Ep.5 Alexonweed | LevelsFM Music Production Podcast - YouTube
[Music] [Music] what is your name and or your alias my name is alex professionally known as alexonweed love it um [Music] and you are currently in vancouver but you are sort of between vancouver and toronto is that correct vancouver toronto yeah i've just been hopping around i spent the last like uh
a few weeks in edmonton actually and um yeah going to la next month that's so awesome just kind of being a nomad right now hopping around if i didn't know you and i met you in an elevator and i asked what you did what would you say what do you do music producer recording engineer basically the easiest way to sum it up yeah are you ready for the lightning round let's do it what's the best song of all time the best song of all time oh man um it's a lightning round buddy it's gotta be it's gotta be up uh radiohead's hail to the thief anything off that album really i love it why ah it's just a masterpiece to me in my
mind sonically and artistically i just think it's pretty much a flawless album that's awesome who has the best voice of all time who has the best voice of all time or one of the best boys of all time i mean maybe like i don't know in terms of like probably one of those old cats like edda james or something but maybe like i don't know now if we're talking now i'd say maybe able the weekends love it uh what's your favorite musical group or band of all time a favorite band of all time is radiohead okay for sure um i don't know i just think they've consistently put out incredible albums
and um i don't know it's so it's such sad music but it's like it's so nice and calming to listen to and they're so like experimental but also still like mainstream right i just think their their whole like discography has just been so legendary to me it is it really is um you were gonna say something else were you gonna add another group in there i mean there's so many but i'll just stick with that that's a great answer uh who would be your dream collaboration um [Music] like to work with for myself um i mean i'd love to work with drake um but i'd also love to work with more women in the industry make the stallion or like flow millie or
um you know nicki minaj someone like that i think lovely kind of a dream uh laptop or recording studio laptop in the recording studio that's the best answer so far i never i didn't see that coming that's amazing but i've seen lots of pictures on you of you on instagram doing exactly that yeah using the board as a laptop stand right yeah it looks great it's amazing a lot of people might be mad at that but i don't think so i think a lot of people might be glad at that too um what's your favorite audio effect my favorite audio effect um i've been really loving delays lately i recently got the valhalla delay and i've just been experiment i think it's just like the best delay ever it's kind of been incorporating it in
all my newer stuff and um yeah i'm stoked about that one so what makes it better than all of the other delays um it just has it has more knobs you can tweak it sounds amazing even running through the presets are amazing you usually just have to tweak a little bit but um yeah i don't know it's just got it's just got more to it than than most delays do more you can be more creative with it you know what i mean right yeah it's awesome uh what's your favorite aside from that one what's your favorite vst like for like vst instrument or like plug-in just first let's go with vst instrument um i love the spectra sonic stuff obviously omnisphere and keyscape um i really love one called diva and repro oh yeah diva
from i think uh you you he or something yeah yeah so good those are my mains and the arteria stuff is amazing awesome yeah which song sounds great uh which song sounds great um of all time like ever like any song yeah oh man obviously like what do i reference um that's a good way of putting it i still reference like dr dre's the chronic to be honest with you some of those old hip-hop albums just bang yeah yeah yeah i promise that's great great answer i agree okay that's the end of the lightning round how do you like the lightning round that was fun kept me on my toes that's the point of the lightning round
um so where are you originally from uh i was born in nanaimo on vancouver island uh i grew up in edmonton and uh i've just just been hopping around toronto and vancouver kind of between those lived in l.a for a while um it's kind of all over the place but originally i'm from here vancouver that's so cool yeah can you tell us about an early musical memory from when you were a kid um yeah i used to my dad i grew up with my dad was a guitar player and um but he'd always just be playing and i had to i wanted to play drums so bad when i was growing up obviously no parent wants to hear their kid like play drums so it took him a couple years and a lot of saving for me but i finally bought a drum kit when i was maybe like
15 16 and um yeah i would just jam with my dad to start out and then eventually started bands and stuff with my friends and it's kind of how it got started so that's really cool yeah um how how do you think that has influenced your productions or has it like being a drummer has got to influence your whole approach to everything right definitely i mean i started out playing jazz and stuff and learning how to read music and i played all through high school band and all that stuff um but honestly like i had to kind of unlearn a lot of the technical aspect of it and kind of simplify my process yeah um but um it's definitely still useful to have like it's yeah hmm yeah
i get it you know what i find you know what this is just my theory is the more you understand the more you move towards understanding music and understanding complicated music the harder it is to write songs yeah you just start overthinking stuff and like yeah being like oh i should be doing this or that or something and it's like no it really doesn't need to be like that at all like right i'm the best produced the best producers i know have no musical background whatsoever and they just go off like they're feeling or just their ears you know and that kind of like always makes the best music so i always just try and kind of forget everything that i like learned growing up just to you know break it down for myself but yeah i think that's the best way because i'm i'm not saying don't learn anything
about music theory or anything but it's only a tool right like exactly and it provides these rules that aren't maybe necessary um do you do you remember the very first time you heard your voice recorded and then played back like messing around with a tape recorder yeah yeah i remember yeah what was that like uh it was yeah it was i was in this band in high school with like it was just me and one other guy and he was like keyboard and we both did vocals and i had like a drum kit and a sampler and we were and we were just like doing like weird experimental hip-hop stuff and i would record my vocals what were we recording in this like little mixing unit i can't even remember what it was um yeah i don't know i thought i sounded pretty good back then but now i can't stand the sound of my own voice
it's so weird yeah like am i really that nasally like everybody's super daisy yeah what was that band called can you tell us or you want to keep that to yourself ah you're experimental ben i'd be hard-pressed to remember did you guys ever play any live gigs uh yeah we played a couple shows around edmonton but nothing too serious cool after that that's when i decided i don't like working with people and i'd rather just make beats by myself interesting that's a that's a big part of the process so okay so i i totally get that because it's way more efficient it's obviously the vision is from one person you don't have to convince somebody else about the vision exactly nowadays when you produce other people um is it a collaborative experience with them or do they sort of let you do your
thing and then they add their thing does it go back and forth or how does that work uh it really depends on the artist like um when i work with like the 88 glam guys like those are like my brothers you know like my best friends and stuff so when we're working together we'll make the beat together write the lyrics together write the melodies together we just kind of do it all together you know so to me that is like the funnest way of doing it it's like you kind of have a hand in every step of the process so that's like that's the most exciting to me right yeah and in that scenario you find that people don't need to prove themselves like people aren't like oh i better get something on this track right we're just we're just having so much fun like bouncing ideas off each other and whatever making melodies and like yeah it's it's just a collaborative like really fun like time you know that's so
cool man that's awesome um if we go back in time again do you remember the first album that you bought with your own money or that at least you you sought out yourself i think it was like actually you know what i i didn't buy it but i used my uncle had like a cd burner so i used to give him like a list of songs and he would burn me cds and it was like it was a lot of like fat joe and ashanti and like just like r b and from that era you know janet jackson and all that that's the stuff i liked so he'd always just burn me cds i'd give him a list of songs and so yeah that's awesome um aside from drums do you play any other instruments no not well like i could i know like um
like i can i know like uh scales and stuff on piano and like i can find my way around pianos for sure but um not really you know yeah that's a good way of putting it i i like uh i like finding my way around a piano it's i like not knowing what i'm doing on a piano i really like the layout it's just fun to play around on you know exactly you can like yeah it's just such a creative like thing you can just like yeah it's fun i wish i knew how to play bass i think i want to learn how to play bass but it's only four strings how hard can be right how hard can it be exactly one note at a time that's right you had no chords so easy exactly yeah um what so what about some uh oh what's your favorite instrument by the way like not one you play but just the sound of um probably like saxophone cool
yeah i love saxophones and trumpets too do you put those into your productions these days all the time yeah awesome yeah if you think about some of your early influences on you musically uh what were they i'm sure you've mentioned some already but what were they and have they stayed the same or have they changed um i feel like it's always changing but um my early influence were like my first influences was definitely like j dilla and nujabes and um i love nujabes started sampling jazz and stuff and really digging for these like old samplable and just trying to emulate what he did even though i didn't have the heart the same hardware
i would make it on this little like this little like dj unit that was about this big and i started making beats in the dj software and um i don't know that's like the first beat i made i was so stoked on i was like this is fire like so i was like yeah listening to a lot of just like that stuff a lot of the 90s golden era like producers and stuff good stuff yeah have you heard that beat recently no i wonder if it is i wonder if it is fire i don't it's probably not fire at all i think it is i think it probably is like i'm pretty surprised when i go back and listen to stuff that i think i'm going to be really embarrassed about i'm i am a little bit but i'm more i'm more surprised how alright it is really yeah i have like i have like a cd book of all my old stuff i just i don't even have a
cd player anymore i'm like you should you should buy one and then listen to it because i it's funny because like i went back and heard some old stuff and i was like oh i'm gonna start doing that again like i was like yeah right that's actually a good idea yeah grabbing tips off myself because some of the early stuff you were doing you know you were right on the money but then you you changed over the years right exactly yeah that's actually so true it's it's it was it was quite interesting for me to see how okay it was but but i noticed the vocals and the kick and the snare were all just too quiet which is like well that's that's that's everything you know that's always the issue it's always always an issue um tell us about your first live performance what was that like was that with that experimental bent uh yeah it would have been that just like in front of like family and friends probably okay um
do it well i mean you think so like your family and friends are always gonna support you you know right always gonna clap no matter how bad you it up um but i think my real first live performance was like probably playing in toronto like um with a guy who went by drew howard at the time so we were just like playing our own music in like small venues and stuff and just make it as hype as possible to be like 25 people there you're so nervous you're so nervous but it's the most nervous ever right yeah i guess but i still have like i don't know if i'd call them nightmares but uh i guess nightmares where i'm on stage with my band from the 90s and they just go one two three and i'm like i didn't practice any of this
and we're just live on stage and i gotta play and i have no idea what we're doing like i make it work make it work dude make it work but that's what i did when i was in the band i was like playing bass i was like i don't really play bass but i'm in a band and i'm a bass player um that's so weird and then after a few shows there's just no looking back from that um what's the best live show you've seen personally it just blew you away um the roger wad i saw roger waters of what like probably 15 years ago that show was just mental he had like the massive inflatable pig flying around the stadium and like it was crazy but my favorite show i ever saw was uh um was the weekend because i got to sit right in the center behind the mixing
board so i really got to like see it front on for what it was and it was just like mind-blowing like the way that guy performs is just incredible it was a really that was probably the most inspiring thing to see you know how important and connected is the live performance of the artists you work with and the production like oh it's super important super important for me it's like i don't know this definitely doesn't apply for everyone but for me when i'm even making the beat or whatever i'm always thinking of how will this go over live like that's always like my first train of thought before i even start it and like what would sound good in a live scenario you know because for us just want the shows to go as smoothly as possible you don't want to lose energy really at any point unless it's purposeful and you just want to make sure the songs
are in a place the whole way through that is gonna be captivating to the audience you know so is that uh instrumentation wise you're gonna you're gonna pare down the instrumentation when you're writing the track yeah instrumentation-wise structure-wise like just vibe in general whether it's dark or happy or whatever you know so it all plays a part frequency-wise do you sort of figure out the tuning of the kick or that you do you have certain kick drums or certain frequencies you go to or do you just do it by whatever feels right or how do you approach that i definitely have go-to sounds for sure um switch it up but i definitely have go-to kicks and stuff um yeah i have like maybe like five kicks that i rotate through on every single beat uh they just slap harder than anything
else so that's cool yeah do you do a lot of layering of drum sounds no i don't layer it all ever layering i always like uh i just i'm a minimalist when it comes to production so i think like just finding that one sound that just sonically fits whatever you're doing is like that's what's important to me you know i find layering just can just like sometimes create phase issues or whatever but like i just like sound selection is my biggest thing i think you know like i'll run through sounds for hours just like trying to find the right one so do you have a folder a go-to alex on weed folder where you know there's gonna be like 20 or 30 or 10 decent kick drums in there yeah i have a massive a huge folder full of samples and it's all organized
um i know my go-to's and then yeah i'm very like ocd about that so like i keep all my drum samples very organized and i know exactly where i'm going and what i'm doing when i'm looking for something so just makes the process a lot quicker you know how do you organize it color coding naming do you have a bunch like five stars in front of the first letter i'll just have like my favorite sounds and then 808's kick snare hats whatever and then all my favorite sounds in those folders you know so i can just if i need to if i make a beat quickly i'll just go to those folders always and i know i'll know it sounds good every time what's the first thing you usually lay down in a track is it the kick drum pattern uh melody i usually make melodies first almost always but lately in the past like two
months i've been making drums first and it's been really interesting it's been fun because you kind of get a bounce going before you have a melody and then i don't know it's kind of a i've kind of been liking it better lately to be honest but i tr i try to switch it up a little bit with every track i make just to like keep the inspiration going i find if you're doing the same thing every time it just gets redundant and you you just might get a creative block or something so to avoid that just try and change it up you know right yeah what creates a bounce tempo uh temp tempo is a big part of it tempo and the bounce really is in your like is in your hi-hat patterns i find for the most part if you can find like a cool hi-hat pattern like i'll always start with claps or snares and then hi-hats also
and then um yeah that's that's really how you can how you can find a sick bounce i love it is that something you learned from dilla uh it's not actually i just learned that from just studying other producers and how they're doing it mostly toronto guys and um yeah they seem to all kind of do it that way so i was like it just found better rather than starting with 808s and stuff with 808s i usually like to just have a simple consistent pattern because that's your low end you don't really want to with that too much um so i really try and get as bouncy as possible with the hi-hats and percussion and that kind of stuff you know that's great do you mix your own stuff or do you hand it off to somebody else uh i mix it to a point and then if it's getting placed then it'll always get mixed later so i don't really i don't mix it like i just mix it to the point where it sounds good you know right and the artist can listen back and be like oh this sounds
amazing right i wouldn't say i'm not professionally mixing it you know like yeah so are you mostly writing tracks and then either you or somebody else is playing them for artists and artists or deciding if they're gonna use this track is that how it rolls that's part of it yeah like like i said some of the artists i work with were all in the same room all doing it together even producing together but sometimes i just send beats off too like the people i'm working with in la i'm just sending them instrumentals mostly they'll kind of tell me the vibe that they want and i'll try and emulate that as good as i can um it's just not as fun that way you know i like being in the studio with the artist that's like my best work always comes out that way so right like the back and forth where there's it's it's exchanging hands via communication exactly because
i like having a say in like vocal melodies and all that kind of thing too lyrics like i'm good at all that stuff too you know so um it's just more fun you just build off the energy that that you create in the room and oftentimes you're just like partying or just having a good time together and like that always creates the best music it definitely does yeah definitely does classic futch man quote is all the best songs are the ones you write in five minutes to make the squad laugh right always um it's always when you're just joking around that's when the that's when the heat comes and then the artist never wants to record those ones they're like that was just a joke it's like you know that's the hit yeah that's the hit that's the least in it yeah exactly the next question comes from tamara adelman what has been your biggest career high and your biggest career challenge so far
um my biggest career high was definitely when i moved to toronto and we formed a group called 88 glam we were all like super broke on welfare like just struggling to like eat like anything you know couldn't afford clothing or any of that and like we're just making this album in our kitchen and then it got picked up and just kind of exploded and went from like having nothing to like doing really well just kind of overnight and that was like that was definitely the most exciting time it's always that first like success you know what i mean and i'd say the biggest challenge is trying to maintain that trying to always like one-up yourself and and keep the fans happy and like um just make sure you're you're
progressing but still sticking to to what people were got into you in the first place for you know what i mean yeah totally yeah i i think both of those things are probably true for a lot of artists like i remember with my band we started doing exactly what you're saying we just sort of did stuff that we liked and then people just loved it you know as soon as we stopped trying to do something and we just did something that we liked people really connected with that and then the second part is like you said it's like you don't want to you don't want to just keep putting out the same thing for the rest of your life you have to like switch it up yeah you've got to progress you got to progress that's that's difficult yeah it is um what are you probably best known for
like what do other people recognize you for the most famous thing you've done um i don't really know to be honest i'm so like oblivious on social media and stuff and like all that i'm just kind of in my own world all the times but um i don't know i kind of brought um toronto had this like really dark sound and i think one of my goals was to like lighten it up a little bit and start using some like major melodies and like you know just kind of lighten the mood a little bit so that's right i had these you had these like artists known for like being on like the darker side of things to like getting on bouncier like happier beads and i think that's kind of was my contribution to to the city and the sound and the evolution of it
and just like i think that kind of sparked a wave of creativity in other toronto artists that were like oh we can like go outside the box we don't have to stick to this like mold that the whole world has kind of boxed us into and so i think that's kind of what people recognize me for is just kind of changing that a little bit you know stirring that pot that's really cool so not only as an artist do you have to sort of escape your pigeonholed sound but you were at the time living in a city that was known for having that sound so you almost like the seattle sound in the 90s right everybody sort of expected to put out the same type of music which is cool because the world's noticing um but also yeah that's that's really interesting yeah that's a great answer yeah i love that um
what is what are you like what's a track that you are really proud of being a part of in some way either producer or any other way um my favorite song i ever made was this song called 12 off our first project that was the song that kind of it's the song that got us signed like to exo and um it just kind of had like such a unique energy to it and that's the song that really like kind of blew us up and and put us on the map um everyone was like oh this is like the best song out of the city in years kind of thing and like people just really really loved it and it was it was very simple but very tastefully done and um yeah i was just so proud of that one i still am it's still my favorite song i've ever made that's so cool yeah
so getting signed you mentioned getting signed getting signed is such a you know goal for a lot of artists and it's this this thing you try to reach and it's it's completely out of reach until it isn't so can you tell us about the process of getting signed what what did that feel like did you celebrate was that when the work just started like take us back to those days uh yeah it was like it was kind of it was pretty surreal because um i don't know if you know about exo at all but they they don't really sign anyone like they have like five artists on their roster wow it's like one of the hardest labels to like get the attention of in the world probably so like to get approached by them and like actually signed by them we were like whoa like what the like how is this really happening you know
but um you just all of a sudden are in a whole different world than what you're used to around people that you never thought you'd be around just kind of changes overnight you know there's obviously bad that comes with it too but i didn't see so much of that i stayed independent throughout the whole time um i was getting a lot of offers from different record labels and stuff but i always wanted to stay independent keep all my percentages and everything so i kind of but just like seeing because i was so affiliated with that and them like i definitely reaped the benefits too but um yeah it was a blessing it was definitely a blessing did the signing part take a long time or was it quick from when they showed interest to when it was sort of official uh it was about a four-month ordeal i would say from pretty quick it's pretty quick november 2017.
and signed around february 2018 maybe march so it was pretty quick what about the time between when you signed and when the first release or track came out was that a long time because a lot of times it takes forever for things to come out we released the album independently and we got signed but it was okay so basically we were under management by the label so we had a management contract with them but not a record deal so we dropped our first project technically independently and then we got signed four months later and then we signed over the rights to that album so then they really re-released the album but like an extended version with uh like four or five bonus songs right so that was kind of how that process played out that's cool that's pretty quick all in all yeah it was fast it was fast
um [Music] what's your favorite part when you're producing a track or writing a track starting or finishing holy man you don't even finish about 99 of the songs you make but um basically the way we work is like you might make 10 songs in a night and just lay down hooks you know and then like from there you just kind of pick maybe the one or two best ones and then you finish it from there so that first the initial like writing session is always the funnest because you're just like banging out song after song after song and um that's just when like you're most creative and the energy is the highest and just running through ideas really quickly and it's just it's exciting it's fun what do you do with those tracks that you don't use do you just bail on them
completely or do they go into like a folder like that you might work on again uh most of them just get completely scrapped um but once in a while we'll go back and revisit something and be like oh this was actually really good you know work on it i keep everything i never like throw anything away yeah thousands and thousands of songs in my drives but um yeah most of them will never see the light of day not with that attitude they won't let's let's let's put out uh let's put it like uh let's put them online let's put them in a g drive and let's let the lights through at the last vapes the alex on weed lost tapes i bet people could come up with some cool stuff with that right probably i'm sure what about like sample and loot packs there's you probably have like 50 sample and loot packs sitting there waiting to be released in those folders yeah yeah definitely for sure
i should actually go back to that and see what i have because there might be some heat in there i'm sure there is i guarantee there is yeah yeah i bet there's got to be a couple of legendary tracks in there i just don't go back to my old stuff so much i like that's good i always like creating new stuff you know and coming up with new ideas but i should spend a day or two just revisiting old stuff well perspective changes everything right like you know like when you're writing stuff and you're like oh this is junk and then and then you hear it like an hour later even sometimes you're like wow this is amazing you just gotta you gotta get out of your own uh head sometimes exactly exactly um so let's get into the portion of the program called the fast track assignment which is where you're going to tell us something that you're pretty great at and then give us a little
sort of uh uh process where we the listeners can practice doing that thing so that we can be like you um i think um okay it's gonna be a couple things um i love it if you're basically i'll start with like a melody when i'm making a beat my i think my strength is just like i'm in so many different areas of the creation of the process that like i just say creating as a whole is like my strength you know from start to finish so like if you're creating a melody uh just make it as unique as possible and stay away from it sounding like it's car commercial music and just make it like i always try and just make it as unique as possible using new sounds new instruments and then add drums over top and then often just make the beat in a few minutes and then
you should in the same session i'll have like my vocal chain and everything all my sends already set up and then you just start recording and then with that you can kind of like change the beat around to their vocals because it's all in the same session you know what i'm saying so like they'll just record some i already have all my like my sick chain set up and everything so it already sounds amazing you know right and then base and then basically from there you just do a little bit of editing this and that and then um yeah before you know it you have like an already nice sounding almost complete song after like maybe an hour or two you know that's great so i think that's kind of just having it all prepared already in the session i have like numerous different templates depending on like what kind of vibe i'm going for
some will have like different reverb effects or different delay effects and then others will have like i'll open the session already have like the vsts and stuff that i like ready to go already have the drum sound set up that i like so it just like speeds the process up and you're always catering to the artist right so if the artist is ready to record you just you have to be ready because they might have a great idea that you just have to be ready to record like from the jump you know you don't want to miss that magical moment when they're first getting excited about it and so you just have to be really just prepared i guess is the it's the biggest thing what's your daw of choice oh man uh for making beats fl studio and then i i do all my recording in ableton lately so do you bring do you sort of uh bring the stems in from fl or do you bounce it all down to
a stereo and bring it into live bounce just bounce a mp3 throw it in sometimes but often that's only been my process recently usually i'm making the beat in ableton and recording the vocals in ableton right but uh lately i've been getting into fl i really like the way it sounds so interesting doing that i might start recording in fl studio soon we'll see what do you mean you like the way it sounds how does it sound uh it's loud it's super loud it's just like you don't i don't know it's i find there's just something magical about fl studio like you don't have to mix as much like you just can kind of like throw on a soft clipper or limiter and just kind of mix into it right and your beat will sound like just smackingly loud and like cool that's usually what artists want nowadays is just like super loud and just slaps so
they're kind of getting more into that you know that's correct yeah um [Music] what are you currently obsessed with um currently obsessed with i'm currently obsessed with i don't know i'm obsessed with so many things i'm upset i'm currently obsessed with making bass lines i guess that's a good one i love adding real bass to songs i think it adds so much and then often you'll have the 808 come in later or something but especially for like rmb and stuff it's just i use trillion which is another another spectra sonics it just has like incredible bass sounds and lately i've just been obsessed with making really intricate
bass lines and stuff so yeah i love it yeah i get obsessed with a lot of stuff too i think it's good like what so now right now i'm obsessed with audiobooks architecture and how architecture and music are connected and then that led to how everything's connected to music and how music's one of the most important things in the world and then that that quote by nikola tesla everybody's going to get sick of me saying this but that quote by nikola tesla if you want to understand the mysteries of the universe think in terms of energy frequency and vibration that quote is just always around me and it's telling me to do something i don't know what it is yet i kind of know what it is um i kind of been doing it for my whole life but um but i just love seeing how all that stuff connects together so you take
something like architecture and music which you think wouldn't be connected and they're completely connected they're they're very absolutely absolutely connected so i think that's my is that's my obsession is finding patterns and everything um that's so cool that's so interesting yeah it's all just physics at the end of the day right i think so yeah physics is physics is is the answer to life i think that you might be onto something i saw this uh this sort of like five-hour conspiracy documentary and it was all about how arches are actually like energy capacitors and cathedrals are actually old energy capacitors from thousands of years ago i don't know if it's true or not but it made a lot of sense to me you ever like you know you look at an old church that's like 200 years old and you're like how were they building stuff like that 200 years ago 500 years ago a thousand years ago
and we're using drywall like what what happened what happened here something got switcherood right this is the freemasons you'll never know you'll never know this video has been flagged for content from it's been taken off youtube uh due to its graphic i don't know um okay moving off uh moving off of the conspiracy stuff although we can do that on another podcast if you want okay let's do it i love it um oh i one thing i want to before i uh continue on with my line of questioning i want to i want to go back to something you were talking about can you tell us a little bit about the content of your vocal chain are you able to reveal some of the components of that for us yeah okay cool um it's a lot of it's it's a lot of eq it's about three pro cues um wow i don't
i don't use any hardware actually i learned that from you anything you can do outside the box you can do inside the box which man fletch man um it's a lot of eqs i'll cut i'll do uh a um i'll do a low cut at about minus eight decibels from about five to seven k down so i'm basically cutting out everything low and then i kind of add the lows back in just so they're more controlled um i've been using um what's that thing called there's this new there's this multiband that's that's it's my new sauce it's um it's called like the mc2000 or something it's hold on let me pull this up really quick it's so good um but yeah that i really love the eosis
de-esser um and uh hold on one second here what do you love about that de-esser in particular uh it adds a nice high end i find it like it pulls out all the frequencies you don't want and it adds like a really cool like kind of high end that i like um yeah the uh mcdsp the yeah this is what it is the mc i think 404 okay yeah the mc404 from mcdsp that's that's my secret sauce right now shout out to mcdsp and then i'll have um three c6s usually three to five c6s all cutting like very small frequency bands so like i'll usually have a cut around like 12
to 13k usually have a cut around in the in the harsh five to seven that everyone hates and then i'll usually have a cut around one to two one to four k anywhere around there and you just obviously use your ears but yeah i'm all about using very narrow because a lot of the time with multi-band compression you you lose the power in the vocal but if you do it with very narrow q width then it it you can still get lose the harsh frequencies without losing the power in the vocal so just kind of been focusing on that that's a heavy chain and i assume you just record raw and then all of this processing is done later right no it's all on there you track through it i'll track through all of it i love it that's great god has to sound like a finished record while they're recording you know that's amazing that's that's genius um so any
latency problems never know if if if you usually you get like maybe a couple milliseconds but if an artist is super picky about that then i'll just go to uh the universal audio stuff because it's has basically no latency at all so right right okay so for for the listeners that don't really understand this process and just to just to be clear you're bringing your signals in through like an input channel doing all this processing on it and then taking the output of that channel and and bringing it into a new track on which you record this processed audio is that correct basically i'll have like in ableton you can create groups and so i'll have my entire vocal chain at the on the group and then you just have your tracks underneath that and you record it and anything being recorded is going through that vocal chain
so um and then from there you can have all your sends you add your reverb delays or whatever and then it's just super odd easy to like automate those you can do like reverb throws or whatever you know what i mean right but i keep i'll just like by the time i'm mixing just making very minor adjustments to the chain because it already sounds so good it's already very dialed in you know right do you sort of like do minor adjustments like per vocalist and but it but your sort of de facto setting sort of work for everybody exactly and the reason i and that's the reason i i switched over to using multiband like i stopped doing eq cuts and stuff because nowadays like a vocalist might change their cadence every bar so it's like are you really gonna go in and eq each bar separately like no so with like multi-band you can it just kind of rides the vocal for you and you don't really have to do too much or worry too much about that so that's
why i started doing it that way rather than my old way which was like making a million different little cuts and finding all the bad frequencies is like you don't have to do all that you know right have you ever tried any of those smarty cues like gulf foss or soothe i i used to i'll use soothing mixing just because soothe is a lot of latency you can't really record with it right sometimes if i find there's like harsh mids and stuff that i can't control so easily i'll go to soothe but again soothe you have to use very carefully um because of the bandwidth yeah it just again it can take like a lot of the sauce out of the vocal too so you gotta use it you know sparingly but um golfos is sick i love golf floss it's my favorite plugin of all time that goes on the master me too yeah it's amazing 27 up 27 down
there you go it's it's an incredible plug-in for sure it really is i love it yeah absolutely yeah uh shout out sound theory yeah um what do you still want to learn uh i want to learn how to how to play piano better i want to learn how to mix better and those are my two main focuses right now it's just learning piano and just getting my mixes to a point where i'm just a lot more confident in them i guess what would make what would make sorry go ahead just make them so like um yeah just i've like i already have i'm already like decent at mixing um but it's always i'm trying to take it to another level i think like creatively especially and just using creating kind of effects and stuff that people haven't heard before or maybe no
one else is doing that's always kind of what i'm what i'm trying to do is figure out the next thing you know awesome originality excitement yeah all that good stuff in your opinion what makes a great song um honestly the rule there's really no rules nowadays like you can have like a one minute song that's so incredible because it has replay value and you might just play that song 10 times over before you go to the next one um i think what just makes a good song is really i think taste for me it's just being tasteful doesn't matter like what it is as long as it's tasteful and like not cheesy i guess um that's definitely it like it basically encapsulates a vibe or a feeling or something and does it
well you know that's really cool i love that um [Music] so i talked about some non-musical influences architecture what are some non-musical influences that influence your productions and your music like where do you find inspiration from aside from other music uh funnily enough also architecture i used to study it as a kid like obviously loved frank lloyd wrights and the oscar neidermeyer's and frank gary's and like i've always loved architecture but i think lately is traveling for me i just love traveling that inspires me more than anything i think just being in different cities meeting different people working with different people um yeah i just i just love traveling man
that's great yeah what what would be uh a destination like what's your dream destination that you've never been to but you've always wanted to go um well i almost bought a ticket to bali the other day it just looks so beautiful there i haven't i haven't actually been to asia yet so i wanted to explore asia a little bit um vietnam probably so i'm thinking i'm planning a trip for a few months from now just gonna go out there maybe even by myself just bring my laptop make music and just go travel around a little bit that would be fire just have to wrap a few projects first but um yeah i really want to see that part of the world and i love the state so much like i'll probably settle down there but for now just have the travel bug especially after kova just want to get out there and yeah right yeah so that's awesome yeah
um okay what advice do you have for up and coming music producers and artists um the best advice i can give you is just you know be fearless with it like if you kind of do really gotta fake it till you make it like when i started i didn't have any idea what i was doing i didn't know how to mix or make beats i just threw myself into it and you just make it work as you go and the way you learn the most is being in those situations where you're under a lot of pressure and you just need to make it happen no matter what so i think that is the best thing for me is just be fearless with it don't be like don't let your fears hold you back you know if you want to work with someone message them if they invite you to the studio be there early and you know even if you don't have beats for them just make one on the spot and you know
just get in there and do it that's great yeah a little little bit of fear is good right a little bit never goes away so you might as well get used to it that's awesome yeah um so i was mentioning i'm i'm kind of a audio book obsessive lately mostly because i i can't really read because my my brain just reads like the first line of a book and then i just start writing my own movie in my head you know if you're like that or if you can if you can read a book for more than five minutes but have you read any books or listened to any audio books lately that are inspiring oh man um i used to read a lot as a teenager but i honestly haven't read in a long time um i really liked just like fiction though i don't know just like interesting fiction novels um i don't i've never listened to an audio
book in my life um yeah i used to love to read i really should start doing that again there you go what have you what have you been listening to though what kind of like dude like so some of it is like sort of uh business stuff and some of it's more like buddhism vedic wisdom the kabalya and like sort of super inspiring stuff that way spiritual stuff i guess um but the one i'm i'm uh listening to right now is the presentation techniques of steve jobs and it's way more fascinating than that than that sounds like it would be like you know what that sounds very interesting when he went out and did those keynote addresses for apple right like the legendary ones where he like released the iphone or whatever all the stuff that went into those presentations and how he presents products it's all
methodical and it's all plain calculated very calculated but but it also comes across like a performer or like you're presenting a song it doesn't come across as calculated it comes across as exciting like i i think um i think he said something like uh uh apple is releasing three new products today and he showed the iphone it's just like oh cool you know just letting people connect the dots and wrap their heads around that and and giving people a battle cry for you know it's just a it's just a phone it's just a damn phone right but you presented to them that it's this cultural event and just it's super fascinating that's so interesting yeah yeah some some things i i think i'm not going to be inspired by and then i end up getting completely sidetracked going down some rabbit hole of inspiration yeah um
what's one thing that the listeners should learn to master if they want to get in music production that the listeners should master like what do you mean like one skill or one piece of software or one like studio component like eq what's one thing they should become a master of just your your daw thousand percent always like that'll take you so far in like whether it's like you know making beats or like recording someone i think just knowing that software inside out and how to use it efficiently and quickly as possible is like will take you so far you'll never be out of a job if you know that like you'll always have work to do people will always like want to hire you because you're quick and efficient with it and know what you're doing and if you can make it sound really good while they're recording and they can
leave the studio with a finished product that sounds like it could be on the radio already it's like that's the biggest thing nowadays people don't really make demos anymore you know it's like you go in the studio you finish it and often you're mixing on the fly and by the time they leave they have a complete song and that they can listen to in their car on the way home and it sounds professional you know that's amazing that's that's definitely the biggest thing that's for sure that's awesome advice i think it's kind of like that in any industry too especially like my friends who are into design and stuff and and if you know like those design programs and how to work with them super quickly and like know those inside and out those are the people who go the farthest you know right even if you can get it eighty percent of the way just so they can see what the vision looks like is is good enough right yeah that's great that is huge
um all right let's wrap it up with uh your call to action so why don't you tell us about some of the stuff that you're working on now if you're allowed to if you can reveal that stuff um and basically where the listeners can find out more about you uh well i just have my website up alex onweed.com and it has all my productions releasing a new project with ada glam in the next few months working on we're just wrapping up derrick wise's solo album right now which i'm very excited about and uh i'm also just finished a project with matt mills actually cool um which is sounding very very unique i'm actually really excited about that one too that's awesome a few other ones with some artists i can't name but you'll see those in the future too love it yeah
uh shout out matt mills shout out my mills um anything else you'd like to add anything you'd like to say to the listeners i mean i keep saying the listeners but right now there are no listeners but hopefully there will be in the future shout out future listeners um yeah i mean as i said before if you're looking to get into it just you know don't be afraid to put yourself out there move to that city that you think is like will benefit your career just you know just be fearless with it and and go all in you know because that's the people who go all in are the ones who really take it the farthest so i think that's always that's always a good way to do it that's awesome yeah so much inspiring stuff thank you so much for doing this you are awesome thank you future man i appreciate it man no worries yeah everybody
that's alex on weed [Music]
