inside that particular length.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: And broadcast standards in the States really haven't wavered in the fact that when you purchase 30 seconds, you get 30 seconds.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: You don't get 30 and a half, you don't get 31.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: You don't get 28 and a half right, you get 30.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: And then that's on one side.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: On the other side is I've never seen copy written for a 30 second spot that contained 28 seconds or less of copy.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: It's always 35 seconds of copy that you've got a few force in there.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: So you're doing dialogue editing and all of that as well.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dialogue editing and music editing just to make the spot fit and work and flow naturally, gotcha.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Now are you dealing with?
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Back then, were you dealing with just radio spots or were you dealing with against video as well?
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: In that era I was only doing radio spots.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: It wasn't until first time where I did music for video.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Gotcha, and did your editing chops come in handy there?
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: And if so, did you have to get into learning video editing tools?
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Because the reason I'm asking is if somebody wants to get into music editing right now.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Let's say you want to go to Discovery Channel and say I want to edit your music to match your shows.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Generally, my understanding is that's done by video editors, right?
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: They're the ones cutting apart, looking up loop points and all of that stuff.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: Is that accurate?
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Do you think?
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: That is my understanding as well, but that's about as much as I can speak on it, because, again, I'm a studio rat and I make music for sync and I did have extensive training in video editing.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: But you don't want to hire me for video editing.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: You need me to make your music and then get some rest of the video.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Because you transitioned into being a mastering engineer and that you were a mastering engineer professionally for some 16, 15, 16 years.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: And so talk about that.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Talk about, maybe, how mastering has kind of changed just over the last 10 to 15 years, versus what composers what they think when they think mastering Because mastering used to really terrify me and there's still some edges on the map that are still just blurry to me that I don't really get.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: But talk about mastering, about your journey through mastering and maybe how the industry has changed.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely One of the very good pieces of fortune that I had early on when I came on board at First Com and even actually I should back that up working in jingle studios Topson Creative, specifically, was a jingle studio I worked in.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: In both of those situations I was able to mentor with somebody that was accomplished and that had experience and was able to talk with me about not only the techniques in a broader sense but techniques related to the specific equipment that I had to work with.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: And I still do think that mastering is something that, just like musicianship, is kind of a black art and it really is best handed down from person to person.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: You can look at YouTube videos until you're blue in the face and you can learn a little bit, but until you have that industry peer to evaluate your material and let you know where you're at and maybe give you tips and tricks, it's a hard uphill thing to learn, especially on your own, and I feel that way about musicianship as well.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can learn songs on YouTube, but you may not be minding your posture, you may not be minding your picking technique, you may not be minding several other elements of the game that are crucial.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one reason that mentoring, specifically live mentoring and coaching, is one of the foundational principles of 52Q.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: That's why we have feedback sessions and mastermind groups and all of that stuff, because I think mentoring in the age of a la carte masterclasses that you can subscribe to YouTube channels and all of that and mind being one of them, there is still something about spending time with another human being in real time that I don't know.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: It really can't be beat.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: And 100 years ago these would be called apprenticeships and if we wanted to learn how to shoe horses, we would go work with a blacksmith and we would shoe a thousand horses and then we would get our own hammer right and so that I guess I've never chewed a horse.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Is that how it works?
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: But now I think apprenticeship now what's kind of called mentoring, internships.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: When you think about the studio system, whether it's Bear McCreery's crew or Hans Zimmer's crew, you know essentially you go and you sit at the foot of the master, if you will, and you learn and absorb while you're doing things which might not necessarily seem like right, in line, like yes, I'm getting Hans Zimmer's coffee, but I'm also in that airspace, right, and I think that's really super important.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I would agree.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: I really think there are things that you can learn there that you won't pick up on your own.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: And you know, I think, that for me it's a core value of mine that I think music is better when humans work on it together, you know, collaboratively.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: I think that our vibration, if you will, rises to a higher frequency when it's summed with that of another person that we're collaborating with.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I strongly believe in that.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: So what would you say are some of the ways that mastering has changed over your career?
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: I mean going from like 90, was it 99?
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: To 2015?
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: I mean that is a tectonic shift of technology in the audio production realm.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: So how did you navigate all of that?
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Well, it was not easy.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: I've learned my trade twice, which was rather hard, because, you know, in the mid 90s we were learning on analog gear and we had to learn to even bias our tape machines, you know.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: I mean you were expected to keep your tape machine running, because tape machines running means studio doors are open for business and naturally, the first jobs.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: I got outside of school everyone was starting the transition to computers and to digital.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: We had a we actually had a Pro Tools rig at school in 1996, but it would only do two tracks and I remember we had to go buy a new hard drive and we spent $2,000 for a two gig external scuzzy hard drive.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: So that's how things have changed.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: We shifted from two track tape machines to CDs, which was that was an awesome change, because CDs, I know they're not the hip thing now, you know, but when you came up in that era, the reliability, the repeatability, like that was just just the lack of wear and tear.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: I mean that was monumental, the fact that I could play this odd, you know odd in fanatum and the sound does not degrade.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: I think it's really easy to lose track of you know, your record wearing out or the cassette stretching or whatever.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: It's really easy to lose track of that, it is.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: It really is, because it's so slow that your ears just attune themselves to it over time.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but, yeah, yeah.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: But the tools have really changed.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: We've gone from analog hardware to plugins and I know that there are some purists, you know, who still swear by it.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: But I mean, I don't have the thousands and thousands of dollars of gear to pour into that.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: I have Ozone, you know, and Ozone works great for me.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: But how did you have to adapt to the plugin era versus the hardware era?
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Or do you maybe ride the line in between?
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: I, honestly, will probably break some hearts when I say this.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I was a very early adapter of plugins.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: My first computer at Firstcom that I used was a Celeron, that I worked with our IT guy to overclock it and you know, do all the things that you do to hot rod a computer in that era.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: And I was using waves.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I was using waves and I'm still a waves user.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I'm a firm wave supporter.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: I know they've made everybody mad this year.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: Right yeah.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: They've made some waves.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: They asked but don't.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: But I mean they're they're an excellent company that make an excellent product.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: They've always supported me Like I don't, I don't worry about plugins, I don't stress about my registrations and stuff.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Like, if I have problems, you know, I call waves and they take care of me.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: And so I still.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Now I have the sound toys bundle.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: I am a heavy user of PSP plugins.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: I think they are those men are just geniuses and they do brilliant work.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: I do have few other plugins here and there, but early on I I realized how much power you could get in the computer versus the outboard gear.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: And I had, you know, outboard gear.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: We had a lot of great stuff at Firstcom Studios.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: We had the manly massive pass.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: We had, like the NTI EQ that everyone covets, the one covets like it's the blue one with the air band that everyone loves so much.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, so you know, we had gear.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: We had great converters.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: We used links.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: I've been using links converters actually for this the whole my whole career and I still swear by links.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's it's.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Does the analog gear matter?
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: I think there isn't intangible to it, but does it matter enough to justify the learning curve, the cost and all of that?
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Not to mention, you know, upkeep of analog gear and especially taking into consideration what we're doing here.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: You know we're not, and I've talked about on the channel, we're not making art necessarily with a capital A, and that's not to diminish what we do, but let's you know if my music is going to go up on a football broadcast.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: You know, beneath all this dialogue and beneath sound effects and everything is, is the, the, the, the, the, the, that intangible umami difference between all analog gear versus plugins?
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Is that really going to kind of come out in the wash?
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: This.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: This is the question for the ages.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, I will be the the first to say that I can absolutely tell that analog summing gives you a bigger sound field.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: There's more depth, there's more width, there's just a more pleasing quality to the frequency response.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: But having said that, I mean even early on, so at first calm.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: We've been doing stems since the late nineties, which a lot of people are blown away by, because we actually would release them on an audio CD with a click pop at the front of each stem.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: So when you would play it into your workstation you would have to line the, the clicks up and then it would be synchronized.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: But so if you're doing a piece of music that you've got a main mix, that's, you know, got all of your instrumentation, including the melody line, and then you've got a narrative or an underscore or whatever someone wants to call it submix, alt mix.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: You know you, maybe you have one without the melody, maybe you have another alt mix, that is, less guitars or less synthesizers.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: And then you get into there's a 60, a 30, a 15 and a 10.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: And then there's also stems.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: So you've got a drums and bass, a synthesizer, a guitar.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: I'm already up to 10 files for one title, right.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: So to make the mastering match and have all those files be uniform and be able to, you know, at the station for that video editor to be able to intercut between my mixouts and have that sound seamlessly behind the voiceover.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: The mastering is really crucial and, frankly, you can't get repeatability like that out of analog gear.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: That's the bounce.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's too many, too many variables, too many, all those intangibles that give it its special flavor, also add, add problems, you know, for repeatability, which begs the question and this is hopefully you can answer this and this has come up in the community every now and then and I don't know how to solve it.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: So let's say, a library is looking for stems.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: You know are, are and we're using stems not not as a synonym for alt mixes or minus mixes, but let's say they want mastered stems, just instrument groupings.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: So not just not every instrument isolated, but they want mastered stems that they can also have the option to reassemble to create the final mastered version.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Right, how do you do that?
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Because I there's, no, there's no like button in logic that does that.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Because as soon as you start muting and soloing things, then the energy, the dynamic energy hitting the master plug in chain is less, so you're not going to knock, the compressors aren't going to respond the same.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: And so what is your solution there?
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: I am asking, maybe selfishly, but it has come up in the community.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: No, I'm happy to speak on it and unfortunately I'm only going to dig the hole deeper for you.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: I'm going to sit back and take a long draw of coffee while you make me feel terrible.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: I mean fundamentally there there are only two approaches.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: So if you have a group of, if you have a mix that is going through master bus processing, then obviously it's hitting that limiter or series of limiters.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: It's getting that limiter haircut, you know and at the same time the, the, the RMS is being pushed up, you know, to give you the perceived loudness thing that everyone expects out of mastering engineers.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: So you have two options.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: You can leave that mastering chain in place and you can solo your groups or instruments individually, render those to new files, and what you're going to get if you take that path is when you re-sum those files they'll pretty much sound like your main mix, like some of this would be able to hear a difference not, not a lot of us.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: So you'll be in the ballpark.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: However, since the sum of those files did not hit the limiter, your peaks are going to be way over zero.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: You're gonna be peaking its plus six or plus nine or plus twelve.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: However hard you dug in with, the limiter is the inverse of how far over zero you're gonna be, and Any of us that have, you know, worked in audio.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: No, you can't have overages.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: And zero, or in digital, zero is the ceiling.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: In digital it's not like analog gear, where that, where there was headroom and the better built analog gear had more and more headroom and more pleasing headroom.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: So the, the trade-off there is that you have to know.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: The sum of your stems is number one Gonna have to have my mastering processing put on it, at least a limiter.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: And number two, that the overall Some is probably gonna have to be ducked to a considerable degree.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Of course, having said that, this is Production music.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: It's typically got a voiceover in front of it.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: They're gonna duck it anyways.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Right the so and then.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: The other way to do it is to bypass your bus processing and Print your stems so that the sum does not exceed zero, but the mix is never gonna match your full mix.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that that's the the holy grail challenge and that's I'm glad I actually you know, now that I've had my coffee and I've listened to you it's I'm in the ballpark because I am not a mastering engineer, I'm a drummer, you know, and a composer who just kind of backed my way into this because library after library Was asking me to do the mastering and I'm like, uh, like I'm not shipping it off, I'm not working for a record label or whatever, I'm not signed to a deal, I'm just I got figured this ish out and so I knew library wants Mastered stems, but they also want the sum of those stems to equal the final master.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: I'm like that.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: That's mathematically impossible without Changing something.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: So my advice was for folks in the community looking for this is to Basically do a blanket gain reduction, like, however much you you go over, just insert a gain reduction on each stem or each on the master bus, minus six.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Usually for me it's been about minus six and then that gets you closer than you're going to get any other way.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: And so I, at least, I feel like I'm in the ballpark.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: So you kind of normalize all the files to the same amount under zero.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, basically yeah, so that.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: So that each individual stem isn't going to hit my target loudness, but the sum of the stems will.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: So they'll sound full and mastered, but the loudness doesn't get hit until you sum them all together.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: I would say this I feel like I haven't given much help to the community at large.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: So so let me say this that that I think maybe of some benefit.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: I've tried it both ways throughout my whole career.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: We we did stems for two decades, so we were way ahead of the rest of the industry curve.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: On that I Literally no one ever complained.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: So like I'll leave that out there, like to take the stress out of it no one ever complained.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a deal-breaker.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: No, it's really not and and frankly maybe I'm kind of hard-nosed about this attitude, but if someone, if a client of mine is working with stems, frankly most of those guys know what they're doing.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Most of those guys you know, once you're a video editor, that is also cutting music to video at a major network or For a major or even an independent film distributor.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Those guys have chops and and they know what they're doing and they can handle it in whichever direction you can go.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: So as long as things aren't distorting.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as long as you don't give them a problem, they could.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: They can yes.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you, and you have, you have given it.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Like I said, it tells me that I'm on the right track, that there is no like magic way, because I've watched all those YouTube videos, I've asked folks about it, I've asked engineering friends at full sale like how do you solve this problem, thinking that there was just one setting that I have not.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: But no, it's kind of the holy grail and and so I'm good, I'm glad to know that I'm on the right track.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: You could you know brick wall each Stim and go that route if you have all day, you know.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: So yeah, Well, at the end of the day, you know if you're delivering an album for a library.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: You might be dealing with 10, 15 tracks, and each each one has multiple stems, could have four to eight to ten different Versions, and and so getting into micromanaging every single wave of music, every single wave file and every single output file becomes Untenable like you just can't wrangle all of that audio, and any, in any Good amount of time and that that speaks to you know, like I mentioned a minute ago about the, why I love digital mastering versus analog mastering Is the consistency, because when you have ten mixouts for one title and you may have ten or twelve titles on a record, well, if there's ten titles, you're already at 150 files.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: As part of the delivery package, it's a complex thing.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're going in and routing every single one to a bus and muting and the likelihood for mistakes just Exponentially grows.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: So simple is better mute, solo, put a six gain, six DB gain, duck and you're good.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: You're good, all right, thank you me All right, so I'm good, all right.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Changing gears, because I could talk about this mastering stuff.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: I feel like I'm sitting at the foot of a Jedi master who knows so much more about it.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: But I really want to talk about your work with level 77 and we'll have a link to level 77 music and we're gonna have a link to Jason's LinkedIn and all that stuff.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: So you can you can check out his resume.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: It is impressive.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: But I want to talk about your role at level 77 music as executive producer and Maybe talk about some things in the industry, some trends that you've seen over the last five years, maybe over the last.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: You know where do you see us going?
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: But tell us about what an executive producer at a production music company, at a library, what does an EP do?
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: It's a lot.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: This was a job that I really, you know, feel like I was cut out to do.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: It emerges a lot of my skillsets.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Essentially, what my responsibility is is that I need to drive the vision for what type of content the catalog offers, which speaks to exactly which niches in the marketplace that we're chasing business in.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: I have to develop that catalog at a Expected level of quality.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Clearly I can't master everything, so I have to lean on people that I can trust to do work at the level of quality that I expect.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: But essentially I pick the concepts.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: I develop an annual plan for the year.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: It is a framework, you know.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: There are opportunities in that plan to pivot on a project or try something new, but it in general I know mostly what albums I'm gonna produce.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: I have to manage the budget for those records so that if I go over on my vocalists on a record then I've got to find a way to Get another project done a little cheaper to kind of offset that.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: So I've sort of brought Peter to pay Paul in that regard, right, oversee the delivery schedule.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: So on the one basically writing Everyone to say you know, hey, we need this record for the.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: You know we need this.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: This basketball record has got to be out in January so that it's ready for March.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Madness, or this Christmas music has got to be done in the summertime.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Every year I Jammin to Christmas music for at least a month or two in the summertime and I'm crazy.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: But it's got to be, you know, released by September so that the, the spot producers and all content producers have it when they're ready to start over.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like every Christmas commercial you've ever seen was shot in the fall or in the summer, like when it's hot outside.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you got to backtrack about six weeks.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Then was when the music was done for that to be shot.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, yeah, I have to manage the timing of it.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: There's just a lot of thought that goes into it, a lot of planning, a lot of details and a lot of management.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I use several different Google Sheets, honestly, because they're just simple to share.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: I use a project management portal where the actual product comes in for my review, for notes and feedback and for whatever changes need to be made.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: So you're providing the mix notes and the feedback and the back and forth with the composer's submissions?
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, so I'm producing about 40 albums a year.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: 25 or 30 of those are vocal albums.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: The rest are instrumentals.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: We don't lean as heavily towards, say, for example, film scoring.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: We're a lot more contemporary library.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: We are very heavy on vocals.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: We're very good at vocals.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: Our library owner, patrick.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: He came from a background where he did for decades he did custom production, mainly for cheerleading, which is how he built up his business before he started this one.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: All these sides of the industry you don't realize needs music.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: Of course, if you go to a cheer competition, that music had to come from somewhere, the on hold music that you're waiting for AT&T representative will be right with you.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: Your call is very important.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: That music had to come from somewhere.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Had to.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: That's what people I was circling back to what we talked about at the PMA earlier when they released that report several months ago that showed us that 45% of the music consumed is from this industry and not commercial music.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: On one hand, it blew my mind to know that as a fact, but on the other hand I kind of knew it already.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: There's so much we like to think of something on Netflix or something on NBC or football music, that's one thing, but it's really easy to lose track of how, whether you're shopping for groceries or on hold or at a theme park, that music has to come from somewhere.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: If you're watching a DIY video about how to build a work bench or how to cook something, or a makeup tutorial, it is really endless.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a walk around video for a car dealership or whatever.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, your role as an EP reminds me of the way an executive producer for a television show would do.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: You have to get boom operators and dolly cranes For this episode.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Your next episode is going to be a bottle episode with low makeup budget.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: You're not doing any prosthetics or stunts.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: It reminds me a lot of that.
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: I did have a couple of questions that came through the community that I'd love to float by you, especially as somebody on more of the 30,000 foot view, because we're here in the trenches, you know, as composers we're grinding and we're always asking what do libraries need?
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Now, before I let you answer that, I just want to tell our viewers and listeners it's not the best strategy, I don't feel, to chase trends because I feel you should do what you do best.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: That having been said, I think it's important to know, kind of, where the industry is leaning.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: So, just with that caveat on front, I don't want you to answer this question because I want my viewers and listeners to just go right.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: A bunch of whatever you're about to say.
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: But where do you see the trends in the larger production music space?
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: And or, like what does level 77 need more of?
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: Where do you see some of the gaps in the industry?
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: You know, I would say right now there are almost no gaps in the industry.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: There is a first of all, there's a massive glut of companies that do what we do.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: There's a ton of competition.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: People are doing every style and genre imaginable, whether it's instrumental production, whether it's scoring, whether it's vocal production.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: There are so many people handling so many niches.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: I really I feel for a composer starting out, because it would be very hard to find your sea legs like okay, I'm good.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Maybe I'm good at you know three or five specific niches.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: You know how do I get enough work in those you know niches?
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: I know it's hard.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: I have nothing but respect for the people working in the trenches to supply this material.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: It's tough.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: I don't need to be discouraging, but no, it's if it's truth and it's truth.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: I'll be blunt, you know there are for someone like me.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: I get constant, constant influx of submissions, to the point that I mean I have a full-time job just getting product out the door and making sure that the product sounds good, make sure the art looks good, make sure the metadata is correct so that it can actually be found, because and not to overstate it but if your metadata is not right, you shouldn't even do the music.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: No one's going to find it, you know.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: It might be the best cue in the world, but if it can't be found, then it's going to be the best kept secret in the catalog.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: It just lives on a hard drive.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: I mean kind of the secret's out, Like production music's no longer this kind of unspoken segment of the industry that not a lot of folks know about.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: With the internet, I think especially you know COVID, I've been in the industry about 11 years 10 or 11 years specifically focusing on production music and I feel like COVID really pushed it to the front, because now suddenly all these musicians, film composers, game composers are all sequestered inside and looking for oh my gosh, how can I make money with my music and production music, back-end royalties, sync, the whole sync industry kind of, was exposed as a viable way.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, this YouTube channel exists largely helping to educate composers just like me and you, looking to make a living making music.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: Now, I've never tried to sell a dream, I've never made any promises or anything, and it is a competitive industry, but I feel like the secret's out.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: What I could give a value is.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: There's about a three-pronged approach that I would stress.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: That is a reliable thing.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: Number one is that you can always improve your composition techniques and if you're getting into this business, you have to realize that and this I'm speaking to the people that are maybe self-taught or maybe have a little bit of informal training you're competing against the graduates of all these major composition schools Berkeley graduates, a whole new batch, north Texas graduates a whole other graduating class every year and those people are trained in composition and they have the skill set to know how to reverse, engineer a piece of music.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: So I would say that make sure and take advantage of all of the composition tools that you have under your belt for composition.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Now, setting composition aside, I would say the same for production.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Maybe you're a great composer, maybe you are that graduate from Berkeley that understands very advanced music theory and knows how to use the secondary dominant to give a parallel framework, some other stuff like that, but maybe you don't know how to get a good gain stage.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Well then, they need to work on the production side.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: I actually had a executive producer that I worked under.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: Tell me one time, point blank.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: He said I don't care how it's written, does it sound good or not?
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: And he had a composition degree, so I've heard some amazing pieces of music that were either poorly programmed or, I think, some in the academic world.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: You kind of get used to the way like Sibelius and Finale MIDI sounds.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: You just get used to it and like trying to pass off a Sibelius render as and it's like man, you aren't doing yourself any favors at all.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Well, and then that's the third problem that I was going to focus on is, once you've got your composition game down, once you've got your production game down, that's great.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: From there I really still believe in the human element, this whole thing First comm really did very well for a lot of years advertising themselves as real music, and they really did mean it.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: And that was one thing that I loved about working there is that you know, my very first project that I ever did for first comm, I noticed, you know, sports, they love metal on sports, I mean hockey especially wears it out.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: And so this was, you know, early on.
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: I went to our executive producer.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: I'm like say, you know, we don't really have any like really gritty metal, like we don't have anything that sounds like Terra or Talica you know any of those bands.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: And so he made me, you know, write up a proposal and do my research and present that.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: And I got my proposal accepted and I produced the first like real metal record, the first comm ever did.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: And you know these are guys in the bedroom studios laying the guitars.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: It's either DI, it may be miked, but you know in that era it was probably guitar rig.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: But we rented a studio and we paid to hire the drummer from King Diamond I can't remember the man's name awesome drummer and spent a whole day in the studio ironing out 10 songs worth of live drums and I really feel like that makes all of the difference.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, putting a recorded human element, and especially in these nascent days of AI, you know, and we're all kind of scratching our heads like, okay, where's this going to go and how is it going to kind of cannibalize our industry and so putting up a human component on every track.
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: I think is, yeah, you're absolutely right, and it reinforces what we've been talking about here.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: I firmly do believe that that attitude and philosophy is still going to serve me through the AI era, because a computer can do a lot, but human beings are so wily and unpredictable and can do such incredible things that they don't even know they can do until they're in the moment and part of the vibe in the room.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: And that's where you get that vocalist to push that extra five or 10%.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: You know, and how would you program something like that?
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: You can't.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think AI will try, but I think humans, I think the uncanny valley will get wider and wider and we will increasingly be able to suss that stuff out.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: I believe it'll get good.
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: But even today you can't look at like polar express and not kind of creep down a little bit, I think.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: I think sonically, that's going to carry forward too.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: I don't really have much to say on AI, but it is, you know, on my mind.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: It absolutely should be.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: And the last thing I want to say is the human element when it comes to relationship and circle all the way back to the PMA, because one of the things that you've started doing it's called sync ATX, which isn't a virtual thing.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: This is a flesh and blood.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: Go share airspace with another human.
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: This is a meetup group that you that you have in there in Austin, yes, yeah.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: So tell us about sync ATX and how that came about and some of the advantages that you're seeing.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: It started actually with level 77's honor.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: Patrick Started this sync South in the Atlanta area and we recognized early on that there is a lot of business that is outside of the coasts.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of production being done throughout the South and the Midwest, and so Patrick saying was to bring people that were very disconnected and disparate I guess would be the word you know together and get them networking and get them learning about each other and learning about the work everyone's doing, and just with it with an attitude of you know, a rising tide raises all boats, I guess, and he's had quite a bit of success with it.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: And so we talked about it and decided it would be a good idea to do that here in Austin, and I was very happy to get it rolling.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: So we've had three of these meetings so far.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: We started this this spring and it's been very rewarding.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: Immediately, the very first meeting I needed, in fact, that week I needed a female soul singer for four songs that I was doing for a custom project.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: So time was of the essence.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: I had one person that I had thought about contacting but I knew it would be a disconnected sort of thing.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: I met a vocalist at the first sync ATX hired her that week.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: She was able to do the tracks and the back to me immediately, so right away it worked out for me.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: But essentially what I'm trying to do is just create a monthly space where people can meet in person, have a cocktail network.
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just kind of, is it like at a restaurant or whatever?
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, super informal.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: So it's not like you're going to a conference room.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: None of that.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: No, I'm trying to keep it free, because you know there are people in this industry that aren't exactly rich, yeah, and so I want to be inclusive for them, and it's been a lot of fun I have found.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: This is a truth about life is that the way to really know something is to teach it, as you probably know well.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh sure, your background.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: I learned Logic Pro the moment I had to start teaching it.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: So you know having composers pepper me with questions like, well, you know, how is this business deal good for me, and should I maybe petition for a different arrangement?
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: How do I do the cut-downs?
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: What are the specs that people at a library expect out of me?
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: And I was able to sit down with a composer and iron it out like, look, you know, these are the steps, these are the parameters that they're looking for, and I mean that's helped him make more money.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: Well, like you said, rising tide raises all, but paying it forward, you know, believing that there's room at the table for everybody, and that one of the things we say here at 52Qs is together we are better, and it's that, you know, giving of yourself, I think, is so important because you might end up being a catalyst for somebody else's entire career.
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: You know, and you might not ever know that right, you might not ever know that, but just knowing that you are putting good positivity out in the world, especially in a career in an entertainment industry which can be somewhat cutthroat, I think it's just good karma, for lack of a better word.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: You know a lot of people will acknowledge there's a lot of gatekeeping in this industry and a lot of deliberately people being deliberately shut out, and I just don't like that.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to spend my time trying to circumvent it in my own little way as best as I can.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just like you did, just like you did here, you know, reached out and connected.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: You're super generous with your time today.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: Jason, thank you so much.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: And again, we'll have links to level 77 and links to as linked in so you could, you could connect with him.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: But Jason really appreciate you.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining me.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me, Dave.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: It's an honor.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: Once again, a huge word of thanks to Jason for joining me on the podcast today and of course, we're going to have all of his links in the description below, so be sure to check all of those out.
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: And also a huge word of thanks to the members, subscribers of 52 cues, who pay their actual real life money to keep all of this going.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: So if you like what I do here, don't thank me, thank them.
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: But if you want to learn more about how you can help support 52 cues and also keep us 100% community supported, where you're not going to hear any embedded ads for plugins or mattresses, then head over to 52 cuescom.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: We have plans starting at around four bucks a month.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: But that's going to do it for me this week.
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: You definitely want to tune in next week where I am joined by Mrs 52 cues herself, shannon Croft, where we are going to be talking about gratitude and grace and forgiveness, specifically grace and forgiveness in the professional world.
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: So join us next week for a very special Thanksgiving episode of the 52 cues podcast.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: But again, that's going to do it for me this week.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: I hope you've had a stellar week and just know, friends, that I know and trust and believe that the universe has amazing plans just for you.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: Until next time, peace.