How to Use Automation in Your Music Production Workflow | with Raphael Sepulveda
In this episode, you'll learn about:
- Soundflow
- Keyboard Maestro
- How to Use Automation to Speed up Workflow
- Why Consistent File Naming So Important
- Automating Complete Session Delivery and Stem Printing
- The Power of Pro Tools Track Presets
- Coding and Automation is a Skill just like playing an instrument
- How Making Music for Sync Differs from Making Records
- How to Hit All the Cuts when Composing for Ads
Connect with Raphael
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Grammy File Naming Conventions - here
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Credits:
Guest: Raphael Sepulveda
Host: Travis Ference
Editor: Stephen Boyd
Theme Music: inter.ference
Transcript
Yeah, man, once you start doing this stuff, it's just like, you get excited
Speaker:because you're building features for yourself that, you know, like, probably the
Speaker:developer's not gonna do it. That's Rafael Sepulveda, a producer,
Speaker:composer, mixer, and workflow automations master. Rafael writes music for
Speaker:television and ads, as well as produces records and contributes heavily
Speaker:to the soundflow community, helping people script and design automations for themselves.
Speaker:Today we are gonna go deep on the advanced automations that he uses
Speaker:every day. Once I implement it into my workflow,
Speaker:it will be amazing. It will be like, man, this is actually making my. I
Speaker:can work faster, and I can build more for less work. We also get into
Speaker:a lot of pro tools, specific workflows for track presets and templates. That's
Speaker:where track presets and templates come in handy, like, it gives
Speaker:you. And we touch on how he got into writing music for sync and why
Speaker:it's so different from making records. One thing that I learned pretty
Speaker:quickly, once you start landing these, you know, you
Speaker:see your work in real life, it's just like they push your music
Speaker:way down. My inner automations. Nerd has been
Speaker:building scripts nonstop since we had this chat. So if you've been thinking about taking
Speaker:the dive into soundflow or just learning to code your own scripts, definitely stick around
Speaker:for my interview with Raphael Sepulveda.
Speaker:So I've been excited to chat with you because we met at NAmm. At
Speaker:this point, it was like, almost two years ago, and I'm in the midst of
Speaker:kind of like, working through my end of the year
Speaker:systems tweaks. And I'm like, I know that you're going to
Speaker:have some tricks for me, so. Oh, yeah,
Speaker:I wanted to just get straight into Nerd and ask, do you have
Speaker:a top three pro tools, workflow or automation
Speaker:things that you've put together? Absolutely. I mean, I have so many, I
Speaker:can give you more than three. Make it five if you want. But the first
Speaker:one that comes into mind is the stuff that I have for my
Speaker:subgroups. So the way that I work, you know, like a lot of people,
Speaker:I have a bunch of subgroups at the end of my session, you know, just
Speaker:auxes for the drums, guitars, and whatnot. And I like to have
Speaker:all those colored a certain way. One of the macros that I use all
Speaker:the time, and I have them right here on my iPad. I
Speaker:have most of the groups that I would use on a session
Speaker:laid out, and I just need to select the tracks that I want,
Speaker:and I hit a button, it will color it, it will look through the session.
Speaker:If it doesn't have an aux to go to, it will go create
Speaker:one and then route to it and have it pretty much
Speaker:laid out for me. And that one is just. I
Speaker:just do it all the time. I have it. I have, like, maybe
Speaker:16 of them right here. That's awesome. So that one I use all the
Speaker:time. The other one that I use all the time is
Speaker:duplicating. And now, you know, this pain. Being
Speaker:a pro tools user, we have to duplicate a
Speaker:track. It involves several steps. Oh, yeah. You know, usually
Speaker:if you're on Ableton or logic, you hit the shortcut and it
Speaker:just creates a new track. And that's it. With pro tools, one of the things
Speaker:that we love about it is that gives you options, but when you're in
Speaker:the flow of things, you kind of want to, like, just get it going.
Speaker:So, you know, the first thing that comes up is the little window saying, oh,
Speaker:what do you want to duplicate? Do you want the clips? You want the automation?
Speaker:Do you want this and that? How many do you want? Most of the time,
Speaker:I want the same thing. I just want the same track with no
Speaker:clips so that I can usually record something else,
Speaker:like a guitar. I just want to do another pass.
Speaker:So I go through those options, have it there, and then the next pain
Speaker:point is the name. I just want it to
Speaker:be. If it's guitar one, I want it to be guitar, too. I don't want
Speaker:it to be guitar one. Dot dupe one. Yeah, that's
Speaker:right. So I have a macro that
Speaker:takes care of all that. It will do the duplicate. It will
Speaker:deal with that window, set it up the way that I like it, which is
Speaker:just, you know, have to track. It will wait for it to come up, and
Speaker:once it's there, it will change the name to guitar two or guitar
Speaker:three. It will go through the whole session and be able
Speaker:to tell how many guitars are, or, you know, whatever
Speaker:the name, the main name is, and give
Speaker:it a number that makes sense. So that one
Speaker:is just like, man, that's
Speaker:amazing. Yeah, man. Once you start doing this stuff, it's just like,
Speaker:you get excited because you're building features for yourself that, you know,
Speaker:like, probably the developer is not going to do it.
Speaker:It's probably too customized for yourself.
Speaker:There's no way that this is going to happen. So you just do it. It's
Speaker:like, okay, this is actually awesome for me.
Speaker:And I guess, let's see. I mean, I'll just mention another
Speaker:one of my favorites is the reverse reverb trick. You
Speaker:know, like, that's the classic we all do. Yeah, but it
Speaker:also involves several steps. Well, I have it so that
Speaker:I just need to select. And I usually do this with vocals, you know, to
Speaker:come into a verse or whatnot. I just select
Speaker:where I want the reverse to start, and then
Speaker:I include some of the vocal, like, usually the first word,
Speaker:I hit the keyboard shortcut, and
Speaker:it will just go through all the motions to make that happen. And, you
Speaker:know, like that. It usually, it is more complex with a
Speaker:monosource, which is usually a case of vocals, because the
Speaker:reverb, you want it to be stereo, right? So usually what that
Speaker:involves is duplicating
Speaker:that vocal track twice. So you have two of them, then
Speaker:grabbing the piece of audio that you want, bring it down twice,
Speaker:then creating a stereo track, bringing those two down.
Speaker:So it's basically a stereo file of the mod, of the monophile.
Speaker:Then go into auto suite, choosing your reverb of
Speaker:choice and setting it up the way that you want it. And then
Speaker:with pro tools, it has a bot at the bottom of the auto suite window,
Speaker:it has a reverse reverb option. So you hit that and it
Speaker:will finally get it there. And then you have to clean up, delete all the
Speaker:tracks that you created and then rename it all that.
Speaker:The worst. The worst with his automation
Speaker:trick. And it's just so awesome to just. It kind of
Speaker:makes me want to do it more, even though it's. At this point, it's a
Speaker:little overplayed, let's be honest. But when you need it, it's like, oh, I
Speaker:can just do it real quick. Just press the keyword shortcut. All the stuff that
Speaker:I just said. Boom. Gets done, and it's perfect. And I have
Speaker:it so that as soon as it's done, it plays back what it did. Because
Speaker:usually I want to see, maybe I want it a little bit longer.
Speaker:So I make the selection longer, and it'll
Speaker:just read through the whole thing. That's awesome.
Speaker:I'm kind of old school because I never use the reverse reverb button in the
Speaker:audio suite. Does that audio sweep the reverb
Speaker:and reverse the reverb, or does it reverse the vocal print reverb and
Speaker:then reverse the reverb? Right. So basically it will print the reverb and
Speaker:then reverse it, right. And basically you have the effect.
Speaker:Right? Just the standard reverse reverb right there. So
Speaker:that if it didn't have that, then the. The automation flow would have been
Speaker:way longer, but thankfully. Oh, yeah, they helped us
Speaker:that with that one. Yeah, that was when I first got keyboard
Speaker:maestro years ago. That was like the first thing I built
Speaker:was a reverse reverb, but I didn't use the reverse button, so I had to,
Speaker:like, audio sweep the reverb, then reverse, and then
Speaker:have that selection. And then you reverse that. And I built that. And I was
Speaker:like, this is amazing. And then I never bought keyboardmeister. I just used that, a
Speaker:proof of concept, and then just like, moved on and just forgot that I was,
Speaker:you know, doing that. But it's those little things. It's like people
Speaker:don't think about how much time you save
Speaker:incrementally, because we're talking about saving 2 seconds,
Speaker:but you're talking about saving like 2 seconds
Speaker:ten times a day, 30 times a day. And then you start building all these
Speaker:automations and you're just like. Then you start saving minutes and hours and then at
Speaker:the end of the year you're like, I just got, like an extra week to
Speaker:do something else. You know what I mean? Which is, I
Speaker:don't know. That's huge for me because I've got a kid now. I don't know
Speaker:if you have. If you've. I do have a son. And
Speaker:I'll be pleased to inform you that we've been sick for the past four months.
Speaker:He's almost one year old, so he started daycare
Speaker:recently. So, as you know, it's.
Speaker:We're going through that right now. But yes, it's
Speaker:those, you know, it might seem. Might seem marginal,
Speaker:you know, like that. It just saves you a little bit of time. But they
Speaker:do add up. Yeah, but there's more benefits to that. I mean, there's
Speaker:workflows that are way longer and we can talk about that in a bit.
Speaker:And I don't know about you, but whenever I finish melody,
Speaker:my wrist hurts. And if I have to do even
Speaker:more stuff in addition to that, you know, these
Speaker:workflows, they help you with your physical,
Speaker:you know, stamina, just less clicking around.
Speaker:And with pro tools, you feel it. I mean, you have to get
Speaker:to the one thing like I described earlier. You have to do a bunch of
Speaker:other things. So it really
Speaker:makes you a little bit lazy, I'll tell you that much. I've been
Speaker:using these systems for four years now, and there's
Speaker:no way. There's just no way. I cannot go back. And the same, you
Speaker:know, I was just talking to my friend right now. It's like, man,
Speaker:sample wasn't you know, it was acting up. It's like, just restart it. It'll be
Speaker:fine. But, yeah, he was just explaining to me, he's like, man, I cannot work
Speaker:without this. It's just, I need this. I did a record recently,
Speaker:and I was using. I was using bounce factory. Andrew
Speaker:ships bounce factor, which is an amazing sound flow
Speaker:based product that is, like, built so
Speaker:overkill. Like, what? He's like, it can do anything,
Speaker:but I was having a problem with heat, and I never really was
Speaker:able to. I didn't have time to, like, really get onto the sound flow form
Speaker:and, like, work through it. And so any session that the producer had
Speaker:sent me that had heat on, I'd left it on, did my mix,
Speaker:and none of those, I could get sheps to bounce. And
Speaker:I was doing atmos stems, so I was bouncing so many stems, and I was
Speaker:sitting there, like, basically crying because I haven't
Speaker:sat there and actually printed stems for, like, two years or
Speaker:since. Whenever bounce factory came out, I just, like, have never sat in front of
Speaker:my computer and had to do that again until this moment a couple months ago.
Speaker:And I was, like, just breaking down. I was like, I should pay somebody to
Speaker:do this. I can't do it anymore. Yeah, man, it's just
Speaker:impossible. You know, like, it's with stems. You know,
Speaker:having the machine do that kind of stuff is just the best case scenario.
Speaker:Oh, yeah. If you have it laid out in a way that, you know, is
Speaker:bulletproof, like, you know, the. The tracks are going to print the way
Speaker:that you want them. Yeah. Stuff like labeling. I mean, when I started
Speaker:this, my pain point was I
Speaker:started doing this composing stuff that I've been doing for the past three
Speaker:years. And one of the things is printing a ton
Speaker:of stamps and a ton of alts
Speaker:and the format of the names, they're pretty long. I
Speaker:mean, when they come to me, you know, whenever I'm prepping,
Speaker:mixing a track from another composer or my
Speaker:stuff, the name is temporary. You know, usually we assign
Speaker:it a number, and then it
Speaker:has the type of how long the
Speaker:track is. You know, we have 60 seconds, 30 on
Speaker:20, which is two minutes. Yeah, we have several lengths, and
Speaker:then we have, you know, what type of track it is. You know, this
Speaker:is for the stems, you know, typical stuff. And then you have to put the
Speaker:VPN, the key of the song, all that stuff in
Speaker:every stamp. And I was typing them manually and, you
Speaker:know, we are humans. We are going to make mistakes.
Speaker:I was making mistakes left and right, you know, tempo, you know, just
Speaker:my, my finger will slip a little bit. It's like, oh, there's no way this
Speaker:is 200 bpm. I screwed up. It ain't 20 either.
Speaker:So I don't know. So whenever you
Speaker:set up your, your automation
Speaker:to handle that stuff, it's just, you know, like, I haven't had any
Speaker:mistakes for years. Yeah. You know, like,
Speaker:at first, you know, obviously you have to finesse your
Speaker:coding and make it, make sure that it works in all kinds of
Speaker:situations. But I'll say that that is one of my other favorite
Speaker:ones. Just having the ability to
Speaker:print stamps and have them be
Speaker:awesome all the time. I did my
Speaker:script before Andrew worked on
Speaker:his, so mine is more specific to my
Speaker:workflow. I do still like to
Speaker:print the main pass on an audio
Speaker:track. Okay. Then I do, I do balance the stamps because
Speaker:that will take too long. I don't really QC. It's not part of
Speaker:my job to QC the stems. We have somebody else to do that. But I
Speaker:do QC the main pass and the alts.
Speaker:Yeah. And I've always found, like, I have not, haven't had any type
Speaker:of trouble. Whenever you print the audio on the session
Speaker:itself, while with bouncing, I remember there
Speaker:have been some hiccups with, especially with effects like reverb and
Speaker:stuff. You know, it rarely happens. But
Speaker:back in the day, I remember being burned a little bit
Speaker:because there was an artifact in the session that even, even if you're
Speaker:listening to it while it is bouncing, it will,
Speaker:the resulting file will have the glitch. Yeah. So I have that and
Speaker:that going on. All the information from the session
Speaker:is print it on the audio file, which is awesome. It'll grab the, like I
Speaker:said before, the BPM, it'll grab the key. The key.
Speaker:I do type it in at first, whenever I set up the session, you know,
Speaker:I listen to the song and then figure out the key. And then
Speaker:that way the script can read it off the file. That's cool. And
Speaker:then it will know, depending on what track I have highlighted, what
Speaker:stem we're talking about. And once it does all that,
Speaker:it will go in. You know, usually they land in the bounce
Speaker:files folder. And with stems, you know, when you do the
Speaker:bounce, the track, it will add a dash st. We don't want
Speaker:that. Right. So go get rid of that. And then it
Speaker:will move all the files from the bounced files into
Speaker:its proper place where it needs to live. And that,
Speaker:man, is just invaluable. And
Speaker:there, we're talking about saving several minutes at that point. Oh,
Speaker:yeah. Well, you're also talking about saving the kind of thing that a
Speaker:lot of people pay an assistant for. Like, you get down to, like, stem printing,
Speaker:so you can pay somebody to build you a script, or you. You can
Speaker:subscribe to one of these scripts that exist, or you could pay
Speaker:somebody hourly for 8 hours on a Saturday and a Sunday.
Speaker:And that's gonna be a lot more expensive than, uh, you
Speaker:know, building something yourself or subscribing to soundflow or whatever you want to do.
Speaker:Yeah, it's like, it's, uh, taking work away from people, but. But, you
Speaker:know, it's. It's freeing. I mean, that's. That's where we're heading,
Speaker:you know? Like, even if I had an assistant, I will hook him up with
Speaker:sandflow so that no time is wasted, so that the whole
Speaker:machine is moving forward. Yeah, I don't think it's about taking work
Speaker:from anybody. It's just like, we just need to keep moving forward. That's
Speaker:true. That's a great way to think about it. It's a great way to think
Speaker:about it. Come on. We have the power. Why would I force you to
Speaker:do the thing manually? Well, let's talk about
Speaker:naming for a second, because you mentioned that was a pain point
Speaker:for you. Because I recently did.
Speaker:It was a full album project, and the label wanted a very
Speaker:specific naming for each type of file. And luckily,
Speaker:I have a very specific naming, so I was able to get
Speaker:a batch rename process where I could swap out the words that I use
Speaker:for the words that they want. And it was still time consuming. But what,
Speaker:like, how do you name. How do you name a mix right now? Like,
Speaker:what's your. Your naming convention? A few years ago,
Speaker:I adapted the Grammy
Speaker:specifications. Do you know what I'm talking about? There's a document flying around
Speaker:back in the day. Yeah. With how it's supposed to be.
Speaker:I don't remember it because I have sound flow through it for me, but let
Speaker:me try. I know it was the initials of the artist,
Speaker:and then underscore the name of the song.
Speaker:Underscore what is the. If it's a mix,
Speaker:a master, and then underscore the revision.
Speaker:A rev one, rev two, rev three, then
Speaker:underscore forty eight k a twenty four,
Speaker:something like that. I'm pretty sure that was
Speaker:90% correct, but, yeah, that's kind of like how I have it
Speaker:set up for. For artists stuff we don't do. For the composition, stuff
Speaker:that I do, we use different terminology that's more in
Speaker:house. But for artists and records, that's the way
Speaker:that I do it currently. Nice. Nice for listeners. I just found
Speaker:the link to the PDF that he was describing. I'll put that in the show
Speaker:notes. I'm not going to read it back, but it's easy to
Speaker:find. Yeah, right. Okay. So we've kind of talked about some of the
Speaker:things that you're up to, some of the things that are possible.
Speaker:How'd you end up going down the automation rabbit hole? Like, why did
Speaker:you decide to try to save this time? And more importantly, what are you doing
Speaker:with the time you saved? Oh, man. Oh, like
Speaker:that. Well, I know that in 2019,
Speaker:I was very curious to learn how to, like, do some
Speaker:programming. You know, something that, you know, kids nowadays, they get it in
Speaker:school, and I felt like, man, like, if I could just get my hands on
Speaker:something like that, you know, like, just get familiar with it. And
Speaker:I've always wanted to do a contact library,
Speaker:but whenever I try to go in and try to study the
Speaker:thing, it's not very user friendly,
Speaker:especially somebody that does not know how to do any programming. It kind
Speaker:of, like, felt like I was missing the foundations, the very
Speaker:basics. Yeah, I put it off for a while, but
Speaker:in 2019, I saw
Speaker:somebody using keyboard maestro
Speaker:and they were flying like, oh, my God. When I saw that
Speaker:video, I was like, what is going on? I thought I was
Speaker:decent at pro tools, but he was just doing
Speaker:things that I didn't even know were possible, which now, you know,
Speaker:it's crazy because we've gone way ahead of that in
Speaker:modern days. But what he was doing, which was basic stuff, like
Speaker:going through the menu items and pro tools and, like, for example,
Speaker:doing a keyboard shortcut and attaching it to something kind of like toggle the
Speaker:click name so that you can see it or not. Yeah, stuff like that.
Speaker:But to me, it was like, wow. And you can just do it there. It's
Speaker:like, wow, that's pretty amazing. So
Speaker:I got the bug from there and it opened
Speaker:the world for me because I was like, wow. This is not just for pro
Speaker:tools. You can automate whatever you want. Yeah.
Speaker:And I still remember the first thing that they teach
Speaker:you how to do with keyword maestro is just to open a
Speaker:folder on your computer. So you assign, and I still use them
Speaker:to this day. It's just, I have it. So the f one,
Speaker:f two, and f three are my top three
Speaker:projects that I'm working on at the moment. So whenever, you know, like, my
Speaker:top three clients. So, okay, I'm going to work on this guy
Speaker:today, boom. F one is usually the one that I'm working all the time and
Speaker:it just shows up. That's versus going in open
Speaker:window, going through all the clients, all this guy. And you know,
Speaker:as dumb as that might seem, just, it is way easier to just
Speaker:hit one key and it shows up. Yeah.
Speaker:So I, that's how I started and then it just got even more
Speaker:complicated and more complicated and I just wanted more. You know, once you
Speaker:start, you get used to, it's like, huh. This whole thing about the
Speaker:macros is cool, but I kind of want to, yeah, you know, I was referring
Speaker:my mind to, I want to like do some coding, some more like
Speaker:advanced stuff. Yeah. The way that keyword master has it laid out is
Speaker:pretty user friendly. It's basically blocks of
Speaker:actions that you can drop in into a flow
Speaker:and then once you hit run,
Speaker:it will go through all those processes, you know, back to back and it will
Speaker:get your result, whatever that may be. And then I discovered
Speaker:sound flow and that was a whole,
Speaker:I was amazed. And I remember
Speaker:I, I opened, I got the trial that they have a
Speaker:30 day trial, I got it on it. And these, this
Speaker:was early days, at least for me. Yeah, but things have changed
Speaker:dramatically since then. But it was early days and I was like, man, this
Speaker:is cool. It's a little hard though. I
Speaker:tried the trial, I tried to trial. There were so many
Speaker:commands, so many things you could do, you know.
Speaker:So I was going through it and I was building
Speaker:my first script and then I was like, man, this is
Speaker:taking a while. And I was in the middle of like a big project and
Speaker:I wanted to see if I could do something quickly, but
Speaker:it was obvious to me that this required a little more investment
Speaker:for my part. So I let
Speaker:the trial expire and then I got back like, man,
Speaker:let me just roll with, keep up my answer for now. As clunky as it
Speaker:might seem at this point for me, I'm just going to roll with that for
Speaker:now, get through this project, and then after the Christmas break
Speaker:I'm going to go into this. And that's exactly what I did.
Speaker:After the Christmas break, I got into it, it was 2020,
Speaker:a new year. Yep. We did not know it was coming, but I
Speaker:was like, okay, this is the year for me. Yeah.
Speaker:So I started getting into soundflow and going
Speaker:down the rabbit hole of coding and scripting.
Speaker:So Samflow uses JavaScript
Speaker:as the, the language of choice. And the cool thing
Speaker:about JavaScript is that it's a very well
Speaker:documented language, probably the most
Speaker:well documented language. And from my
Speaker:experience coming from trying to do some contact stuff,
Speaker:which is not, well, you know, I mean, I guess it is, but still
Speaker:harder, much harder. With JavaScript, you can find so many
Speaker:examples of things to do. So that's what I did. I
Speaker:went on YouTube, watch a bunch of videos, did a little chorus on
Speaker:my iPhone. It was called Mimo. Just like a
Speaker:training thing, very easy to do.
Speaker:And once I got that going, it's like, man, okay, this is
Speaker:cool. Started going through all the things
Speaker:that sample has to offer, which is thousands. I mean,
Speaker:that was another thing. Like, man, just seeing what
Speaker:other people have done, it's like, wow, I just need to spend some
Speaker:time checking everybody's things out. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:So I did that. I did a whole list. Every time I would see a
Speaker:name of something that sounded cool, I would put it there and I would just
Speaker:make a point to try it out. And eventually I just started putting the pieces
Speaker:together. And the most important thing, and the thing that
Speaker:kept me going was that once I implemented into my workflow,
Speaker:it will be amazing. It will be like, man, this is actually making my, I
Speaker:can work faster and I can build more for less work. You know,
Speaker:it's like, it's actually manifesting in
Speaker:real life versus when you're trying to learn something, you know, usually takes a while,
Speaker:like, let's say whenever you're learning an instrument or something like
Speaker:that, it is, it takes a while from going from zero
Speaker:to playing on stage or on the studio, it takes a few years.
Speaker:Yeah. Here I was able to quickly implement what I wanted to do
Speaker:and try it out that same day. Yeah. And see the
Speaker:benefits. And once it's there, I just have it, you know, laid down on my
Speaker:stream deck and on my iPad or on my keyboard.
Speaker:I do all different combinations, you know,
Speaker:so it that once I caught that bug, I was like, man, this
Speaker:is, this is cool. And it made me feel
Speaker:really good that I could learn a new skill because, yeah, I mean, at this
Speaker:point it's tough.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, it saves so much time. One of the things
Speaker:I wanted to highlight because maybe not, we've mentioned soundflow so many
Speaker:times, and everybody listening to this may not be familiar with what soundflow
Speaker:is, and I'll let you give a rundown of that, but
Speaker:I think two of the most powerful aspects of soundflow
Speaker:is one, everything's saved to the cloud. So if you go to another
Speaker:computer, you can pull your commands down, which is
Speaker:something that you couldn't get back in the day. Like when I was at capital,
Speaker:there was a, there was a few people that used quick keys, some of the
Speaker:film scoring guys, but I think you had to carry a usb stick around, you
Speaker:had to load your things on, assuming they had quick keys on the computer. And
Speaker:then the assistant had to remember to turn it off. And
Speaker:soundflow, you can just log in, everything starts working. And
Speaker:the other one, the power is in making your own
Speaker:macros because I know friends that have tried soundflow and they're like,
Speaker:oh, and you know, there's like a, there's like a free version that comes with
Speaker:pro tools or something like that, I think now. Yes. Yeah, but it's just, it's
Speaker:basically just giving you control of the things that people already
Speaker:know. And that's the argument that a lot of, some of my friends have had.
Speaker:It's like, well I'm already super fast at pro Tools. I'm like, dude, it's not
Speaker:about having save as on your stream deck, it's
Speaker:about building something deeper than that. You know, like we
Speaker:all know the key commands. Like if you work professionally, you're already very fast.
Speaker:This is to do weird. This is to get into the dark arts, you know
Speaker:what I mean? Yeah, but yeah, like that's where you get the Jews out of
Speaker:it, you know, just making things that are a little more complicated. But you
Speaker:know, I can give you a lot of examples, even easy
Speaker:stuff that just helps
Speaker:me. But yeah, I guess we have to rewind and kind of talk more
Speaker:about sound flow. I kind of just, you know, assume that, well,
Speaker:Sandflow, to me it is the best
Speaker:automation software that there is. I am biased because I am on
Speaker:pro tools and the creator Christian,
Speaker:he made it specifically for pro tools, even though it
Speaker:can do a lot of things outside of pro tools. That was the main
Speaker:focus at the beginning, so that it will help engineers
Speaker:just work way faster on pro tools.
Speaker:And that is the biggest difference from something like keyboard master for
Speaker:example. Keyboard master is just, you know, tool for the
Speaker:Mac to help you automate. Soundflow has that, you
Speaker:know, the aspect of pro tools and the
Speaker:audio community attached to it. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:So, and one of the cool things that I really like about
Speaker:Soundflow, like you said, well, the cloud stuff, a lot of people when they hear,
Speaker:oh, it's in the cloud, they get a little bit scared because the data, they
Speaker:want to have a backup. I'll admit I
Speaker:was part of that camp for a while,
Speaker:but we're in a new world, man. Like in reality. I'll
Speaker:give you my own experience here.
Speaker:In the last four years, I've only lost Internet connection twice.
Speaker:One, one time it was a week, I had a studio.
Speaker:The studio I'm in right now is in my house.
Speaker:But in 2020, before the whole pandemic, I had a studio off
Speaker:site and we lost an Internet in the building for a
Speaker:week. And what did I do? I just used my
Speaker:phone and gave the computer a
Speaker:hotspot on my phone, and it was completely fine.
Speaker:And even if you lose Internet connection,
Speaker:it's not that you can't use Soundflow. You can use it on an offline mode,
Speaker:which means that you can use all your commands, you just can't edit them
Speaker:so that it doesn't break the sync with the cloud. That's, you
Speaker:know, forget about saving. You don't need to save and sample because every,
Speaker:every move that you make gets synced to the cloud
Speaker:immediately. Yeah, you know, one of the
Speaker:other benefits of having that is that I just experienced
Speaker:it right now. Just changed from my trash can Mac Pro to the
Speaker:Mac studio. Once I install sandflow,
Speaker:all the keep cover commands just populate. I don't have to do anything else,
Speaker:you know, versus, you know, like the other stuff pro tools related,
Speaker:like your track presets, you have to make sure to go on
Speaker:the documents folder in the old computer, put them, you know,
Speaker:make sure that you transfer them over. Anything that you put on sample
Speaker:will automatically just take over on your new computer. And
Speaker:the same applies if you're at another studio. Like whenever I go
Speaker:tracking, all the custom keyboard shortcuts that I have
Speaker:just automatically populate and I don't have to worry
Speaker:about, you know, it's just like I'm working on my own workstation, which is
Speaker:super awesome. It's been a. I mean, I hate to use the word game
Speaker:changer, but there's really no other way to describe it. If you're looking to
Speaker:save time or you have a lot of repetitive tasks. I mean, just like
Speaker:editing this podcast, there's like so many things that I have to do over
Speaker:and over and over again. Folder structures like you want to talk about, like non
Speaker:audio workflows, I'm sure you have some. But like, I
Speaker:got, I have buttons that create my pro tool session
Speaker:hierarchy and my podcast hierarchy,
Speaker:and I just press one button, it asks me the name of the
Speaker:song, type in the name of the song, a couple more things. Boom. There's
Speaker:Dropbox folders created, there's work drive folders created.
Speaker:Everything's named. I got tired of making those
Speaker:folders. You know what I mean, yeah, I. Have that same one that you
Speaker:have. Yes. Yeah, that's just so easy. I think you
Speaker:actually helped me on the forum with that
Speaker:because I was trying to use your, you have your
Speaker:utilities that'll create a pro tool session, which I ultimately
Speaker:never used, but I downloaded that and then I posted like, hey, how do I
Speaker:make this folder structure here, here, here? And then I
Speaker:think you jumped in because you're always on those forums helping. People
Speaker:out, which, oh yeah, yeah. And that's something that I want to tell everybody.
Speaker:If you're struggling with this kind of stuff, just get on the forum.
Speaker:Well, specifically with sound flow. And I'm super
Speaker:down to hell. That's something that I've been doing. I started doing it so that
Speaker:I could practice more of the scripting. And then eventually, you
Speaker:know, like, I do have a lot of answers that take,
Speaker:it takes time for other people to find. So I'll just, you know, I'm more
Speaker:than willing to just help you because, you know, I've
Speaker:been through that whole process. It can be frustrating.
Speaker:And I just think, you know, if, if I could just, you know, show
Speaker:you how to do, then you can, you know, sometimes if I see
Speaker:users actually, you know, trying is in a good path. I won't give away the
Speaker:whole answer. I will just point you in the right direction so that you have
Speaker:the tools to do whatever you want. That's, sometimes I can give you the whole
Speaker:script, but you don't know how to modify it. Oh yeah. You're kind of
Speaker:stuck there. Yeah, yeah. But I do, you know, I love helping
Speaker:people in the forum. The, the forum and the store, I think make,
Speaker:they really bring so much added value to soundflow because you can just scroll
Speaker:through and it's like, oh, I want to make a script for
Speaker:this. For example, I was thinking, I wonder if I can build something that'll replace
Speaker:my Uad plugins with UADX plugins.
Speaker:And then you go to the store and somebody's got one up there already and
Speaker:we, it's called a store, but it's like 95% free
Speaker:applications. There's a small group of people that create paid applications
Speaker:that obviously have taken a long time to build, but yeah,
Speaker:it's invaluable. Do you have any, like,
Speaker:what's the craziest thing you've done? Maybe not even
Speaker:related, like one of the hardest automations or pieces you've put together. It
Speaker:could be anything. Yeah, it's definitely gonna be
Speaker:protos related, but yeah, that was the, the craziest one
Speaker:was the, the whole set of
Speaker:deliverables script that I made for my
Speaker:composing work. And it's just, I already touched
Speaker:on it with the whole bouncing and doing the stems
Speaker:and that whole chunk. It did take a long time
Speaker:to make, but then after that, there's an extra
Speaker:step. Once everything is bounced
Speaker:and ready, it's already where the files are, where they're supposed to
Speaker:go. It handles the session
Speaker:and kind of finishes everything off for me. And what I mean with
Speaker:that is that it will go, it will save the session,
Speaker:then it will create a save as of it, because I do provide for the
Speaker:composing stuff. I do provide like a simple session of
Speaker:everything. So I would need to clean that up. There's
Speaker:stuff that nobody needs to see. Like I have a whole monitor
Speaker:aux that I listen through that. It has my TC
Speaker:electronic, the clarion laptop
Speaker:meter. Yep. Has the sonarworks sound id,
Speaker:you know, stuff that if you put that on another computer, just not going
Speaker:to work or it's going to sound horrible. So I need to clean that up
Speaker:so it creates a save ass. It goes through. I usually
Speaker:delete all the comments. Comments for me are more
Speaker:technical. Like if you're like the mic that you use or whatever,
Speaker:once for this, for the, for my purposes,
Speaker:you don't need comments. So I go, it deletes all the
Speaker:comments. It deletes any other extra tracks that
Speaker:were there just for.
Speaker:Well, that's another workflow that I use. I have an archive folder at the
Speaker:very top of my session, and there I chug
Speaker:anything that I already committed and that
Speaker:I don't really need for. You know, like I. Especially for virtual
Speaker:instruments, you know, like one of the workflows, you know, it's just you do the
Speaker:part, you commit it, and then you have it as audio. So then
Speaker:I chug it into this archive folder and I have it there in case I
Speaker:want to redo a part, whatever. Whenever I'm just done with the
Speaker:song, I don't need any of that. So it makes sure to delete
Speaker:that archive folder and anything that's in there that's
Speaker:good. And then once the session is clean, it will go
Speaker:through the IO, it'll hit default because you don't want all those
Speaker:buzzes that go nowhere. Basically, the session is
Speaker:super good for anybody to open. And, you know, like, I am a little
Speaker:bit OCD with that kind of stuff. If people are going
Speaker:to receive my session, it's going to be super clean and ready to
Speaker:go. Everything's organized.
Speaker:So that script handles that they'll go and then it
Speaker:will do the final step. And this is the one that's, you know, it was
Speaker:tricky at first. Now it's simple, but it'll do a safe copy in.
Speaker:And the reason I do that is so that it flushes any audio files
Speaker:that are no longer existent in the session. Right. Because, you
Speaker:know, like, as you, as you're working, you might trim a file, it'll still be
Speaker:there, or you might even not get rid of the whole thing altogether. But the
Speaker:audio files folder still contains that audio. Yeah.
Speaker:I like to have the session, just have the stuff that it needs, you know,
Speaker:to play. And if you set up the safe copy in
Speaker:window in a certain way, you can have that. It will just make sure that
Speaker:all the files are in the session, are the ones going into
Speaker:that other thing. And then once that session is
Speaker:created, it goes through the folder hierarchy that
Speaker:I have, just like you, it might have a whole system going
Speaker:on, and there's pretty much set for another script
Speaker:that I have. That is, whenever I'm done and I want to deliver, actually deliver
Speaker:to the client, I select all the sessions and it will grab
Speaker:just the pieces out of that. I don't want them to have the whole hierarchy,
Speaker:just several parts, you know, like this, you know, the important stem, the stems,
Speaker:the mixes, the, the pro two session, not the
Speaker:proto session that I worked in, because that's just a mess. It has all the
Speaker:creative stuff. Yeah, but that one, I remember
Speaker:it was when I was starting out, and it took me a long
Speaker:time, months to perfect that. Yeah,
Speaker:that's, I'm trying to. So that would basically,
Speaker:you'd have to have a really tight naming system for it to know if you
Speaker:select like ten song folders. Yeah. You'd have to be
Speaker:very consistent for it to identify what it needs. Right. But
Speaker:since I created the sessions and everything is handled by scripts, it
Speaker:will always be perfect. That's true. The only thing
Speaker:it needs for me is the name of the server. Yeah, whatever. That's
Speaker:the one thing that I have to provide everything else gets is, you
Speaker:know, already preset by the scripts
Speaker:and it just never messes up.
Speaker:That's, that's amazing. I'm definitely, I'm definitely emailing you in a
Speaker:few weeks and asking you to build something for me.
Speaker:So let's, we've talked about a bunch of automation. There's probably like
Speaker:people that have completely fallen asleep. Let's talk about making
Speaker:music and composing. Oh, yeah. Okay,
Speaker:so I know you left New York, you came to
Speaker:Nashville, you kind of transitioned into
Speaker:doing a lot more composition, and it seems like that worked out for you
Speaker:pretty quickly. And I think a lot of people
Speaker:really try to kick that door down for a long time. How did it
Speaker:work out for you that you started landing spots, you know,
Speaker:fairly fast, and you have any tips for people on how to get in
Speaker:the door? Yeah, I mean, I guess I got lucky.
Speaker:You know, the whole composing thing came about, you know, through
Speaker:the pandemic. You know, I
Speaker:I was doing records before, and I still do now. Things are back to
Speaker:normal by the time we're shooting this, but, uh,
Speaker:yeah, whenever the whole Covid thing happened, you know,
Speaker:I had a studio, and just people couldn't come through. It just
Speaker:wasn't happening. So I needed to
Speaker:find a lot of opportunities. And it just so happened that
Speaker:the company that I currently work with,
Speaker:Halloween music, they were looking for somebody like me
Speaker:initially as an engineer, basically to
Speaker:handle the library side, but
Speaker:also, as things develops, like, hey, well, do you need
Speaker:tracks like this? I can give you tracks like this. So it
Speaker:kind of just worked out like that. And from
Speaker:my point of view of making records, you know, I'm the kind of guy
Speaker:that the guy, you know, like, I am the band,
Speaker:and the artist is usually just a vocalist, so I am used
Speaker:to making tracks from. From scratch.
Speaker:That is not, you know, something. I didn't really need
Speaker:to adjust anything with my workflow with that. It was more about
Speaker:the getting used to the intention of the
Speaker:tracks. Like, it's more about the spot. And one
Speaker:thing that I learned pretty quickly, once you start landing
Speaker:these, you see your work in real
Speaker:life, it's just like, they push your music way down.
Speaker:It's like, man, I'm used to having it loud and proud. It's like, in
Speaker:the background, you barely hear stuff. Like, okay,
Speaker:more about the groove, making sure that it fits
Speaker:the. Whatever it is.
Speaker:Having a lot of space for the Vo. That's
Speaker:true. What's important.
Speaker:So I got used to that. And just dealing with the clients,
Speaker:making sure that they get what they want, that was the adjustment
Speaker:and just working through it, working to picture
Speaker:that was something that I didn't do before, but
Speaker:that came pretty natural to me. I mean, I just
Speaker:made it sound in a way that looks good, too.
Speaker:Just making sure, you know, I. You know,
Speaker:it got. Sometimes, you know, I try to hit every cut, even though with a
Speaker:beat, but that sometimes doesn't happen, and that's okay. That's something
Speaker:that I had to learn as well. Can we talk about that? Process for a
Speaker:second. Hitting. Hitting all the cuts with a beat. I worked with a guy years
Speaker:ago, and. And we would always, like. We'd throw picture up, and
Speaker:he would just kind of, like, strum a guitar. Not even, like, really musically. And
Speaker:we would just try some tempos, and he would really pay attention to, like, where
Speaker:things were hitting before him. And his writing partner would even, like, go open
Speaker:logic in the other room and start writing. What's your process for
Speaker:trying to, like, especially in ads? Like, you gotta, like, land your sting
Speaker:in the right spot at the end. Are you, like, working backwards? Are you just
Speaker:trying different tempos? Is it moving? Like, how do you kind of
Speaker:hit those spots? Well, it changes every time. I'll tell
Speaker:you the one from the last one that I landed. So basically, they
Speaker:provide a script, and there's some key
Speaker:points that need to happen. And at this point, you know, there's no muse. They
Speaker:just. They just sent a. Some references,
Speaker:but not. There's no. Nothing to look at. It's just some.
Speaker:There's some scribbles, you know, like, it was very
Speaker:bare. So what I do. I do have.
Speaker:It's gonna be. In this case, it was 30 seconds. So I laid down
Speaker:on pro tools. I opened up the session, and I put some
Speaker:markers where I think, you know, it could land. I kind
Speaker:of, like, spread them evenly apart. And then there was. I know there
Speaker:was supposed to be a pause, and then at the end, it needs to come
Speaker:in. So then I laid it down like that. It's like,
Speaker:okay. And I just start looking at the
Speaker:tempo and kind of, like, moving it up and down until I can get, like,
Speaker:a few. Like, I try to do, like, 16 bars, something like that. That
Speaker:makes sense musically. And I'll start there because I know if I get 16
Speaker:bars, that that is something that I can work with. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker:And then I grab the guitar or the piano, and I just
Speaker:start strumming something. And then I just look
Speaker:as the timeline goes on, it's like, okay, here I can put
Speaker:that sync point that they want here, here, and then here.
Speaker:And then depending on the. On the last one that I did, I just did
Speaker:it like that. And everything landed correctly. And, you know, like, the
Speaker:tempos in the thing with things like that, like 30 seconds or
Speaker:60 seconds, is that if you put it on 120 or, you
Speaker:know, something like that and multiple, that it will be perfectly. Because that's, you
Speaker:know, it's. By the second. Yep. So if you get it close to
Speaker:that, you will be guaranteed to land
Speaker:before the 32nd mark or 60 or whatever
Speaker:numeral is. Yeah, so I did that. And
Speaker:it just, you know, it just happens. And then, you know,
Speaker:once we see the whole picture, you know, there'll be adjustments
Speaker:to that, but then it doesn't really matter. Like, they're, you know, they've, they've
Speaker:already, in this case, they've already edited to your track that's
Speaker:already then, and then you just want, you know, several adjustments to that.
Speaker:Yeah, but in other cases, it involves temple
Speaker:mapping, and that can get a little, a
Speaker:little crazy. But once it's set up, you get, you know, it's, it's there and
Speaker:it's just kind of magical whenever it
Speaker:lands on with the, with the picture, even though the temples are going left and
Speaker:right, like, it's going crazy. Yeah. With the picture, it looks,
Speaker:sounds completely fine. It really does.
Speaker:It. The eye, whenever there's a visual, you
Speaker:just, you get, I don't want to say tricked, but it's just,
Speaker:I don't know, a lot of things pass by that wouldn't
Speaker:pass by if you were just listening to music. Yes. You know?
Speaker:Yeah. So that, that's kind of how I handle that. And, you know,
Speaker:it's, it's, it's fun, man.
Speaker:Like, it's just one of those things like I didn't do before is like, okay,
Speaker:this, this actually can work, you know, with variable
Speaker:tempos. You know, that's whenever you're tracking a band live, and
Speaker:that's pretty much the extent of that, or at least was for
Speaker:me. Yeah, yeah. I know a few people that'll like, you
Speaker:know, bump a section up a BPM or something,
Speaker:but, yeah, you don't really see a lot of
Speaker:deliberate tempo changes. Right. In
Speaker:music. Just so you, you obviously work in pro tools for
Speaker:everything. A lot of composers, or I guess I should say
Speaker:heavy midi users have hated pro tools for
Speaker:so long. I think they've solved all those problems. But did
Speaker:you ever, were you ever frustrated with the way pro tools works in these composition
Speaker:settings? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, man. It's been an ongoing, you
Speaker:know, with pro tools, it's been a love hate relationship for the
Speaker:majority of it. And, you know, I've tried
Speaker:logic. I've tried Ableton live. Those are the
Speaker:two dogs that I know the best after pro
Speaker:tools. Yeah. But there's just something about pro tools. I mean, it is the dog
Speaker:that I know the best. There's something that I've learned. It's just
Speaker:the best tool for the job is the one that you know, the best. It's
Speaker:just, you know, I know where everything is. And pro tools, I know how to
Speaker:do, you know, like, even like, the more intricate things. You know,
Speaker:one of the things that we love about pro tools is that gives you many
Speaker:options to do all kinds of different things, like something very
Speaker:simple, like multi mono stuff. Like, I. I do so much multi
Speaker:model stuff, and you don't know that you miss it whenever it's just not
Speaker:there, you know? Like, what is multi mono enabled
Speaker:in life? Nothing, you know, that does not exist. So it's like, yeah,
Speaker:but I. All my compressors are multi mono. That's just the way
Speaker:that I like it. And when it's not
Speaker:there, it's just like, man. But, yeah,
Speaker:I'll just say that, you know, pro tools has changed a lot
Speaker:since then, and it's just, you know, in
Speaker:my frustration,
Speaker:I've tried to, you know, like, instead of, like, jumping ship and
Speaker:just going in, getting Cubase or something like that.
Speaker:Right now, as of right now, cubase and logic are the top
Speaker:dawes for scoring or for writing.
Speaker:Yeah, and portals, I would say, is the third.
Speaker:But instead of jumping ship, it's like, man, how can I get involved
Speaker:with these guys and kind of, like, let them know my
Speaker:frustrations and things that can be done better,
Speaker:you know? I got lucky that for whatever reason, they
Speaker:chose Nashville, Abbott did to do what
Speaker:they called a ACA chapter. ACA
Speaker:is the avid Customer
Speaker:association, and they meet up and they do these
Speaker:events, and they get together with the
Speaker:users, just talk shop
Speaker:and get to know the people that make the software. And
Speaker:they came to Nashville in
Speaker:February of this year, in 2023.
Speaker:And, yeah, I went to the event and met all these guys, and they're cool
Speaker:people just trying to make the best offer that they
Speaker:can. And
Speaker:a lot of changes have happened since last year, since
Speaker:2022. A lot of things are moving in there
Speaker:in the positive, very positive direction, and
Speaker:just talking with them, I got really excited and, you know,
Speaker:and as you can see, in 2023,
Speaker:there's a lot of things coming that are. They're even
Speaker:backtracking on things, you know, like the pricing. They finally brought
Speaker:perpetual licenses back, which is, you know, something that people wanted it, you know.
Speaker:Yeah. That is sign. A sign that times
Speaker:are definitely changing. Yeah. But in terms
Speaker:of the software itself. Yeah.
Speaker:And now. Now that I have it set up with sound
Speaker:flow, there really isn't any better option. It's
Speaker:just impossible. I don't know about you, but I abuse track
Speaker:presets that is one thing. Track process is
Speaker:huge, workflow. Huge, huge. Other daws
Speaker:have a version of that. But this one, you know, you can
Speaker:import, because what a track preset is, it is a whole
Speaker:session, and you can just drag things from it. Even
Speaker:tempo markers, you know, like, if you delete,
Speaker:you know, the extension of
Speaker:track preset is PTXP or
Speaker:PTXT, I think it is. If you delete the last letter, it's just a
Speaker:normal, normal procession, and it will open
Speaker:like a normal session. Can you add a p to a normal session?
Speaker:I think so. I've never tried it that way, but, yes, I would make
Speaker:sense. I think it would make it work, but that's
Speaker:what it is. And you can. You have access to whatever you have in that
Speaker:session. Obviously, most people use it just to get the tracks that they
Speaker:saved. So I have it
Speaker:set up. Or my template is kind of like. I
Speaker:use several different
Speaker:philosophies here, but the one that I've been using the most
Speaker:is having kind of like a basic template with all the things that I
Speaker:need. You know, like, I have, like, what I call my master
Speaker:chain, you know, like my. My submaster, my.
Speaker:My regular subgroups, like the guitars, the
Speaker:drums, things that are always in. 90% of the things
Speaker:that I do, you're all laid down there. And instead of having,
Speaker:like, hundreds of tracks of different
Speaker:instruments and stuff, I just have here my iPad,
Speaker:all my favorite track presets for the instruments that
Speaker:I like. And when I need them, I just press the button and it
Speaker:will load that for me. And you kind
Speaker:of populate the session with the things that you need. And
Speaker:it happens so quickly because you just. It's just one.
Speaker:One iPad push away. Yeah. And
Speaker:the thing with that is that my iPad started to get full,
Speaker:so I made another script that is
Speaker:shows up a search, kind of
Speaker:like what you would see in spotlight. And then you can start typing
Speaker:and find whatever track preset that you want, is basically searching through all
Speaker:your track presets, and you can select what
Speaker:you want. Even, you know, I, like, I got into the practice of saving track
Speaker:presets after every project. Just stuff that worked, you
Speaker:know, things that I'll probably not use for a while, but
Speaker:just this worked. It made it all the way to the end.
Speaker:This is. This is something that I might want to use later on instead of
Speaker:rebuilding it. Yeah. From scratch or from memory or
Speaker:trying to find the session. I just have it there. I just put, you know,
Speaker:the name of it. I put the. In parentheses, the name of the project you
Speaker:know, something that might help me remember where it came from.
Speaker:And once you're working on something
Speaker:else years later, it's like, man, I kind of remember that.
Speaker:Let me see how that sounds to you. You pop it in, it's like, man,
Speaker:it's already kind of mixed. Yeah. Like, it really
Speaker:helps with the, with the workflow. And I just don't. I mean, that,
Speaker:to me, was a game changer, and I just don't think I can find something
Speaker:similar to that. And that's just one of the things.
Speaker:But that one is, you know, very important to me.
Speaker:Yeah. In terms of the way that I work now. Well, yeah. Okay. There's two
Speaker:things you touched on. One, I wanted to talk about templates, but we'll come back
Speaker:to that. But track presets, that it sounds like you're
Speaker:doing kind of a more advanced version of what I'm doing with the track presets,
Speaker:because I have my, I switch my whole mix template to basically
Speaker:run off of the track preset. So I pull all my, my bus
Speaker:bussing and routing structure in and then put the audio files
Speaker:at the top of the session. And then I've got my stream deck set
Speaker:up with instrument groups like drums, bass, guitar, whatever. So
Speaker:I'll click, you know, say there's three kicks in this pop track. I'll select those
Speaker:three kicks. I'll go over, press kick, and that'll load a
Speaker:track preset that'll move it into the kickoffs, color
Speaker:code it, give it the groups, give it any plugins,
Speaker:whether they're active or inactive, that I like to use. And then
Speaker:it'll. Then it'll jump back up to the top of the session. I can select
Speaker:the snares and press snares. Boom. We go through,
Speaker:cycle through the whole session, and mix perhaps, like, 1015 minutes.
Speaker:Yeah, man, that's awesome. I love it. It's great. But, uh, so I
Speaker:want. Okay, I wanted to ask you about templates because I feel like
Speaker:the more, like, I cruise around the Internet and, like, participate in TikTok and
Speaker:stuff, templates are getting this, like, bad rap that
Speaker:people are just, like, want to sell you their vocal chain, and it's gonna mix
Speaker:your record, and. And then it's making other people react, like,
Speaker:don't use templates. I start from scratch every time, and I'm like, you guys all
Speaker:have templates. Wrong. Templates are like, free
Speaker:creativity and let you work quick. It's not to do the
Speaker:work for you. It's to help you do the work. But I don't know
Speaker:what. So you kind of touched on your philosophy. How much
Speaker:processing is active in your templates
Speaker:versus ready to go, I guess, is the
Speaker:question. Well, I like to have it pretty much ready to go. Yeah. The
Speaker:thing is, and the reason why it's
Speaker:controversial is, I think it's. If you decide
Speaker:to just keep it as it is and it's not gelling with
Speaker:the track that you're working with, you know, like, that is where it's a problem.
Speaker:But if I put on something, you know, like a chain that I
Speaker:did a while ago I listen to, it's like, this is. Doesn't sound right. I
Speaker:mean, it's there, but. And then I start tweaking it, and then I start changing
Speaker:into whatever I want it to sound at the moment.
Speaker:But that is way easier than trying to rebuild it
Speaker:from. From scratch. And there's some chains, man, that
Speaker:I've gone crazy, um, you know, with drums and
Speaker:stuff. You know, we're always in the quest of
Speaker:not using samples and whatnot. Oh, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah. So you will see, if you go through one of my sessions, you will
Speaker:see the attempts at doing some crazy
Speaker:thing that at the end of the day, you know, just put a sample, you
Speaker:would have saved so much time. It was pretty much the same,
Speaker:but there's some good stuff that I, you know, I would spend, like, an hour
Speaker:just, you know, playing around, and I can just
Speaker:go through my thought process, like, man, actually, that sounded pretty cool. Let me
Speaker:just grab, like, half of it, and then, you know, take it from
Speaker:there. Yeah. So that's where track
Speaker:presets and templates come in handy. Like, it gives you a snapshot of
Speaker:where you were mentally at that point. It's just
Speaker:you have to make a deliberate effort, you know, to
Speaker:change things and make it fit to whatever you're working.
Speaker:True. I just can't, you know, like,
Speaker:the stuff that I do now. Time is of the essence. I cannot start
Speaker:from scratch. There's just no money for any of that, you know,
Speaker:luxury to spend a week tweaking one track.
Speaker:It just needs to happen immediately. Yeah. And
Speaker:that is where it comes in handy. You're more efficient. Things are laid out, you
Speaker:know, in a particular way, and you just have to make an
Speaker:effort to change it up if it needs to, or just, you know, there are
Speaker:times in which you would do something from scratch. One of the things that I
Speaker:do for records, I do like to make
Speaker:one or two sounds that are specific for that track,
Speaker:that are signature to that track, and that's where I spend my
Speaker:time, you know, making sure that something that's gonna be on the spotlight,
Speaker:you know, I'm gonna make sure that that has a signature sound, but then
Speaker:everything else, you know, I have many
Speaker:gray guitar sounds, mini grades, drum sounds. You know, it's
Speaker:just. I can mix and match them, you know? Yeah, that's my thing
Speaker:that I've done throughout the years. So that's what I think about
Speaker:that. I agree. I think the people, when they're
Speaker:newer in their journey, they don't know that they're supposed to change the
Speaker:preset. And I think I'm actually going to make a pitch to
Speaker:all audio engineers and companies out there.
Speaker:I feel like if you're going to load presets into
Speaker:your plugins, which obviously you are, they should have
Speaker:an input game marked, right? Especially if you're getting into, like,
Speaker:guitar stuff and you're going to record, like, you're. You probably
Speaker:plug your guitar in, your mic preset, you load your presets. It's. It's
Speaker:expecting that gain all. It's all the game staging is done. Yeah,
Speaker:exactly. If somebody filled the meter up and loaded your guitar
Speaker:temp, your guitar sone, it's going to be crazy distorted,
Speaker:and they're going to be like, this is horrible. And you're like, no, that's not
Speaker:how it was supposed to be used. So there you go.
Speaker:Nerd in me. But before we go, I wanted to
Speaker:ask. Your main instrument is guitar? Yeah, that was the
Speaker:first instrument that I learned. Yeah. Do you. Are you die hard
Speaker:amp or are you software? Are you like
Speaker:Kemper software at this point? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker:yeah, most of my career, I used guitar Rick out of all things.
Speaker:And again, is the tool that you know, that
Speaker:is the tool that I know. I can get the sound out of it. It
Speaker:is cpu friendly, which is one of the battles.
Speaker:And you can recall it. Yeah. Those are the things that are
Speaker:important to me. At the end of the day,
Speaker:if it's a little better, you know, if I mic up
Speaker:on amp or whatever, that's cool. But that is
Speaker:just in the world that I live in now. That is not something to
Speaker:worry about. It really is more about the part,
Speaker:you know, the. The musical aspect of it. I mean, the tones are cool. They're
Speaker:gonna be cool regardless if it's just 5% better. It's just that
Speaker:that doesn't matter, you know, in the world that I'm in right now.
Speaker:Yeah. As so much is dictated by the fingers and the
Speaker:instrument, like, if you've got a great guitar and you're
Speaker:a great player. Like, I don't know. I think people that don't play guitar, I
Speaker:play guitar. They, they don't understand how much tone is in,
Speaker:like, a person's fingers. You know, I've got buddies where
Speaker:they'll, they'll play their guitar and you're like, oh, wow, that sounds amazing. My guitar
Speaker:doesn't sound like that. And then they'll grab your guitar and start playing and you're
Speaker:like, oh, okay, fuck. I understand. The problem's me. It's not
Speaker:him, it's me. Awesome, man. Dude, this has been
Speaker:a lot of fun. I would, I would nerd for another hour,
Speaker:but I know you've got stuff to do. I've got to get back to a
Speaker:mix, but I've got two questions. I think you know what they are. So the
Speaker:first one that I hit everybody with is, was there a time in
Speaker:your career that you chose to redefine what success meant to you?
Speaker:Absolutely, man. And that was early on, I thought I was going to
Speaker:be a touring musician with a famous band, you
Speaker:know, like a successful band. You know, I wanted to be, you know,
Speaker:I'm from, you know, my scene was the early, mid two
Speaker:thousands, you know, my chemical romans, you know, like, take him back
Speaker:Sunday. I want to be, I wanted to be in a band like that,
Speaker:and I wanted to be in a band like that by the age of 24,
Speaker:which kind of make things complicated
Speaker:so quickly, you know? You know, as time was going on, you know, I
Speaker:was making, you know, progress towards that. But
Speaker:then, you know, I was approaching 24 and I saw that, you know, I was
Speaker:still pushing what, it still wasn't happening. And, you know, my
Speaker:career, you know, I had to do many different things, but
Speaker:basically there comes a time in which you need to, you know, secure yourself
Speaker:financially. And I was making money at the
Speaker:studio recording other bands and not so much playing with the band.
Speaker:The band was making no money. So
Speaker:there. There I am at 25, 24 years old. It's like,
Speaker:wait. Like, I am pretty happy here at the studio. This is
Speaker:cool. Like, I get to record whatever I want. I'm not
Speaker:touring. And then in hindsight, you know, like, touring
Speaker:is not really. That wouldn't have been the lie for me. For me, that
Speaker:was something, you know, as a fantasy as a kid growing up, like, oh, man,
Speaker:that's what I wanted to do. But that, that was not the lie for
Speaker:me. So right there, I had to redefine success as, you
Speaker:know, just living, you know, I was happy to be
Speaker:employed in the music business and doing music every day.
Speaker:That, to me, is what matters.
Speaker:Yep. I love it. I love it. It's funny, the
Speaker:long, you know, if you do this long enough, you. You kind of.
Speaker:You take for granted that you make your living in the music industry,
Speaker:and then you think about how many people would kill
Speaker:to make their living in the music industry in any part of it,
Speaker:you know? But, like, when you're wrapped up in it, you just forget
Speaker:sometimes and, you know, yeah, it's. It's pretty
Speaker:awesome to do what you love, even if it's not music. If you love painting
Speaker:and you make a living at painting, that's awesome, too. So many people don't
Speaker:get to chase their passion and, you know, pay their bills that way, but.
Speaker:So last question. What is your current biggest goal
Speaker:that you can share with us, and what's the next smallest step you're going to
Speaker:take to go towards it? Well, man, this is a very
Speaker:general one. A lot of people share it, but
Speaker:it's. It's my goal, you know, just financial security, you know, financial
Speaker:freedom, just the thing, you know, like, you know, in
Speaker:this business, you have to make a lot of sacrifices with your time
Speaker:and, you know, like, you understand this, you have a family. You know, my family
Speaker:has to sacrifice a lot, you know, so one of my biggest
Speaker:goals is just to attain that so I can have more
Speaker:time with my family and enjoy that part of life. You know, that's one of
Speaker:the things that that is, has a lot of
Speaker:value for me. And I guess the
Speaker:next step, you know, is. That's a
Speaker:difficult question because I'm always, you know, every, every move that I
Speaker:make is towards that.
Speaker:But I guess, you know, one of the things that I want to do for
Speaker:next year is start to get more with the social media and stuff. Like, I
Speaker:am somebody. I think you found out when you went to my instagram. I barely
Speaker:post anything. I do post, you know, whenever there's a new
Speaker:version of pro Tools or another Mac coming out. Yeah,
Speaker:but I found out that, you know, in
Speaker:this day and age, you have to be present in social media
Speaker:to kind of like, you know, get people to know you. If
Speaker:people don't know you, they don't. They don't know if you exist, you
Speaker:know, you lose an opportunity. So, yeah, that is something that I look
Speaker:forward to next year, just, you know, getting more
Speaker:active with social media. And I
Speaker:guess one of the things that I'll be making content
Speaker:around is obviously what we've been talking about
Speaker:this today, soundflow and pro tools specifically,
Speaker:I'm in the soundflow store. I have a package
Speaker:that is free and it has a few of the
Speaker:commands that I like. But I've been helping out in the forum
Speaker:for the last four years. I have a ton of
Speaker:scripts that are just lay there just like doing
Speaker:nothing. I'm just going to start cleaning them up and putting
Speaker:them in there. And, you know, every time I. Every time I
Speaker:post one, I'll do a little piece of content around that and
Speaker:I think that'll be fun for people to find and get familiar with the
Speaker:things that I like. Yeah. And I think that, you know, just another
Speaker:step into developing a
Speaker:multifaceted career. I guess you kind of have
Speaker:to now. And the Internet has become like. It's become how
Speaker:people build trust with each other. Especially post pandemic where a lot of people
Speaker:decided that they could leave music hubs. Like, I don't have to be in
Speaker:Nashville anymore. I don't have to be in LA or whatever. And they go
Speaker:somewhere cheaper to live. And they still have maintained connections and
Speaker:they. People still trust that they make music. Cause they could see they
Speaker:get to know this person on the Internet. Social media is
Speaker:definitely an interesting double edged sword, but it's so
Speaker:necessary. You know what I mean? Yes. Yeah,
Speaker:absolutely. I'll be watching those videos because I need
Speaker:to. There's so many things I need to code that I
Speaker:will be. I'll be looking for more tricks. But dude, this has
Speaker:been. This has been great. Please tell people where they can find you,
Speaker:where they can find anything you've done for
Speaker:soundflow or whatever. Just your little spot to share, whatever you
Speaker:want. Well, I'll keep it super simple. Currently,
Speaker:my one thing that I have is my Instagram.
Speaker:That is the best place to find me. Whenever I have something to
Speaker:announce or anything, that's where I post it. So please
Speaker:find me as Raphael sepulveda on Instagram.
Speaker:And if you're into soundflow or want to check it out,
Speaker:go sample.org and you can find my
Speaker:package on the store. Just type my name and you'll find it right away. Rafael
Speaker:sepulveda utilities and that is
Speaker:it. Awesome. Amazing. Dude. This was a good
Speaker:hang. One of these days I'm gonna make it to Nashville. You coming to namm
Speaker:this year? Hell yeah, man.
Speaker:I'll be there. Absolutely. Awesome.
Speaker:It.
