Welcome to the Sound On Sound People & Music Industry podcast channel. My name is Felipe Gutierrez. In this episode I interview Kevin Paul, a London based sound and mixing engineer whose work span studios, artists and genres across the UK music scene.

You may know Kevin as the host of a number of other interviews on this very same podcast with some other very incredible people. In our conversation, Kevin steps onto the other side of the glass and walks us through his journey into the industry from his early fascination with sound to getting his first opportunities in professional studios and the often unseen steps it takes to acquire technical skill and eventually, hopefully turn that into a sustainable career.

We also explore the importance of personality in the studio. How communication, trust, and knowing when to step back can be just as critical as knowing your tools. Kevin shares his perspective on music technology courses at university, how they fit into the current professional landscape and what they can and can't prepare you for when entering the industry today.

Let's get into it. Hi, Kevin. Thank you for, um, for having me. Well, it's nice to be here. Um, yeah, for some reason the sound on sound, thought it would be interesting to talk to me rather than me talking to someone else. Hopefully I can, uh, think of something intelligent for say over the next 45 minutes. We were saying just before we started recording that the podcast you started in 2020.

Yeah. In 2020. Yeah. I mean, for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to. Do a podcast, even though I hate the sound of my voice, like so many engineers and producers do. I, I was listening to a lot of podcasts or as many as I could find around production. Yeah. And around just the industry. Most of them were American based.

A lot of them were based around technical aspects of the job, equipment, gear and stuff like that. And I kind of just thought, wouldn't it be really good to do a podcast or first of all, with some UK based people. Yeah, yeah. Wouldn't it be interested to talk about how. We get people to do the things that we want them to do, which is to, to be creative.

Yeah. To perform. For some reason, I called a few people that I knew at that point in 2020, so that would've been like 30 years Okay. In the business. And so I, I, I had a pretty decent phone book of some people. A people, yeah. I called maybe half a dozen one, one afternoon. And incredibly, they all said, yes, that's a great idea.

Let's do it. And then I suddenly thought, oh no. I'm gonna have to do a podcast now, and I knew nothing about how to do a podcast. Yeah. Obviously I knew about how to talk with people and record them, but I knew nothing of how to get a podcast online, how to, to do all of the artwork and everything that you have to do.

There's a lot more to it than just me and you sitting here talking. It was quite a steep learning curve. And I managed to record quite a few people in a very quick space of time. I wanted to grab people while they actually wanted to talk, talk to me, and they were fresh and then COVID hit. Okay, so this all hap The idea was before, before COVID.

Yeah. Oh, and I recorded a load of people and I still have some, some podcasts that haven't been released from that time. I just started putting out episodes. I actually found that people really enjoyed doing them, which is always a bonus. And I got people that generally didn't do this kind of thing. It was, I mean, today is very different.

Today a lot of people realize that they have to promote themselves. Yeah. But at the time it was kind of like, oh no, I don't wanna do that. I don't want to. I think maybe at the time, I think probably podcasts weren't seen as a platform that could potentially promote you or help promote you. And that's obviously changed a lot in the years.

Yeah, it has in the past that five years. Yeah. It's become a, a very essential part. So, you know, I got people, like some really good friends of mine, Gareth Jones. I did Catherine Marks, Alan Molder, then Daniel Miller. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, people that rarely talked about what they do in the studio, I thought, well, this could really work as an idea.

I then had to promote them and that was incredibly difficult. Yeah. I spent way more time promoting than I did actually doing the recording. Yeah. Working actually, you know, it, it, it became like literally a full-time job. Yeah. Just to actually keep on top of the social media promotion side of things. And, and that kind of went on for, for, you know, a year or two.

Um, so I stopped. Doing the promotion, but I still release the podcasts. And is it, is it just you in the Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of people don't realize when you listen to loads of these podcasts, a lot of them are like, they've got teams of 2, 3, 4, 5 people that are all kind of chipping in together and, and doing it.

So to do that, like by yourself, I think's. It's a load of work and maybe a lot of people don't realize it. It is a lot of work to consistently do it. Yeah. So I stopped kind of doing a lot of the promotion, did a lot of the podcast, and then eventually I stopped doing that. And then I think some, somebody from Sound On Sound contacted me regarding Gear Fest.

Mm-hmm. And they said, uh, we know of your podcast and we'd maybe like you to do a panel at, at one of the events. I was like, okay, yeah, great. This is good. And I got chatting to sound on sound and I said, well, I've got a load of podcasts. I really need some distribution for them. And they said, well, we, we'll, we'll get that for you.

I was like, fantastic. Great. This is perfect. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I concentrate on the recording and the editing and they deal with all the distribution. That's great. Yeah. Yeah, it, it is great. And they've been nothing but fantastic to me. You know, by all accounts, the podcasts go down really well with their listeners.

And like I said, for some reason they said, well, look, it's about time you did one. And I'm like, me, no, I don't wanna talk about myself. And, and they suggested you and that's great. And, and look, here we are. Yeah. 20, 20, 25. So many episodes in. I couldn't even tell you how many episodes that we got online. So that's, that's kind of the, the, the history of the podcast.

Now, if you tell us a little bit more about, about you, your migration was from kind of like DJing into sound engineering. So what was like that moment where you said, look, oh, actually I think I much rather do this. From a very early age, I, I obviously love music. My, my first kind of entrance into music was electronic music, electro music at the time it would be called.

And then from there that. Went into very early hip hop music. Okay. And there was a progression from there into funk and soul music. I didn't really like indie based music. Yeah. With live instruments. I loved electronic music. It was the first real music where my ears P picked up and just. What is that and where does that come from?

So I buy a lot of music. I had turntables at home from literally the first moment I could get a job at 16. From there, that went into very early house music. Uh, so again, a, a slight progression in in, in that en in environment. And I made various attempts to be a DJ in that very early underground house hip hop scene.

Yeah. Um, but I was quite young still. I was maybe like 17, 18. I had opportunities, but they were very small opportunities. But, you know, I love DJing. I still do DJing now, and we'd look on the back of records. We'd see Produced by Engineered. By, recorded by, yeah. When people could look at the back of records.

Yeah. When people could actually look. Right. I was like, Hmm, okay. Producer. I kind of found out what that was. I mean, this is obviously way before the internet where you could just source anything. Yeah. Sound engineering. Okay. What's that? And then I'd go to my local news agent and there were two magazines that you could buy.

You could buy home and studio recording. Mm-hmm. And Sound On Sound. Right. Those were the two magazines that dealt with the studio. Yeah. From those magazines, I understood what a sound engineer was. You know, he's the guy that puts stuff together, plugs things up, records stuff, and I thought, oh, that sounds like a good thing.

I could do that. I was probably 19, 20 and I got a list of studios from the A PRS at the time. Yeah, I went for all the ones in London and I'd call them up or I'd go and visit them. Yeah, get knocked back loads and loads of times and then I got to one and it was called Soho Studios Uhhuh. It wasn't a great studio, but they gave me a job in the studio.

They said, okay, come back on Monday and you start on Monday. Great. Okay. Brilliant. The studio in the six months that I was there had one paying client, but I had loads of free studio time in this, in, in this studio that time. Yeah. And the, there were two sound engineers that used to use the studio all the time.

One of 'em was called M1 actually was three. One was called Tom Fredericks, who became a very successful music industry lawyer. Uh huh And the other guy was Steve Dub, who became the producer, mixer, and engineer for the Chemical Brothers Roots Maneuver amongst many, many other people. And I still know him today, Steve.

What that taught me that that six months in the studios, it taught me about signal flow and how to patch stuff up, how to get midi, working computers, working, samplers, working a tape machine, working and talking to each other. And the desk and the patch bay mic lines, all of that stuff. Until you understand signal flow, you, you kind of don't really know what you're doing.

Yeah, yeah. Because if you don't know how things move around the studio, then you're, yeah. You're blind. You're blind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, it's one of the things I tell my students at un. We were sitting here doing this recording at Westminster Uni, and it is almost the first thing I tell them is, you need to learn signal flow, because if you don't know how the sound travels around the studio, like you say, you're blind.

But if you do know, you can go into any studio in the world and you can get it up and running. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The terminology's maybe slightly different in different studios. Some are mic line, some are tie line, some are this, some of that. Yeah. But if you understand the concept of what's going on, a hundred percent, I can go into any studio and within five minutes go, oh yeah, this is what we're doing.

And Steve, Steve Dub said, I said, I've gotta get outta the studio, Steve, 'cause I kind of need to move forward in my career. And he said, phone the studio up. They're looking for an assistant. Tell them that, that I, I sent you and it was Con Studios in crowding. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. So I phoned up Sarah, the manager there.

She said, yeah, come in for an interview. Came in for an interview. And she said, yeah. I 21, I was 21 at the time. She said, you, you may be a little bit old for, for an assistant tape hop job here. And I was like, I don't say that. And I essentially, I just said, look, just give, just try me. Yeah, please let me have a go.

I really want to do this. And she, she looked through the diary and she said, okay, so we got a session with one of our house engineers here. Uh, a guy called Dave Inger and he was doing the mixing for a, a, a client, and he said, so I said, okay, we'll put you on that session for two weeks. We'll give you a test out.

I stayed there for two and a half years. And I had the time of my life in that studio. I love that studio. We recorded so many people, so many producers. We had two rooms there. We had a very good SSL mixing room. Mm-hmm. And we had this wonderful recording room with a Neve Vintage Neve. Yeah. And it's a beautiful desk.

And you know, that kind of was were my informative years as an assistant tape up. Then from there, we were doing a lot of stuff for mute records at the time. They said one of the guys there, Roland said, we've got a studio at mute. Would you like to come over? We want to maybe commercialize the studio a little bit.

Would you like to come over there and maybe see if you can help with that? It was quite, and like I said, I've been there two and a half years and it was kinda like, okay, well what do I do? I saw some council from people and they said, look, you know, the one thing that you're gonna get when you go over there is you're gonna get lots of experience actually recording and engineering and mixing.

Yeah. Whereas an assistant, you maybe don't get so much, obviously you get to work with loads of great people, but at some point you've gotta step into the big chair and, and, and kind of do that. So I took the job there. Yeah, just a moment to say how, I think how important it is when you get to those like Crossroads, right?

Where you're like, do I stay here? Do I go that you have people, you respect their opinion and you know that they'll have your best interest at heart to kind of go to and say like, Hey, I've got this situation. Like what do I do? What do I do? Because I think having that is very important. Don't be afraid to go to other people and ask them.

Yeah. For sure. It doesn't mean you have to take their advice. No. But they might make you look at something in a way that you, that you hadn't seen it before. Yeah, exactly. And, and like, so I, I took the position there. I stayed there for 10 years. There go and I worked my way up from the second engineer.

There was another engineer out there before me, pk, who taught me again so much Yeah. About the job. And I worked my way out from, from. From that second engineer to, to head engineer eventually, uh, chief engineer, whatever you want to call it. And I mean, again, we, we, we had a really prosperous time in the studio.

Yeah. Where we had loads and loads of great artists coming in. You know, I worked with pretty much every single artist on the mute roster, and it's probably about 50 60. Artists spread over all of the different labels that they encompass. Yeah. And, and, and again, you're working with producers and engineers and artists who just wanted just to do things, particularly at mute that wasn't being done anywhere else.

No other label really, I think at the time were doing the things that Mute, they were doing it, were doing, you know, that, that. Period of probably the first five years, you know, it was 60, 70, 80 hour weeks continuous work. Um, no sleep, but. Great bands, great music, great producers, and you know, again, I sort of had the time of my life there really.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, tho those were my real serious engineering training ground. And then from there I became freelance and I stayed there another like five years, 10 years, you know, continuous working with them, but then obviously branched out around different places. So for example, with that kind of getting.

That first break, you said you went to a lot of studios, a lot, you know, nothing came of them. Yeah, and I think that's a very, it's a very normal thing to happen and that when people are like, what do I do? What do I, you know, what do I say? What do I not say? What do I put on my cv? What do I not, I always think about this thing where the path that I took, it might not be the same path that you need to take.

Yeah. You might do exactly the same things I did. And not get the same results. Right? Yeah, of course. What, what do you think about in terms of, are there big dos and don'ts when you're trying to, like, I, I think, I think one of the things is persistence, right? You know, it's highly competitive. London is, you know, the center of the world for so many things.

Yeah. Music, fashion, film, arts, and a lot of people come here to do the things that we want to do and, and you've gotta be. Very persistent, but you also have to be prepared to get knocked back continuously. Yeah. You also have to be prepared to see the opportunity for what it could be, not for necessarily what it is.

Yeah. You know, so as we've said in my instance that Crossroads where I'm at conc, I'm doing very well there, but I'm not getting much engineering work essentially going to mute in in terms of an environment, possibly a step back. But in terms of enough opportunity, definitely a step forward. Yeah, exactly.

You know, one of the things that I tell my students at uni is that this is a really safe space for you. You can come to uni for a year and you can make as many mistakes as you want. Hmm. And it doesn't cost anything. Yeah, it just costs your time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas the moment you go out into the world and you say you are the engineer, you are the producer, you're putting your reputation on the line, you could cost you money.

A client, a relationship. Yeah. Client time, all of those things. Right. Whereas here, it doesn't cost you nothing. Yeah. So I say to my students, if I had your opportunity, I wouldn't leave here. Like literally they would have to tell me to leave. Yeah. I I think there's something basis, there's something to be said about that.

And, and you know what, when I was at mute, you could use the studio as much as you wanted. Yeah. When I was at Con, you could use the studio as much as you wanted. It's not to say that I would do that, because the last thing you want to do after a 70 hour week, you spend another 10 hours in the studio. But the, the point being when it was quiet.

Yeah. That wasn't a chance for me to put my feet up. Exactly. That was an opportunity for me to learn and practice some of those things that I'd seen, some of those things that someone had shown me. Yeah. Some of those things that I wanted to try. Yeah. To hone your craft and to develop my, my, my skillset.

Right. Yeah. Because, you know, maybe we'll get onto that a little bit later in terms of education, but yeah. One of the things that's not being talked about enough is the idea of, show me your personality. Because all the producers I worked with had their own personality. Yeah. All of the artists I worked with had their own personality.

Yeah. In this job, you, you can either be a doormat and just sit there and push buttons, which for me personally is great at the beginning, but isn't that exciting? 30 years later? Yeah. Yeah. But what's really interesting is when you can add value. To the session. Yeah. Right. And the only way you can really add value to a session is by putting yourself, giving your creativity.

Yes. Is giving what you can give to it that nobody else can. And yeah, and that's why I kind of wanted to trace back to what you said about why you wanted to talk about a different thing that. Other sound engineering podcasts we're talking about. I think that's great because a lot of the times I think it's easy for us to get lost in this like rabbit hole Yeah.

Of deer tech. It's all well and good that comes with time and you just kind of, you just get the feel for it. But the one thing that I think that makes you miss out on is that the thing that's always gonna change the sound the most, it's never what mic you put up, it's never what compressor you put them through.

It's the performance. That's the first thing that always comes through. I'll take a good performance through a bad mic any day of the week. Yeah, a hundred percent than a poor performance over the best mic I could find, or the most expensive one. And getting that performance will always have more to do with your personality.

Yes. And your connection with the artist, the producer, the band, yeah. Rather than the, the equipment and how well you know, the gear. Yeah. I'm not saying it's not important to know the gear. It is. I, I think maybe at the beginning it's important yes. Yeah, yeah. Of your journey. But if you're going to have some longevity in this business, people need to come for you for something else other than just, you know, how to push buttons.

Yeah. And for me, that is kind of one of the reasons why I started the podcast. Yeah, is because at the time there's too many people going, yeah. Hey guys. Yeah. It's me again. Yeah. This is the 1176. Yeah. This is how you get the great vocal sound really. Okay. Well, what about getting a performance out of someone?

Yeah. You know, anyone could be a great engineer when everything's going well. Yeah. Anyone? Yeah. Yeah. Like literally the person with zero experience can be the best engineer in the world if it's all going well. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And all the gear's working, but what happens when the gear stops working?

What happens when the artist is having a really crap day? What happens if you are having a crap day? How are you then going to get. The performance. I mean, for me personally, that's a lot to do with production. But I always felt very comfortable with the mixing side. Yeah. And it's somewhere where I thought as an individual I could add value.

And I think maybe it comes back from the DJing days where I, I kind of think I have good taste. Yeah. I kind of, I'm very confident in what I like, so if I like something, I'm actually really prepared to stick my hand up and go, yeah, I really like that. And if I don't like something, I'm equally confident to say, this isn't working for me.

Can we try and change that? Should we try and change that? You know, again, a lot of the, the podcast and my approach to teaching and talking with people is about stimulating them to think and listen rather than to read and watch things. You know, too many people are mixing with their eyes. Yes. By looking at a computer screen.

Yeah. I think that's probably one of the biggest changes between what recording to Tape Yeah. Was and what recording to Pro Tools is. Yeah. And using plugins. You know, we can't escape our human senses. No. Our focus has become very visual a lot of the times. Yeah. You know, I mean, I'm sure I'm not, I'm not, um, ashamed to admit how many times I've been moving about knobs and a plugin compressor.

Thinking I'm changing anything. And then I realize that I've got the plugin bypassed. Yeah. And I'm, yeah. We've all done it. We're so, we're so suggestive as humans, right? Yeah. Yeah. Of course. That we're, we're always more keen to believe what's in front of our eyes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I think also feeling hmm, for me is really important.

You know, that gut reaction, that instinct. Yeah. A lot of people don't feel that or understand that maybe, and that takes time to have confidence in yourself. Yeah. Right. One of the things I learned from working with all of the people I worked with as watching, sitting in as an assistant at the back of the studio, making tea, making coffee, getting the lunch, doing the loading, doing the loadout, setting things up, is that these people had an unwavering belief about what they liked.

Hmm. And what they didn't like and they also went on what they felt a lot. And I thought, oh, that's quite interesting. Mm. You know, and I'd sit at the back of the studio and have my opinion about what I was hearing. I'd never talk about it. 'cause you just don't do that. You don't. If you want to last longer, be quiet.

Yes. Sit at the back and say as little as possible. But I'd feel, oh yeah, you know what, this could be great on that. Or. This is what I would do. And then some of the time they would do that and I'd go, okay, so yeah. You know, I, I had some synergy there with what I'm hearing. Yeah. It kind of reassures you that you're going down the right path Yeah.

That you are, you are tuning in to, to, to what is going on. Right. And look, particularly if you are a producer, particularly if you are a mixer, you've got to have an opinion. Right. It is no good being kind of nondescript or kind of nothing because it's like, well, why am I hiring you? Yeah. You know, if I just want someone to push buttons, I can hire anybody.

Yeah. But if they wanna hire me, there's gotta be a reason for that. And, and hopefully that reason is that they trust my judgment. Yeah. We could have the same stems, the same multi-track Yeah. The same computers and, and gear and we would both come up with two completely different things. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right. Absolutely. You know, a a, a classic example, if I give you all the same ingredients for spaghetti bolognese, it would all be completely different. There may be similarities. Yeah. It's not gonna taste like a carbonara, hopefully, but it's exactly, and it's gonna be slightly different Yeah. From each person that you give the, the ingredients to, you know, and, and that is what we call taste, you know, and I'm, I'm always looking to encourage people to develop their taste and their style, because that's what separates you from me.

Yeah. It's true. For example, now that you were talking about creativity and you know, university and teaching signal flow and getting your bearings right before you start considering all these things, I don't know about you, but correct me if I'm wrong and I might be completely overstepping in what I'm about to say.

Do you feel that there is a certain lack of expectation management at universities that do music tech degrees with students? What I mean is like a lot of the students I've worked at, there's always people that come through the door, drop their cv, and there's the cvs are somebody that's straight out of.

Uni and it already says like, oh, I'm a, I'm a recording, mixing, engineer and producer. Yeah. And, and the truth is that, you know, it's, it is, it's never to dumb down what they've done because I'm sure that they've probably put a load of effort in it and maybe some of it might be great, right. But I think for law studios, as soon as you see somebody that comes through the door that's applying for a runner job or um, a junior assistant job, and they come in with a CV that says, oh, you know, I'm a recording engineer and I'm a producer, it's like.

It's like, well, we don't need a recording engineer or a producer. Yeah, we, we need somebody that's gonna make tea and coffee and, and is gonna. Be a nice hang to be around, but, but we don't need a recording engineer right now, so why are you applying to this job if you're a recording engineer? You know what I mean?

Yeah. I think I, I don't know. I, I think, I think there is a, a, a danger that as a person who steps out of the college or university environment that they think, well, this is it. I'm here. There you go. I've got a portfolio. This is it. And look, there's some merit to that. Some people are really good. Yeah.

Right. And And we have great engineers. Yeah. And producers at university level. Yeah. There's always two or three people every year where you go that guy, that girl, they know what they're doing. Yeah. Right. But if you want to begin a career. In the recording studio. Yeah. As an engineer. Well, you need to go right back to the bottom.

Forget about everything you learned and just observe. Yeah. And just learn. The industry's really changed, right? Yeah. Because you know, when I started, studios were the place where you went to make records. They're now the last place you go to many records. Right. And the career paths are very different now.

Mm-hmm. There's less of those big studio jobs. Like Rack, British Grove, strong Room, air Abbey Road. There's less of those jobs. Yeah. But there's more production room jobs with actual producers. Yeah. Or artists. Right. But if, if you want to do the things that I did or, or if you want to do the things that I do, which is I really enjoy working with lots of different people on lots of different projects.

Yeah. I decided that I want to do that in a studio environment. For me, that is where I learned all of my stuff. Yeah. You know? 'cause once you get in this chair, people expect you to know what you're doing. Yeah. Like that's it. You know, if they're paying you to be a producer, mixer, engineer, they want results.

Yeah. And you can't hide behind the fact that you haven't got enough experience. No. Or you don't know what you're doing. I think the bottom line here is people shouldn't be in too much of a rush. Exactly to get into that. Big dog chair situation. Right. Because it's a lot harder to go backwards than it is to go forwards.

Yeah. I, I remember being an assistant and within three months, you know, the studio manager says to me, oh yeah, you're going to Amsterdam tomorrow. And I'm like, uh, no, I'm not going to Amsterdam tomorrow. They said, yes, you are. Ray really likes you, Ray Davis. Mm-hmm. He really likes you. You're taking a tape over and you're gonna sit with Bob Clear Mountain and you're gonna mix a record.

And I'm like. Uh, uh, no, I, I don't wanna do that. Like, I, I, I don't, I, you know, everyone knows who Bob Clear Mount is. Yeah, right? He goes, no, you can do that and you are going to do that. Right. But I had a safety blanket of being a representative of the studio when I was at Mute. And they said, okay, you're going to go to Abbey Road and you're recording Nick Cave.

And I'm like, really? Like inside? I'm terrified. Yeah. You know, for all of the right reasons. Yeah. And you're going into a such a big space as Abbey Road and you're working with. Not kind of one person. You've got seven people to work with, right? Yeah. You've gotta record seven people in a band and you, you kind of, you've got some experience that that tells you, you know how to do that.

Yeah. But at the same time, you've kind of never done that. So you go in there full of, of, of a mixture of fear and confidence. Yeah. And kind of apprehension and it works itself out, but. If you had told me that two years previously, I would've known how to deal with that. You know, and like I say, when things are going well, everyone can be the best mixing, engineer, producer, recording.

It's when things go wrong that the real test of your experience comes, comes to the fore, you know? Can you keep your call in this session when all things around you are falling apart, right? When there's heated arguments between the band, can you keep your call when the studio equipment stops working at 11 o'clock at night and there's no maintenance?

Yeah. Can you get the work around? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sorts that out. Do you understand enough about how to get stuff working in those high pressure situations? Yeah, you know, I always explain again to, to people in the industry and, and students here, don't be such a rush to sit here. 'cause once you're in that chair, you can't go and sit at the back of the room again.

Take your time. Opportunities will come to you. And it's about knowing when to walk through the door and take those opportunities. I think that maybe generations are a bit younger than I am, and I, I'm still feel like sometimes I, I'm in a rush. Right. But I feel more so for younger generations of like, you know, you have the, the illusion that everything happens so quickly for everybody.

Yeah. Right. It, it doesn't and it doesn't. And I think that's okay. Like, it's okay for things to take time and it's okay for things to not, you know, be immediate. Some people get extremely lucky and get a very lucky break and things just skyrocket. Right? Yeah. But for a lot of other people, it takes a load of time.

And I think because of what you said that like once everything's going wrong, that's when how good of an engineer you are comes through and it's like this and, and it's the same when you work with a good band, right? You just have to record them. Yeah. It's when you're working with a band that maybe doesn't have great instruments, that the players aren't so good.

Okay, well how are you gonna get your way out of that? I think when you get those gigs, which are generally the first gigs you tend to get. Yes. Right? Yes. Like don't. Don't look at it with a, like a, like, oh God, these guys can't play. Don't look at it with that attitude. I, I've always taken that like, okay, so if these guys can't play, how am I gonna make this how I get them to play?

How, yeah. How am I gonna make this work? Yeah. I've gotta make it work. That's why I'm here. I've gotta make this work. Yeah. So that's your job. Yeah. Right. That's your job is to get those inexperienced, maybe not so creative, not so skilled. Okay. How are you gonna get them to work? Yeah. I really wanted to hone in a bit more on, on on creativity, and how do you keep that going when you don't feel like it?

How do you keep that spark alive when you don't feel like you can or that you want to? Well, or maybe the client doesn't, or maybe the client doesn't feel like that, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, sometimes just do nothing, right? I mean, feelings always change, right? So if someone's not feeling up to it, you've gotta hope that you have time to work through that.

I always remember a, a really great quote by Quincy Jones as far as I, as far as I know, and he said, I always leave room for God to come into the studio. Right. And he doesn't mean spiritually, God to come in the studio. What he means is, in my interpretation. Yeah. Is that you create an environment where magic can happen.

'cause people feel comfortable and people feel in the moment they feel present. When I'm working in the studio, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to make everything seem really effortless. You know, if someone sees me bashing a desk because I can't get it working, that frustration filters down. Yeah.

You've gotta try and make as calm as you can be, and you've gotta try and encourage people just to feel comfortable. The studio's a really sterile environment, right? It's got no soul at all. And it's up to us as individuals and producers to bring that into the room. And look, some people do that by decorating.

The room. Yeah. Some people do that by lighting. Some people do that by playing music. There's lots of different ways and there's a, there's quite a psychology. Yeah. Based around that. It's not about getting the best gear. That for sure I can definitely tell you. Yeah. Right. It really is about setting not just the mood, but also the energy within the Yeah.

The, the, the space. On the flip side of that, some bands thrive. Off a little bit of urgency. Hmm. Some bands and you crunch edge. Yeah. You know they want to live on the edge. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And you know, maybe you know the environment that they come from. That's how you get stuff done. By being a little bit edgy.

When I started making records, you could spend four months making an album. Now you're lucky if you get four weeks. Yeah. To make that same album. Right. It's true. And, and technology has been a catalyst for some of that change. Yeah. We don't have to work until six in the morning. Some people do, but you don't have to.

Computers and technology allow us to do things in a slightly different pace. In a slightly different way. Yeah. In terms of getting people to be creative, for me it's about setting the environment that's applicable to the artist. Getting them to be comfortable with you and comfortable doesn't necessarily mean that that artist is, you know, sitting on a pink, fluffy cloud and like enjoying themselves comfortable can mean that they just trust you.

Yeah. Or they feel at ease with you in the room? It's, yeah. I mean, I, I, I, I worked with, with someone once who said, you know why I like work, why I like working with these people that I work with. I said, no. And they said, because I can do anything I want here and no one laughs at me. And this is a person that is a very famous person.

Hmm. But what they were showing was that even they had doubts. Yeah. About their own ability. And I was thinking really like, but you are like who you are. Like you could say why. Do you have any doubt about that? Yeah. And they said, no, I, I, I could sit here and go A, B, C, D, E, F, G and no one's gonna go, ah, no one's gonna do that.

Yeah, no one's gonna make you feel this small, tiny, they're just gonna go, okay, let's just go for it. Keep working. Keep working Until we create that place, until we find that magic, that God moment. Yeah. That special place where we all look at each other and go, ah, that was brilliant. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

Yeah. Look, we are lucky you, you and I are really lucky we get to see performances. Bands or artists that are exclusively only for us, right? Yeah. And you go and, and all of that hard work, those long hours, all of the crap that you've had to put up with, all get taken away when you see one of those moments.

Yeah. I think it's because it kind of brings you, it grounds you in the present. Absolutely. You're in that moment and in, and that moment kind of becomes everything, right? Yeah. And it wipes away all of that history of maybe things, why, well, why am I here? What am I doing here? I don't like this. I've had enough of that.

And it is a dream job. It is a dream job. But a dream job doesn't mean that you're not gonna have bad days or that you're, or that there's not gonna be days where you're like, why on earth am I here? Yeah. Why am I questioning? Like Exactly. But then you get, you get, you get those moments, those sessions, those performances where you're just sitting behind the desk and you're like.

I can't believe I'm a part of this. This Yeah. You mesmerized, right? You're mesmerized and that, and you go home and you think, wow, I was so lucky to be there because, and it pays for it in a, not a, a physical sense, but No, no, no. The currency is like emotional. It's emotional. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That currency that you feel from that right.

Is why I want you to come into this business. Yeah. You can be very lucky and earn a lot of money. Yeah. If you're very lucky. I know that that's the, but that's like the 5%. Yeah. You know, and if you get anywhere close to that, fantastic. Yeah. But for a lot of people it's, I wanna say it's a minimum wage job, but it ain't much better than a minimum wage job for, for, for a lot of people.

Yeah. I mean, you know, so like in terms of the creativity thing, just to sort of maybe finish that up. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's really about just setting an environment. In terms of production? Yeah, I think for mixing it's slightly different. Being creative in mixing is really about knowing what part of a song or what instrument or what, um, sound that you can change, adjust, or add something to in order to maybe.

Relu. I mean, it could be something simple as an edit on a song. Yeah, right. It could be something as simple as taking something out. Yeah. It could be something simple as taking a section of the song and doing something to that that hasn't been thought of, or no one thought was appropriate. You know, I've seen many people do that and done that myself, where people go, oh, I never thought of that.

And that's the creativity in mixing. There's a, a great book called The Art of Mixing. Yeah, yeah. Um, by Mike Str Strel, I think. Yeah. This is an old book. Very old book. But he, and so he talks about this like the two minds of mixing, right. The technical mind and the, and the creative mind. Yeah. And he kind of suggests this whole workflow of like getting the technical part out of the way.

Yeah. So then you can just concentrate on what you're listening to. Exactly. Right. And look, every song is different. Right. And again, this is one of the big bug bears that I have a, about the education space, particularly with mixing. Yeah. Hey guys, I'm gonna show you how. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, okay, you're gonna show me how relative to what you are playing.

Yes. That has no relevance for what I'm doing. As a caveat to that, there are some similarities some of the time. Hmm. But it took me a very long time to really feel music in the studio and not worry about the technical aspect of it. Hmm. I'd, I'd say for the first five years of, of working in the studio, it was all about technical ability.

Yeah. Getting things working the way I want them to work. Yeah. And then suddenly someone goes, yeah, but what does it sound like? And I just went. I dunno, I've not been listening to that. I've been worrying about whether the meter was telling me what I wanted to see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Once I've started listening, once I could put the technical side to, to one side, the creativity was a hell of a lot easier.

Just, it just flows, you know? And it just allowed me to, to really think about that. Hmm. A lot more. Yeah. And, and that's when I started to become very comfortable with, with what I was doing. Yeah. When you can forget about the technology and the technical side and you are just operating on sheer, kind of like intuition.

Intuition. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then, then you can be whoever you want to be. Right? Yeah. And then, and then you can provide to the people that you're working with, you know what they hopefully want. Yeah. And look, it doesn't always work. No. And things go wrong, but, and people don't like what you do. Right. And that's okay as well.

Like that. That's fine. It's fine because you, it completely fine in order for, I think there's always a compromise, right? Yeah. In order for somebody to like what you do, it means that there's out, out there in the world there's also gonna be people that don't like what you do. Well, I, I, I always say I'd much rather some people don't like what I do.

Hmm. Than just go, yeah, it's alright. Yeah. Because Yeah, it's all right. Means that they have no thought about it. Yeah. Either love it or hate it, but never be in the middle. Uh, no, I never want to be in the middle. Yeah. In the middle. Sucks. Right. It sucks because it's, it's just, eh, like, well, that's disgust boring as hell.

Yeah. Right? I I, I know, I know that when someone doesn't like something that I'm probably doing something Right. Not for them. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm doing, I'm doing my, I'm doing my job. Right. My thing. Yeah. In terms of finding out where I need to go. 'cause when I know you don't like it, mm-hmm. I can go, okay, well let's, let's go completely in the opposite direction and see if we can get you to like it.

But I think, I think to get to that point, you know, it takes confidence. What built, what were the moments that kind of built your confidence up? Well, early on I had no idea if anything I was doing was good and then. A simple phone call from an artist to a studio where they told the, the manager, yeah. You know, Kevin, he was great.

Hmm. That made me go, oh wow. So I actually am doing something right, where someone calls you up and says, I liked what you did on this project. Would you help me to do something on my project? Hmm. You know, those things are like. Markers in the sand where you go, oh, okay. Maybe I do know what I'm doing here.

What it's really about then for me is like, okay, so let me just explore more of this. Yeah. How can I kind of develop that? Stay humble. The engineer, producer mixer is not the most person, most important person in the room. Yeah. The most important thing in the room is the song and the artist and the band.

Yeah. You know, every single time. That's what you're there for. When, when I'm mixing a record, I'll mix it to a point where I'm happy for someone to hear it, and then after that I say, okay, you've gotta steer me home. Yeah. Because I've done a first interpretation of where I think it should be. Hmm. After that, it's down to you to go, I like this.

I don't like that. Let's explore this. Let's explore that. Yeah. And that might kick off another set of cogs in my head where I'll go, oh, well now you said that. Why don't we try this? Someone said to me once, he said, the thing is, you know when you start off in your career and you do something and you spend hours and hours working on something and you think I'm gonna get every fine detail right down to the very last inch of its life, and then someone goes, I don't like that.

He go, I goes, well, what do you do then? He goes, well, generally you sulk. You sold for a bit because you, you feel hurt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That someone doesn't like all the effort you put in. Yeah. And he goes, actually, what you learn is I don't want to take it into a place where I feel it's mine. Yes. I think anytime you feel that it's yours, you're probably gonna get burned.

Yes. You're probably gonna get told, well, it's not yours, it's mine, and you've gotta change all of this. Yeah. And you'll go, but, but, but. Artists do it. Right? And, and the self-produced records do it all the time where they go, oh no, no, no. We can't get rid of that part. I spend four hours playing that. And you go, yeah, I respect that, but it doesn't work.

Yeah. But you have to play those four hours to get to that point. But some artists are precious about it. Yeah. And you've got to navigate that. Yeah. As a producer, you'll go, okay, well look, let's do one with your things in your four hours work, and then we'll do one without the four hours working and we'll see which one you like in two weeks time.

Nice. You know, and that way you get to express your bit. They get to, to fill. Okay. What He's, listen to me even. Yeah. If he doesn't agree. You know, or they don't agree. Today's technology allow us to do two free versions in over a period of like a week. Yeah. You know, we can come back to it in two weeks time.

We don't, and just open it up and it'll be fine. And just go, BOS, let's just change something. Which actually leads nicely into this thing I wanted to ask you about. I feel like there's so much noise and noise and noise about plugins and options and I feel like we're, we we're living in a time where people don't like to commit to a lot of things.

Yeah. And I feel that that may be some of the most creative work that has ever been done, is been done, because you have to commit, for my personal perspective is that the excess of option, actually, of options actually limits creativity. But what, what do you think about, I, I think that's, that's pretty valid.

And, and I, I mean, look, one of the things that you always see, so they'll open up their sessions and they've got 12 plugins on every channel. Yeah. And you're like, uh, well. Why have you got 12 plugins on there? 'cause it didn't sound right. Okay. So maybe why didn't you look at the sound? Yeah. Why are you trying to force a round peg into a square hole?

And a lot of that comes from the laziness of convenience that is presets. And look, when, when computers first started, plugins were all based around analog gear. Yeah. We were all trying to emulate the analog sound in a digital box. And really there's only about. 50 pieces of analog gear that everyone refers to.

Yeah. Pool tech, eq, Fairchild eq. Yeah. 70 sixes. Uh, these 10 70 threes. LA two A, LA two a, LA three A, whatever. Right. Yeah. So there's probably about 50, let's say a hundred, right? Yeah. All other plugins that are trying to emulate analog are based around those 50 to a hundred plugins. Yeah. Let's get rid of all the 999.

Versions of it and just concentrate on those hundred. But then there's also a new generation of plugins that are built solely within the digital domain. Yeah. And that's really exciting because you've got plugins that are, that do something that nothing else really does analog little piece of equipment could do.

So you kind of need to understand that and you need to go, okay, well you know what? What am I trying to do here? You know, when we, when we first started with computers, you'd be lucky to get five plugins in a session, nevermind like 500. Yeah. And also with that, in terms of creativity and templates, do you think templates help liberate creativity or, I don't necessarily, I don't have a template.

I, I do have a way that I order my session. I think, I think presets are good starting points. There's nothing wrong with the preset. Yeah. What's important is that you have the ability to listen and change, because if you're not confident in your ability, you're not gonna change the preset if you do have the confidence.

You are more than likely change it. Yeah. To suit the environment of the sound that you're looking for. Yeah. I remember being on a, on a session and asking the engineer in the session and asking them like, you know, this would be so much quicker if you had a template. And he said, the thing about templates, it kind of forces me to always want to do the same thing for everything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Completely. And I feel that with every project that comes through, he's like, yeah, I could probably. Get double the amount of work done, but probably the decisions I'd be making would be like an autopilot rather than thinking, thinking and having a very thoughtful choice. Right. And I mean, you know when when you work with analog gear, you have presets and that's what the last person used.

That was your preset. Yeah. Okay. I've got the EQ up. Go over to the pool tech EQ and you go. Don't change anything. Let me hear what it sounds like first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you'd hear what it sounded like and you'd go, okay, now I'm gonna change something. Yeah. You know? And you do that with a compressor, with an eq, with a, uh, uh, a reverb, a delay.

But that's a very Well, your presets. Yeah. And this is the, this is the issue, like with music production, right? Is is that. I, I do get the feeling that it's become a little bit predictable. Hmm. And, and you can listen to records and almost go, well, they're using that and they're doing this. And you're like, where, where's that originality coming from?

And that comes from us. Right. The, the guys at the coalface. Hmm. You know, I got shown 10 ways, 50 ways to EQ something, uh, mic something up and mix it. Yeah. Nowadays you are, you are told that actually there's a definitive way. Yeah. And it's not, no, there's like a, it's never been, and that's what I'm saying, like you can go and, you know, like people come here at the university again and, and sorry to go on about that.

And the first thing I say is, I'm not gonna show you how equipment works. You can go on YouTube and you can learn how a compressor works. But what I'm gonna do is show you how to use this compressor in 15 different situations to give you 15 different sounds and give you a load of options that when it comes to you listening to your music, that you will be able to try.

Yeah. And if one doesn't work, you can try another way. You know, because my bag of tricks that I carry around with me up in my head. Yeah, have been developed over a period of 15, 20, 30 years. Yeah. Okay. Well, Kevin, I think that's all the time. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. I wanna say thanks to Sound and Sound as well, and Paul for connecting us.

Westminster Uni as well for, for hosting us and letting us record in one of their studios. Um, yeah. Thank you so much. It's been such an interesting conversation. Great. I've had a lot of fun. Thank you for feedback. Thank you for listening. And be sure to check out the show notes page for this episode where you'll find further information along with web links and details of all our other episodes.

And just before you go. Let me point you to the sound on Sound slash podcasts website page where you can explore what's playing on our other channels. This has been a mixed bus production by me, Kevin Paul, for Sound On Sound.