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Cause aint nobody got time for Amateur's
Unknown Speaker 0:00
You're listening to local programming produced in KU NV studios. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5. Jas and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Unknown Speaker 0:16
This is talking with the pro professional. This is talking with the pros with me just be I speak to the professionals in the world of audio to gain an insight into what it takes to become a pro talking with the pros. Well, hello and welcome back. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited because we have Joe here today. Joe, do you prefer Joe or Joe? He
Unknown Speaker 0:44
can call me Joe.
Unknown Speaker 0:45
Yeah, okay. Okay, Joe. Well, and I am joined here with my wonderful co host, Paulie. Hey, yo,
Unknown Speaker 0:52
what's up? Let's make it happen. Hey, go.
Unknown Speaker 0:54
All right. So let's just get right into it. Joe, tell us who you are kind of like introduce us.
Unknown Speaker 1:02
My name is Joe. I'm originally from Michigan. Grew up out there for about like 1015 years, then came out to LA for a little bit. moved out to LA to get higher aspirations and dive into the music industry and find the passions that like I love so that being said, pretty much did that did a whole bunch of stagehand work out there. I built festivals, electronic to stadiums and figured that out from there I moved I got a big job offer from out here from er productions. Era productions really stepped forth. My high track into music production and for special effects special effects is phenomenal. It gives everybody that wow factor. that wow factor of like lasers Pyro, and fireworks goes in with Pyro, but it is relatively a lot of fun. Giving back to the crowd and seeing hearing that oohs and ahhs is really great, it gives me goosebumps, just hearing. Oh, you know, from there, I moved into video like I've always been like a VJ of what a VJ is is a video jockey. A video jockey toured with Yellow Claw, their EDM act. I've toured with Omarion little bow and Sean t. And then as well as done every festival known to man Insomniac going all the way to altra. For Mia from there, it's just been a huge passion of mine to be a part of the community, as well as the creatives that put on this huge show. It's a lot of high stressed, a high problem solving energy that we put involved in this. Like I said, it's really, really great to get into. And I highly encourage a lot of people to get into this industry to see and get your feet wet. It doesn't matter if you're going from nothing and you want to be in the music production. Start off as a stagehand bring out that like being comfortable with being uncomfortable, it is like putting yourself in a really great position and showing the light is the best.
Unknown Speaker 3:48
Oh, yeah. So production. I mean, you're saying high stress here, you're coming in. You're giving something to the audience. And you're learning like from the beginning. So how long has this journey for you been?
Unknown Speaker 4:01
So I started around 2017 Back in Michigan, or was it was Michigan Yeah. And I got into this student named air and he put me and he's like, you want to learn how to coil cable always starts with
Unknown Speaker 4:24
always starts with that even for number one is
Unknown Speaker 4:27
number one. And I wish I missed that thing up at least five.
Unknown Speaker 4:33
Yeah, I remember those days. They're waiting for that. Like no, over under.
Unknown Speaker 4:40
And you take your arm with like a big, like L shape or like a statue of liberty right? And then we're just no start calling. No. Oh, man. But it's all the old mistakes that create a better a better be you Oh, tons of mistakes, like, Great a better you. Like I said, If you don't learn from your mistakes, keep trying.
Unknown Speaker 5:08
Yes, there's success in the failure, and there's learning and growing, and a chance just to get better, it's like sticking to that is where you're gonna really level up. So what is it that you're currently doing now in Las Vegas? So currently
Unknown Speaker 5:25
in Las Vegas on, I've been currently working on a lot of 3d animations, and working with artificial intelligence. So we're stable, the fusion is, like, very prominent and where our future is going with sore AI from open AI, and movies, and everything's developing at a very high rapid rate. And we're gonna see a lot of really great things in the next five years, as my research progresses.
Unknown Speaker 5:53
Wow. And this is with your Vijay, right? Yes,
Unknown Speaker 5:57
I integrate that where Vijay? Well, you use a software called Resolume, as well as you can use mad mapper. And there's other software's out there. It's technically a media server. So my main flavor, though, of media servers, or VJ software, is Resolume. I've been using it for 10 plus years. It's a turn key for me. And I really highly, highly encourage for anybody to just learn. Just it starts with one YouTube video. And then you go up the rabbit hole. I don't like this. Oh, you go down? Because you're always going up. Right?
Unknown Speaker 6:35
Yeah. So this is a tie in to music and audio and a production, and a show and all of that. Holly, can you help us round this picture how this all integrates together in the world of
Unknown Speaker 6:50
audio? Absolutely. So in the world of audio, right, you're doing a show, you're in charge of making sure the PA sounds good, the mix is good, the stage is happy and the audience is happy. Because that's the bulk of the experience they need to hear and feel the experience through the PA. But you can't do that. Without a little bit of something, you need a little bit of lighting, a little bit of visuals, a little bit of lasers, fireworks, to complement the audio experience. And also syncing that to and just bringing those worlds together bringing other creatives from other worlds that you have never been really exposed to. It's cool, because it's like you're not alone. You're not alone in the creative process. You're creatively making a mix happen, right? But you realize that there's a gentleman next to you that's mixing the lights and doing the same thing. You're doing an audio, but with lighting, we're all using this creative, artistic, beautiful, like, thing, giving it to a whole crowd of
Unknown Speaker 7:48
people. And based off sound cues too, right? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 7:51
so time aligning all those things.
Unknown Speaker 7:53
Yeah, for sure. It's timecode timecode is something through sympathy, which is a really hot it turns numbers into sound. And turning those numbers into sound. We get a feed from the AUDIO DESK that actually controls everything. So it's like from it starts like a clock is everything that I work with. It starts at 000 or you can do hour one, hour two, hour three, and then so forth, so forth. For that you want to do like for each song, right? I'm playing the Backstreet Boys, for example, you want the Backstreet Boys on our one. And then you have your sent Polly is like sending me a feed to send to the lighting, he goes to a lighting desk to visuals to lasers to special effects, or fireworks. And it controls everything. And then there is a thing called a playback engineer. Playback engineer is the one actually controlling the whole show, which is insane to think about that high pressure that puts on the one person to make everything, by or correctly. It's a turnkey system to make the show go to every city in every state. And so the rehearsals and the environment work, that's pretty much like a big huge thing for those of you interested in audio can see how the range of what you can do as an audio engineer. You get to work with not just audio people, not just musicians, not just mixing behind a desk, you're working with other creatives all of it integrates everything integrates around the audio system.
Unknown Speaker 9:35
Yeah, with audio. There's just so many different channels. There's so many different sources coming through. And then it's an entire production, you have a lot of moving parts that are coming together at the end of the day to put on the show. And it's not just on you know one thing you're you're hearing the experience, you're seeing the experience, and how that all comes together. based off of the music, right, or whatever's on stage and getting that aligned, so it's really exciting to have, you know, your perspective, you collaborate with audio, and how vital and important that is, at the end of the day, to all be working together
Unknown Speaker 10:20
what you do called Show Control, right, which is a feed from the DJ, the DJ is the artist he's playing on on the CDJs right at a festival, your favorite festivals Ultra? Right, you know, etc. All that right. And Joe, where he's located is in front of house, right? Yes, front of house area with with the lighting designer, the LD, LD, LD LD, the LD, and the a one for audio. And all you guys, you guys are like the you guys are in charge of the entire show, you guys are running operating the entire show, along with a laser tech technician or a fireworks technician, right? Playback engineers usually in the monitor world, right. And it's just fascinating. Because when the DJ is, you know, being an artist, he's improvising, he's changing, he's making a CDJ go longer than it should or whatever, or he's just playing to the crowd. You guys are playing to the crowd to Yes, you guys are also moving faders and, and in Resolume you're queuing up visuals that are artistically vibing. With the music. It's so cool.
Unknown Speaker 11:25
Yeah, what's that like show.
Unknown Speaker 11:27
So having that you're always four steps ahead of the DJ is all about music theory, music theory is huge in the sound. And having that it's I'm also doing it live, it's not all timecode. So having a live flavor, it creates another experience and you're having full emotion into this. So with the emotion, you're like, Okay, happy, sad color theory that goes involved with it. So you're able to do like reds, greens, you're doing purples. And if you're doing purple, green, it just integrates to how you're feeling. And you're doing that on a mass scale, save like 50,000 people in a festival. And everybody's just having a great time. Not
Unknown Speaker 12:18
only are you a VJ, you're also an artist, you make your own visuals. I've seen your work, it's awesome. And you're using AI to do it, which is really cool. I'm not seeing a lot of AI art. I'm starting to see it. But it's just so interesting that we have the sphere. So we have this huge led experience, right? And visuals are starting to become their own thing. It's like its own world. Now the audio world has got a lot of avenues, right, you can be guy holding a boom mic to running a show like the show right now. There's an engineer right here. And
Unknown Speaker 12:49
I like what you had to say about that. It's not only stressful, but it's emotional. And I think that's where seeing the artistry come in, you're bringing that like your own unique on top of and complimenting the artists on the stage on that day. Would that show for that crowd? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 13:08
so you're like, it's sometimes you get full creative. But we do have a brand standard that we have to uphold. So we can keep that brand for that artist. Yes, we want to, we want to uplift them as much as possible. But we, the artists are super nice to us, and able to give us our own creative free will to do things. So so I'm painting a picture live. So I'm either glitching out things, or if I'm using like a vast landscape through a drone that's showing, just like in Mexico, with ocean just waving in and out. And then you can even feel the breeze sometimes even in the festival too. So you're able to like actually feel like inside the screen sometimes. And then, like for excision stuff recently just passed by he he just did a four D perspective. So in the 40 perspective, he's able to have like an alpha channel where the alpha channel is it's just having a mask of that character walking by itself and then having scenery in the background. But that scenery is actually pushed back and then they're able to grab into the black space rec visuals. Yeah, like the visible.
Unknown Speaker 14:32
It was crazy. And it's all on one LED wall right? It was just a simple LED, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 14:37
circle, simple LED wall that's curved, you get a better with curvature. You're able to like make it look like you're able to grab outside of the wall, outside and to the 40 or breaking the third wall.
Unknown Speaker 14:51
Wow, what are some exciting things you're working on visual content right now?
Unknown Speaker 14:55
Um, so currently, I'm working on a few things. Some I can disclose in some way cannot. But the ones that I can disclose the 4d aspect is one I am actually currently working on an integrating AI to do it. I'm so right now with AI working with a group of people that are making 3d models out of just prompts. So what a prompt is, is you're giving a description, highly descriptive realization of what you want. And it's turning these, like, it's turning nothing into something and you're able to take these 3d models and able to manipulate them and putting them into scenes that create that
Unknown Speaker 15:39
immersive experience. It's, it's sounding like it's coming from lights, the audio, the visuals, and now kind of just like a whole body experience, you're getting you work
Unknown Speaker 15:52
with AI, and you become, you use it as a as another tool, like a knife, you sharpen that knife, right, especially
Unknown Speaker 15:58
with with audio to that it's, it's insane. You're able to speak into like a mic on for audio. And then it changes your voice completely, like a whole different person. There's like a model called like free, that changes your whole voice. It changes everything. And it makes you sound like a whole different person, which is cool, if you especially if you're trying to make video games and like tight budgets, or if you're doing low budget or to high budget, you have that huge range, I
Unknown Speaker 16:32
can definitely see all of your passion, what origin when you decided, this is the avenue you wanted to go was
Unknown Speaker 16:38
my first big festival out Electric Forest. I went to there, everybody was super welcoming, super caring, and they're just very driving. Like, I was like, I want to do this for the rest of my life. This is this is awesome. This is really awesome. And I just kept going. And I went to EDC and then I started working digging, just started digging and trying to find like how you get into this. But like back then there was not a lot of information on this it was kind of like all hush hush. But not not too much. There's just like all the old headset been doing it for like two with Def Leppard. And they've, they've been doing it like from gels for like for lights, and now we're using LEDs. But that being said, it just pulled me into it. And just being able to make a career out of this has just been a blessing, a complete blessing. And I'm never gonna I'm never gonna stop. Never gonna gonna have side quest.
Unknown Speaker 17:54
But audio is a component of everything that we do communication, right, and communicating a story, communicating an artistic feeling, and complementing that feeling. And there's just a whole industry that you can go into if even if you're not interested in audio and or you get into audio, but you find that you like colors, and you want to work with lights, and you love the way things mix in a room and mixing, you know, vibe, right? You're bouncing
Unknown Speaker 18:19
off the music at the end of the day, which is sound and audio and getting like just the theory of like, how is this gonna work? How can I incorporate something to give back and I think at the end of the day, it's about the experience and the audience, and how you can elevate whatever is coming out of those speakers.
Unknown Speaker 18:42
Right and out of the LEDs of a fireworks out of out of lasers and everything bowl shows. The whole show is tied in together. We're all integrated. We're all connected. Just like we are in the real world. We're all connected. Yes, yeah. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 18:55
really are. Yeah. And if you're really trying to get into this, just don't be scared to work. At a shop we're looking at in Las Vegas. This is entertainment capital of the world you can get into any theater. If you keep it someone tells you no. Girlfriend, keep say going for a yes. That's one thing.
Unknown Speaker 19:15
I love how you took it upon yourself, though, to go ahead and educate yourself so that you can present yourself more educated on your topic and what you're interested in and what you're getting into. So it has to do more with like what you're doing at home and you're building into. It's tons
Unknown Speaker 19:36
of research that you have to do. There's tons it It all starts with a YouTube video, either a YouTube video, or now you're blessed with Chachi Beatty, so Chachi T can tell you everything. I wish I had that 510 Six years ago, you know, then I could fast track a knowledge and then peers to network King is
Unknown Speaker 20:00
huge, so important, so huge.
Unknown Speaker 20:03
You really have to meet people. And the best way to do it and see all these successful people that are already on the stage, or at front of house. Start asking questions. And we love we love teaching. But during a show,
Unknown Speaker 20:23
yeah, pick your moments definitely pick
Unknown Speaker 20:27
your moments, I want to go move to like more lasers, though.
Unknown Speaker 20:31
Let's do it.
Unknown Speaker 20:31
Yeah, lasers are really, really cool. There's a program called Beyond. Beyond software, you can get beyond ultimate or essentials, it's relatively expensive. But once you grab it, you don't stop. I was with a company called Image SFX. And it just affects they, they fast tracked me to put me on this Kpop called twice. I didn't know I know anything about it at all. And I was like, okay, so get there, get to the shop, start prepping everything getting we had a lot of lasers on it as around like 15 to 20. And we had it had to start with cabling. And but the from the shop, we started deploying, I didn't know what I was getting into for how big of the caliber of the show was, I was just like, okay, cool. It's Kpop. And then, you know, and then I get to
Unknown Speaker 21:33
the huge fan base.
Unknown Speaker 21:34
Huge, huge, you get to the first show, you see 1000s and 1000s of people just looking around, and you see all these ones, no pressure, no pressure at all. Yeah, it's all totally fine. And I get there. And start I had four days to program this whole tour. Four days. And I was always like, changing, not changing too much. But making it so the fans and the artists love it. And the biggest show I've ever done was at SoFi stadium. We sold out all SoFi stadium, it was around like 75 to 80,000 people there. And having we're using timecode and with timecode having that whole program set just having that exhilaration Oh, it's gonna fire is this gonna fire is this gonna work you're just so nervous. And because having the feed from different people and and to even say there's two crews on this, there's two crews on each side, we have an American side. And then we have a Korean side. And working with a different
Unknown Speaker 23:01
culture is not language barrier. Huge language
Unknown Speaker 23:04
barrier. But they have translated we have translators on site. And they were really great to work with, like, Grant was amazing. And having streamline with that. Now I have a friend Josh, coming and twice is actually coming soon, like coming to Allegiant stadium. So that's going to be really exciting. So continue on the story with SoFi stadium, having that stress level with this whole like lasers, we're gonna fire. As soon as it hits, you're just like, oh my goodness, everything just just relax. And then you're just able to watch your show and hearing like a big you know, with all the whole crowd and you just see people just so happy to be there. That's why I love Kpop Kpop is just so different from any other genre that I've worked with. And you see people jumping out dancing, just having a blast. And going from there and you're able to just have these lasers just go over the crowd and like for move there's this particular song that I absolutely love programming move was just like move, move, move, move. Tell me how you want to do. And going from that. He just had as like greens to purples and having them like swipe from left to right. are having him hit the stage. It was like stage hitting and just looked around for a second. And I saw this one person start crying He says the other person was just like face lit up. And then this other person was just like, you don't know what, like your neighbor is. So like anything that could happen, anything you like, maybe a traumatic experience happen. Or maybe it's a celebration, like people go to concerts for all emotions, and even like to help them get over or achievement, or, like I said, a celebration.
Unknown Speaker 25:31
Yeah, it's so much energy, you're living that to Ryan, the moment with everybody else, bringing such energy to this performance. So it's no doubt your passion is coming through. And so many people are enjoying it. And it's just such a great honor to have spoken to you today about everything. Anything else you want to add
Unknown Speaker 25:57
a love to add a really want to say? The last tour I did was for the closing. Closes team is amazing. Everybody there, Mike, Jacob, Chloe, and our tour manager, he was really great. He He's helped me out a lot. If being even a tour manager, that's there's so many careers in so many jobs that you could have to do. Tour managing is amazing. And having that tour manager, they really help you push push you a lot. And then from there, I really really loved clothes, these last tour, the great guy, I'm never gonna stop going with them. mazing group mates starts to become a huge family, so
Unknown Speaker 26:48
many connections, so many things connected to the world of audio really love it. For those
Unknown Speaker 26:55
of you interested in audio, just realize there's more to life than just audio in the world of audio, in a sense, because everything is connected everything is we're sending signal, right? We're receiving signals from the artists making a sound amazing is the goal, right? inputs, outputs. And when we send things out, it has an impact on people that is more than just the technical side of what we do. There's an artistic side, and we touch we touch human beings that are at a level that that impacts them on a on a huge scale. And
Unknown Speaker 27:29
we have one hard hitting question for you
Unknown Speaker 27:32
energy drinks, coffee, or tea tea.
Unknown Speaker 27:37
What's your favorite
Unknown Speaker 27:38
my favorite is definitely espresso machine everywhere I go. Portable expresso machine is everywhere you go. And with that is just it keeps you going. keeps you going and with minimal sleep that is on the road, right? You gotta gotta
Unknown Speaker 27:56
keep it. We gotta feel this somehow gotta.
Unknown Speaker 28:00
And then I have to say, really? Someone tells you no, keep going for that. Yes, do not stop, I promise you, you will get a yes, you will get a yes. And for all of you out there, I promise you. There is a light to every career that you want to do. Every career, especially with sound. And there are going to be very, there's going to be ups and downs to it. You're going to be very mean people. But those mean people are going to are there to push you to do better for yourself.
Unknown Speaker 28:33
Thank you so much for that. I think I needed to hear that. So definitely love the message that you're sending. So thank you again for coming to talking with the pros. Thank you. I want to thank you so much for tuning in. And if you missed any of today's episode, you can find this anywhere podcasts are available like Spotify, Google and Apple podcasts. Thank you for listening to today's episode of talking with the pros with me. Just be I love you and I'll catch you in the next one. Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai