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My Pac Man Fever Buddy & Partner for 40 Plus Years – Musician, Composer, Voice Actor – Jerry Buckner
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Good morning. Good morning. Hey, it’s Mike Stewart with Mike Stewart live. So glad to be here. Hopefully you’re getting in your seats right now. And boy Have I got a fun, exciting show today that I believe you’re going to have a lot of fun with. And you’re going to maybe learn a few things about audio and video marketing. That’s the whole purpose of this show is to talk about audio and video marketing. And I’m having a lot of my good friends and colleagues that make money from audio and video marketing, their marketing their audio services and, and techniques. And so you’ll learn some things. But you know, I always hang behind me. You can see right back there, Pac Man fever and my gold record. I’m really, really proud of having been a part of that project from over 40 years ago. And I was involved with that project with two Dear Dear friends Jerry Butler and Gary Garcia of Pac Man fever. And the day I got that gold record, made the newspaper 40 years later. You can see there, there is the picture that was in the paper back in May of 2020. The day I got that gold record that was the gold record party that I attended there you can see a 25 year old Mike Stewart. And there’s our friend Edgel 
gross, but there’s Jerry in the middle. And then of course there’s Gary who we love Gary, but we lost him a few years ago, but but Jerry’s still kicking around and having fun with us. And of course Jerry and I get to do, I’ve got to do a lot of things together over the years. We’ve been to Pac Man, conventions. There we were in Florida together at a Pac Man video games event. And then of course, you know, some of the projects that we did together as we worked on Wreckit Wreckit. Ralph, back in 2012. In fact, I highly recommend you go check out the Netflix show high score Jerry and Pac Man fever are in that Netflix show. And then of course, one of the other things that Jerry and I worked on together was we did the W current QRP in Cincinnati record together so we have a huge music connection over the years. And of course one of our crazy claims to fame is we were involved for many, many years Jerry Jerry, Jerry and and Gary effect was involved. But Jerry and me and my partner in my studio, Danny Jones, we did Waffle House records and back fat back last thing was fall of 2019. Before the pandemic, we got one of the few people in the world to receive Waffle House tuning awards. So let me play you some of mine and juries work that goddess award you you’ll enjoy this little clip here.
Joining me now are three of the pioneers of Waffle House records. Mike Stewart, Danny Jones and Jerry Buckner.
We’re so glad to be here.
We’re happy to have you guys now. Jerry, you had to hit Pac Man fever. So you’re no stranger to having a hit. Talk about the early days of Waffle House records, Waffle House
records decided to form a record label and they called me and asked me if I would like to be a part of them to help them do it. And I said yes. So we started on that project. And 25 some records later. Here we are.
We have an award for you for the Waffle House. Most played songs, I would like to present to you a toonie 2019
Go ahead.
I’ll take I’ll take that for you because we’re gonna make them work a little bit. You guys like to hear a little bit of racing. You guys get to sing along and get everybody started. Okay. Raisin,
raisin, raisin toast.
So there’s a little bit of mine and Jerry’s history to give a little flavor and there’s a whole lot more to come but ladies and gentlemen I want to bring to the virtual stage. My good friend, longtime friend, Mr. Pac Man fever. Jerry Buckner.
Seeing that video I just brings me to tears Mike. Yeah, Pac Man fever What? So, you know, millions of records around the world and on American Bandstand all these big shows, you know, and and, and then we do raisin toast and get awards for that, you know, and we’re in the Waffle House video. So, I’m kidding. I love Waffle House had been great. But essentially, I mean, the truth is, Mike, and why would I lie? people, people seem to be sometimes more impressed with the Waffle House stuff that you and I did, than anything else. I mean, we’ve, we’ve done so many projects together, I mean, some we’ve been on a bunch of different labels, as you can see, in the back there, a lot of hits and everything, but it’s the Waffle House has been great for what it was and enjoyed it. And, and we’ve done a lot of stuff together with that.
What, you know, Jerry, in my audio and video marketing world, you’d be surprised how many people will see these videos, like on YouTube, Facebook, and in social media, whatnot, or even when I was doing websites where I would be selling a training or something. And, and and I’m true, I mean, when I showed that newspaper picture that the day I was standing there with you and Gary, you know, that was the gold record party. And you know, you guys, you know, I got that gold record for working on that album. And I that has been a proud possession of mine for years. And you’d be surprised how many I’ve made more money by people saying Do you really have a gold record? And and I say yes, yes. And there’s the man, you’re you’re seeing him you’re hearing him right now that they had a very, very successful album in the 80s. The Pac Man fever album, and you guys saw to it that, that I had a gold record. And I’ve hung it proudly on my wall. And I found out from an internet marketing strategy that when you hang credibility awards, in your videos online, it creates a credibility. I mean, I’ve made money was like, well, I’ll do business with you because you have a gold record. And it’s like, you know, it has nothing to do with my business. But it gives you a certain amount of credibility. And so I’m very grateful that it’s real. It’s not something I bought on eBay and hung it up and it has nothing to do with me. I was there the night you guys recording those things? I remember you sitting in the studio fact last week, I had Rodney Mills as my guest. And you know, one of the things that was really interesting back back in those days, you know, you recorded Pac Man fever and that whole album, were Sweet Home Alabama was recorded where moonlight feels right was recorded by Bruce Blackman. Where I love the nightlife was recorded. We’re all the Atlanta rhythm section. I mean, that was a very it was, as you said on Dick Clark. It was a very electric electric time and Atlanta.
Thanks for bringing that that up. Yeah, we were pretty nervous that day. Yeah. And in 38 special was recording their album. At the same time, the the album, which went you know, sold a zillion copies, had all those big hits on it. They were recording at night, we were recording in the daytime. And it was quite an interesting thing, a lot of hits, and come out of that studio, including classics for hits, you know, the songs, he’s always big hit records and all that. So yeah, it was really neat working in Studio One.
Well, here’s, here’s one of the questions is that you know, you have this amazing music history. And if you want to know more about Jerry’s music, there’s the web address. It’s really easy. If you can remember Jerry Buckner, calm fact we were working on your site just the other day, you’re getting that really ready to let people know that you’re still making music. I mean, you don’t say I stopped making music, you know, it’s just part of our lives. And, and I do the same thing. I mean, I don’t want to stop making music, I don’t want to, I don’t want to stop being around music. But you know, as life went on, and, you know, the hit made you a good chunk of money. And then the way you maintain that money is you got to keep having hits. So, so that’s why we got into waffle house because that was you know, good money. It was corporate music because what we were doing and, and and of course, one of the things that you and I have been staying in touch with for 20 years now is using your talent and letting people know that you’re available. through the internet. And so let’s talk about microphones. Like for instance, I love the microphone, talk about the microphone you’re using to record yourself now. Well, this
is a Shure SM 78 that I have here. And it’s an incredible microphone. I love this. I’ve tried different microphones over the years, and they’ve all been been good broadcast quality. But this one is just just remarkable. I love this. It’s for my voice, it works really well. It gives a nice tone, I have a little bit of a deeper voice. And it has a nice tone. And of course, I do a lot of voiceover, which we may talk about later. But it’s a great microphone, and for the price is wonderful. So I recommend if you’re doing any kind of work this you can do master recordings with it. I think Rodney Mills, who is one of the top engineers ever said this, you and I were talking about that, what a great microphone, but I highly recommend it if you don’t want to spend a lot of money. You know, there’s always the I have one of these, I should have brought it out, you know, one of the
Yeti?
Yeah, the Yeti. It’s a pretty good mic. It works pretty good. And it’s, it’s, I think about 100 bucks, I don’t know, right? Right, good mic to start with him, especially if you’re starting out doing voice work and so forth. But if you can afford it, this is the mic.
And that’s the Shure SM seven one or something 7878. Yeah, sure, SM Seven, eight, you just Google it, we usually buy our equipment, I buy my equipment at Sweetwater or Guitar Center, those are great places to buy. That’s right. And, and of course, one of the things that you mastered, you know, back when we were working in studios, you know, 40 years ago, we weren’t the engineers, we weren’t the guys running the tape recorders, or, or using the sound mixing boards, or hooking up the microphones, we were just you were a piano player, you were a keyboard player. And Gary was a guitar player, you were songwriters. But the technical stuff was always left up to somebody else. And what happened, when computers came along, you know, I became an audio engineer to the best of my ability, as well as Danny did, and you used to come to our studio, because we were the engineers, and you could come in with with your ideas or whatever, we could end up making a record, right. And when I got out of the studio business, it became evident to me that if you own a computer, I don’t say 80 90% of the work we were doing in our studio back in those days, you could do with a microphone and your computer, which which really brought about this, this was pre internet audio days. But now internet audio is basically communication, its content. And so, you know, you had to learn how to hook up your microphone to your computer, and record and edit and save your content as an mp3 file. So that’s one of your experiences is that you’ve got, you’ve got the IRS for what sounds good from your old recording days, all the records you made, and being around engineers. But tell us a little bit about you know, the software you started doing and, and the skill level you got before we were going to get to five or here in a minute. But talk about you know, your learning curve. I mean, here, here, you you’ve been in studios all these years, and now all of a sudden, you’re at we’re at home studios with microphones, tell me tell me that tell our folks a little bit about that audience
probably should mention my voice work because this is it all kind of comes together. I got into radio is something I always loved all my life. In fact, I wanted to get into radio to begin with back in my younger days. But I also love writing songs and that one out and I did that. But then after Pac Man, we did a lot of stuff in the music business for a long time had a lot of success. But I had a lot of radio friends to from over the years. And I love comedy I used to like like working with comedy. So I got into a friend of mine started using me on his morning show doing some comedy bits and so forth, that mushroomed into a whole whole other business for me. And I had to learn how to record myself at home. So I could submit these demos because it used to be if you wanted to, you’d have to get on an audition for if you want to do a voice then you have to get on town and audition with 100 other people and the same people would always get it and it was just it was really a pain in the butt. And they had to they had to book studio time and everything well now, the advertising people everybody loves the idea that they don’t have to do any of that. All they got to do is they see my site and they come to me I can do everything. And it’s not you know, it’s not that complicated. And and so I had to get you taught me forge how to do. That’s where I started, which is Sound Forge is basically just a stereo track for doing voice types. It’s not a multitrack system, just a regular
for boys a tape recorder. Basically,
it’s a tape recorder. Exactly. And learn how to how to use that. And I can do my own demos. So people, agencies, and people love to come to voice talents who can do this stuff themselves, because they don’t have to pay all those recording fees. And so that gives you a heads up over everybody else that’s still trying to do it the old way. And so that’s how, that’s how I got into doing studios. And then I also morphed into doing music by getting a multitrack I used mix craft, I don’t know what you recommend Mike. And I need to say to everybody, this Mike Stewart. Yeah, he’s my close, dear friend, but he knows this industry frontwards and backwards, and I’ve told him, I made more money with him than I haven’t packed my feet. He’s taught me so much stuff. He’s amazing, man, just knowledge just pours out of them so well. But it’s it’s well, you know, it’s very true. Well,
a DA W is a digital audio workstation. Basically, the ability to layer sounds, we used to call it multitrack recording, you’d have a track of a voice and a track of another voice. And that’s how you made records. But you know, most of the folks in the internet world here, they’re podcasters, where they want to be able to record and edit a show. They want to do an interview like you and I are doing right now. They want to be able to edit in sound effects. And they basically want to make a radio show. And some of them want to do voiceovers for YouTube videos and television, commercial online television commercials. So so the principles that you and I learned as kids in these big studios in Atlanta, like, like buddy buoy, and Rodney Mills, Studio One and Lowery studio, and then my own studio, you know, we learned how to make professional sounding audio, and then the internet came along. And, and basically, you know, an iPhone is almost as good as the tape recorder is better than a tape recorders we had back in the day. A computer is Is anybody can own a studio now. That doesn’t mean anybody has the ears and the talent to make good content. That’s why, you know, learning, you know, and listening and training your ears is one of the things that that’s that why you why you got work is because Jerry, you are talented, you know if it’s right, you know if it’s wrong, you know how to create a piece of audio content that is professional. And, and so therefore. Okay, so you got an audience there just to let people know what I use as a multitrack. You still use a mix craft or have you graduated to the acid program?
You know, I have that too. I have a wall. I guess I prefer the mixcraft seems to work easier for me. But but I’ve got I’ve got the so for me, I’ve got them all. And and I use them for various
purposes. Well, nobody at the bank says Did you edit that audio with with XYZ program? Because it’s all about if it works, don’t worry about it. And of course Charlie just said, the model number it’s and we put up here, it’s the SM 78. Just you know that’s a microphone that is really, really good. That’s it’s kind of becoming the podcast or voiceover. Choice microphone, and
it will, it’s hard to overdrive it. I mean you can but it’s just it’s just so, so perfect. And it will really reproduce your voice. And that’s, that’s so important. If you’re going to get in voiceover work. That’s the quality is so important. That’s one of the most that’s more important. That’s one of the top things I mean, people are not going to agencies are not going to buy your product, not going to use you if you don’t give them quality, quality sound, including the software they don’t. There’s a lot of rules going well,
you know, and one of the things that I want folks to know here is we just built this new website because because Jerry is doing some different marketing, but his specialty is Southern voices. So go to Southern voices Jerry buckner.com because one of the things I highly recommend for podcasters and people making what I call web marshals or even television or radio commercials, Jerry is a professional talent affordably priced. You can reach out to him there at Southern voices Jerry buckner.com. And you know, hire Jerry. He does an amazing job. He’s a pro all the way and he knows you know, years and years of experience and You know, even if you’re doing a podcast, you want to have a professional voiceover intro even if your voice is not that great, you know. So anyway, just putting that out there. All right, well, we get to the this. This is a good question here from Charles. He says, How does one get a musical ear?
You’re born with it. It’s pretty much. Yeah, I mean, when I was a kid, and I probably make this a very short story, when I was when I was about eight years old, my dad was trying to take piano lessons, he was on a gospel group, and had an old upright piano and he were getting he was getting these melons. Well, one day, I sat down there with my mom, she was singing a little song working in the kitchen sentimental journey, I think. And I sat down, I just started picking it out on the piano. And she said, she come in and he goes, how can you do that? I go, I thought everybody can do. So my dad came home, she said, Come in here, do that, play that for him. And that’s when they discovered that I had this ability to instill Can I mean, I can hear a song. And Mike, you know, from playing in clubs, it really helps a lot, you know, you hear these things, and we can sit down and play them. I mean, you know, work come out. And that’s just, it’s nothing I did. I mean, it just, I had it, you know, just came with the package?
Well, you know, one of the things that I do know is that if you know something is good, go back and forth between what you know is good, and what you did, and try to train yourself to discern the difference. And, and there’s just, there’s just little things that you got to learn to listen for, you want to make sure that you’re close to the microphone, when you’re doing voiceover, you want to make sure that you have some sort of, you know, Jerry’s got foam on his sm 78. That is a pop filter, I’m using a wire mesh pop filter, there’s little things that you can do, that you everybody can learn producing music. That’s a whole nother gut, you know, sometimes it’s a god given talent, sometimes it’s something that you just gotta want one, it’s so bad that you work very, very hard to get that skill. But But I think what I want to go to next is, you discovered a way to get people to buy your services, through fiber can tell a little bit of that story.
Well, I was doing voice work, of course, from working in radio, doing morning shows, and so forth. And then I started getting some people that asked me to do some commercials and everything. And I discovered very quickly that if I did a character voice, I would get more of a response. And, and it could get more work. Because they seem to like the sudden I had a southern character that I can disable and I can do and they like that. So I began to try to find ways to to get more work. And there’s there’s sites called voices.com and voices 123 dot com, and their membership sites. And you know, you pay a yearly fee for those. So I started working on those. And that that I did okay in there. And every you know, it was fine. But you did Oh, I did a lot of free. A lot of free demos on there. I mean, you spent a lot of time because you you submit them and they don’t pay you. Well, I heard about fiber. And I thought I’m not, you know, $5 for something. I mean, I don’t want to do that, you know that? Well, I went and kind of investigated it. So I thought, well, I want to try something. So I did, I went in and did an anonymous, put up an anonymous site, you know, kind of a little bit of a joke, kind of a thing with a funny picture and saying I was a regular talent, but I didn’t want anyone to know, you know, well, it caught on. And I started getting people coming to me. And what I found out is is that there’s extras on fiber that you can add to what you’re doing legitimate is not trying to pad it. License, you know, people want to use your voiceover for commercial than any to pay a licensing fee for that which they most people will do. And I found out that I could make better or as good or better money than I would on the membership sites, and not have to do all the free demos. I don’t you don’t do any free demos on Fiverr. So it’s a great place to start. If you’re brand new will then do one for five or 10 bucks if you want just to get started. Because once you build up, you start moving up the chart, you’re moving up into the system to where people can see who you are. But there’s a lot of tricks involved with Fiverr. But it’s a great place to go and yes, you can make money. I’ve made a lot of money on Fiverr. And I’m glad I discovered that.
Well that’s that’s the lesson here is that that Fiverr can be a Li it’s not about doing things for $5. That’s the thing I learned from you is that you can no matter what your skill is. You can have layers of profitability and you’re using the little five Dollar or $10. And in fact, I’ve actually seen some people on Fiverr that have nothing for $5. And I guess it’s that that’s
very common. I mean, it’s it’s kind of fibers is huge. In fact, I think there was a fiber commercial and
they ran a superbowl commercial yesterday.
Yeah. So,
so they’re doing okay, that was $5 million to run that commercial. Yeah.
Yeah, they’re doing okay. And they got a lot of different areas. But the voiceover thing works very well on there. I highly recommend them. And as I say, there’s there’s a few more tricks, but it’s a great place to start. If you want to get into doing doing voice work.
Well, I want to talk about this for a second, we got a couple more things. And my gosh, the show’s almost coming to an end here, because we’ve been on for half an hour. But you know, you’re involved with Waffle House records. In fact, one of the things here, you can search eBay, and Jerry has Waffle House records. He’s a seller there you see Jerry, Buck, any three, that’s the seller information. And you got all kinds of crazy things that you’re selling on on what happens.
Whenever Mike is I, I happened to was looking for something else on eBay one day, and I saw that somebody had a couple of his records for sale for some pretty good prices. And I thought, well, that’s pretty well, because I had a bunch, you know, when we used to do all the waffle stuff back in the day, they would give you know, I would get a box or two of records. I’m not even sure why I guess it’s producing it and get records. So I had a bunch of records hanging around here that I probably was going to throw away, you know. And when I saw that on there, I thought well, people are collecting them, they become kind of collector’s items. And people have jukeboxes, and they want to put the songs on it. So I put a few of my records up and they just, I mean right out the door. So I was able to secure a lot more of these from the warehouse that nobody, nobody cares about them. I do. And so we put them up on eBay, and it’s great people love them. And they, you know, as I say they they’re collector’s items and they put them on two boxes.
Well, I just want you to know that you need to check them out. There are a lot of fun going if you have a waffle house restaurant, in your area, you can go to the to the digital jukeboxes, all the records all the way back to 1980. The very first one we ever did, and then you and Danny did him for many, many years afterwards. So I don’t know how many songs are on there anymore. But you can check out Waffle House records. But now what we’re going to talk about, and we’re going to wind it up here with is this was the party that brought you on is Butner garcia.com. And, and I remember we were you and I and Gary were doing jingles at my house. for local rent. We I’ll never forget we had a local restaurant. Joe rigatoni was was he did Joe’s and we did all kinds of different jingles. And we would do the demos at my home studio. And then we go to a real studio to cut the final product and and that’s, you know how we were we were playing music at night and making jingles during the day. And and you guys started playing Pac Man at near that studio, I think was one the Marielle It was called
shillings on the square up in Marietta, Georgia.
And you know, these new video game arcade games were tabletop? Is that a tabletop game? Or was it an arcade
tabletop, sitting in the middle of the room plugged in at a plug in the floor? They’re sitting there. And we were wanting to get a bite to eat and between working at a local studio and saw all these people so we started playing it got hooked and spent more time in there then working in the studio. We thought maybe we should let’s do a little song because we were songwriters as you are Mike you know, always been and and we would try it. We were trying to get hit songs you know, but commercials was how we were making a living. So we thought well, let’s do the song. And maybe we’ll get a little bit of work from commercials. And that was the idea behind doing it. We never never dreamed that it would do what it would it did but that was the idea behind it.
Well, you know the the gaming community community just still loves this record. I mean, it’s amazing. The people you’ve met over the years as a result of this record. The song has been used in Family Guy The Simpsons The Goldbergs South Park, South Park
been in the Rose Bowl parade. I mean it’s been everywhere
you know, and you know one of the things I think that will be a lot of fun is that that we’re going to help Jerry get Jerry Butler dot live setup. And because I think the gaming world just loves hearing about Pac Man and and, and so that that’ll be a fun show. Hopefully you can get going, launching pretty soon. But I’ll tell you what the way we’re going to end the show is, we’re going to play you and I, and the remaining members of the studio band made a video this past May. And we found some old footage of me and you, and Gary and the original drummer, Johnny. And we actually at Chris Bowman, the guitar player from the from the album, we play the only time that I know of that there’s ever a video of us playing Pac Man fever live. That’s right, it was at Chris’s wedding. And we took that footage, and we made a video and we did a live stream on it. And we started getting some momentum. And then of course, this year has been one crazy news event after another and the world didn’t seem to have much interest in Pac Man after the craziness of last year. So we’re going to play it right now to end the show with maybe have some closing comments, see if there’s some questions. But Jerry, thank you for sharing your your stories. And I will come back if we some time and do another show in the future. Mike? Well, if nobody has any questions, Jerry I once again, this was a lot of fun, a lot of things that brought back wonderful, happy memories. I’m glad that you and I are still good friends and and you know, brother, I’d do anything to do to help you. You just ask and you know that and folks reach out, go to Jerry buckner.com check out Buckner guards. garcia.com check out, you know, the Kindle book back here behind me. That’s one of the things that I’m a firm believer in. It’s it’s maybe the music industry hasn’t really completely accepted it. But our fans that like Pac Man favor are loving it. And we’re just going to keep keep doing the things we’re doing. And the quote my good buddy, Jeff herring, he says that was cool. So sometimes you don’t have to teach something. Sometimes you can just have fun being cool. Jerry, any last words before? Here’s Vicki says thank you, Vicki. Glad you’re here. And so we had a good audience today. You know, one thing about these live streams is a lot of people see it after the fact it’s it becomes immediately posted in social media. And so you can always rewind it, watch it again, visit Jerry’s websites. Jerry, anything you want to say before we head on out of here, just thanks to all all the fans and all the folks who support us over the years and love to meet you and get you know,
Check. Check us out Jerry becker.com and kiss my my partner Jerry Garcia. And Mike Stewart, my close dear friend who’s done so much for me and just a tremendous talent. You need to check him out in all these areas because you’re gonna make money and you’re going to learn stuff. So anytime I can be on the show love to my loved one.
Well, Charlie says fun stuff. And with that, everybody have a great day and we’ll see you in a couple of weeks with the next Mike Stewart dot live
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How are you good.
Well, you know, this thing that I’m doing here, most of the folks that that come in and watch this. And we’ve got we’ve got nice little audience showing up here. I notified them that I was going to have you and and of course we I want to talk about the music business and maybe a couple of little fun stories. I know two fun stories I want to get documented here. But what most of the folks do here at my show is they record narration. And you know, for podcasts for voiceovers for YouTube videos for what we call sales videos. So talk about when you use to record voice what we’re doing little tips and tricks that you used to do to get the best quality vocal sound all the way back to the beginning. You know what what type of microphones and and what are some inexpensive microphones you know today that could be used for those
things?
Well, in the beginnings I had the opportunity when I first started really engineering and opportunity to work with Nueman microphones, and think that that was a kind of a curse to a certain extent, because I, I took for granted how, how good they sounded, because it was kind of like, they were there. When I went to work full time recording studio. Maurice will forever live forever sound in Atlanta, and he had all Telefunken 47 and four vocal mics and, and those things gonna work good no matter how bad I was. So, you know, this guy like, so? Yeah. So when you start off with something that well, you know, you I think you can’t take it for granted a little bit. So I think it was more challenging. When I when we built Studio One, I did not have all those microphones around me, but still working with vocalists and everything. It’s all according to the genre of music, how, you know, you have to take each vocalist kind of on their own, because some vocal is, that have done a lot of recording, they certainly have more mic savvy than somebody that’s never done much recording. And, and I think the people that I’ve worked with had a lot of history of singing in a recording studio, they naturally know how to get the sound of their voice sound good in their headphones and everything. And they can kind of help you out as an engineer, because they say things that really quiet. They know to lean in just a little bit and think something loud, they go back up just a little bit. So those are the people, those people I enjoy working with goes like kind of like kept me from working so hard.
So did you know we used to when I would start talking about microphones to people who are not music people. Because the majority of the people that I worked with for the last few years in the internet world, we’re doing just narration just spoken word. And, you know, I used to say, you know, to get the best quality you want a large diaphragm microphone microphone that has a big sound capture, which is the diaphragm was so that was true. And for folks that don’t know what a Norman microphone or a Telefunken those were those amazing, extremely expensive German microphones that have been around since Frank Sinatra was the first Norman Telefunken that we know what they still kind of look the same today.
Yeah, they think that I know about a friend of ours that’s passed away now Mike Clark, you know, he, he actually collected a couple of moments, I think we’re probably manufactured in the late 40s or mid in the 40s they will have model top where they called bottle top and then you actually see some of Adolf Hitler’s us speakers. And, but those, those microphones for the human for the voice for a vocal and everything where it’s spoken or Sung, or just a great sounding microphone. The fact is most of those microphones have such a great proximity effect. And the proximity effect is when you get in really close on a microphone it makes your voice sound bigger and and sometimes too big. So you but that you know as a sound that those those mics can handle real well. And you and you can you know working with a singer whether it be a singer or a decider voice over everything I think you would work with them to find that magic spot to where they’re it’s like radio guys you know the now switch they know when their voice sounds bass in relationship to the microphone. And so that’s something you work out over a period of time and I don’t think it ever got to a point where I if I had to start with one microphone it would probably be an omen ua seven and but there are certainly tons of microphones out there the sound real good. I’ve kind of stuck with those over the years not only own three microphones one of the Norman u 87. ones a Shure SM seven and the other ones like just the sure 56.
So well and for folks that don’t know the the the to shore microphones, which is spelled sh You are IE, the seven is it’s not that expensive. I think it’s three $400
it’s not that expensive and I’ve I’ve, I’ve leaned over a microphone and I’ve had to do some really tough vocals. The vocals did not sound real good. Coming through other microphones now. foreground experimented and everything and SM seven seem to be kind of a band aid that you could use in difficult situation. That’s a good all round microphone no matter what you use don’t.
So so the a lot of podcasters which are people that watch this, this live stream, the SM the short, SM seven is good for you could make a record with it. You can make a record today and it will be quality enough to for a master recording.
Absolutely. In fact, it’s got a built in windscreen and you can do rollouts or boosts on the microphone itself. It’s quite versatile in itself, addition to being able to process it through a console or something.
So are you still recording vocals there in your studio? Are you just mostly just doing processing, which you call mastering is doing these days?
Well, the majority of the work I do nowadays is mastering whereas people send me their recordings, they’re already recorded. They’re already mixed. And usually they send me a stereo file just like what whatever you make with a WAV file of the song. And I take that try to make that sound as good as I can make it sound. Good friend of mine, Jeff Galeazzi played with 38 especially. And I tried to explain it to him many years ago, and I was telling my oldest EQ, I do hear compression here and there. I play it before and after. And he says I got it. It’s like a loudness. But no, my stereo makes it sound better. I said no. Well, yeah.
I think it’s a lot more a lot better than just loud. Well,
it’s according to who, you know, sometimes the stuff I get is a is done really well. Sometimes it’s, it’s not, it’s kind of like it’s me trying to dig in there sometimes see if I can kind of help the whole process a little bit.
Well, a mastering engineer is a guy who listens to something that is a finished product. In other words, it’s it can be all the instruments of the music, all the vocals. So do you have a lot of control over fixing things and, and well, changing things?
Well, the thing that you can do, I’ve got enough stuff to really screw somebody songs. I can slowly get in there dig around in and everything inflected, as they say there’s not enough bass and there’s too much kick, then it’s trying to really kind of find these little, little areas, frequency areas that you could kind of pull up, pull down, or you need to compress this little frequency range more than others. You need to add some equalization maybe a little bit to to improve the clarity of the thing. demands kind of like mine, my I listen to stuff and I listen to it really loud. You know, it’s kind of like Wow, sounds I can hear everything but not everybody listens like totally loud. So you got to kind of get things sounded pretty good. A lower level everything so and every genre musics a little bit different. You know, it’s kind of like rock and roll sort of a different than say, hip hop, rap. And, and this. So it’s kind of like that. It’s not like totally ahead of them. You got these things pigeonhole. This is what I want to do to it because it’s this genre of music because a lot of times like, I can’t really, in my, to my ears, I can’t pick that genre, exact genre they’re in. So it’s kind of like you just adapt yourself to that music while you’re working on everything you try to get it sounds good, you can usually the best they may send it to people sometimes it’s kind of like I got my fingers crossed because I’ve changed it the way it sounds quite a bit. And a lot of time most of all the time. It’s an improvement that really appreciate what I’ve done to kind of help them with the overall process.
Well the thing in
my shoes Don’t call it
that shows.
Yeah, the main thing that that I just wanted to, you know, let folks know about is that there’s, you know, when we started recording, it was all analog tape. And there wasn’t a whole lot of computerization programming, and there was no computerized processing, that there was, you know, a piece of equipment that now has become software. So you pretty much all software controlling now or do you still not
quit not not totally, but I’m a lot more there than, than I’ve ever been made. Because we got a few pieces of gear in Atlanta. That’s a little bit too cumbersome to bring down here. But I have the equivalent of that hardware piece and software. And the two things that most of us have compared them and both they sound really close to software stuff is really close to the hardware. And whether it’s the same, I’m not, I don’t know about that. But it behaves in the same way, if I turn a knob up on the software, it does the same thing to my ear that if I forgot it’s turning the actual hardware piece, though, either boost or cut a frequency select all it is very similar.
Well, the computer stuff, you know, to my experience in my ear is just, you know, amazing what they have figured out how to plug in to computers. And and they actually I don’t know, if some of the ones you have, they actually have animations of the actual equipment. So that when you’re controlling it, you’re actually feel like you’re working with the old hardware that we were used to 30 and 40 years ago. And so So the thing is, is the equipment, the equipment, or the at least, here’s what hasn’t changed the tools and the software and the computers have all advanced, but the ears and the the the ability to know whether it’s I mean, just because you have equipment doesn’t mean it sounds good. I mean, there’s something folks you got to know about this man you’re witnessing today. And I’m so glad he’s sharing his wisdom with with you today. And you better ask him some questions in the comments area, because I don’t know if I’ll ever get him to come back.
And doing what I do and everything, Mike, I think it’s always thinking, I guess, us thinking analog terms, you know, it’s kind of like, so it makes it a little bit easier. Fortunately, most of these plugins and everything, have kind of made it kind of user friendly to people that have old enough history, they can remember what the real stuff did. But there’s some of the newer stuff too, that does things that none of the old analog gear did. So you have to kind of some of those things, I have to kind of get get them and kind of go through a process of learning how to use them the best way and sometimes in my mastering chain, they can find a place but most often they can’t go like this doesn’t really sound any better what I’m already doing. So I just kind of pasal just pick a plug in or whatever.
Well, the talent that Rodney has, and mastering engineers is they have the ears to know when it’s right. And when it’s wrong. And and that’s that’s what I mean, you know, I was I’ll be honest with you that was before this new you were coming on. I went back and listened to a bunch of old stuff that you did. And I thought my gosh, it still sounds good. I mean, I listened to most of the Winston’s album. And I mean, your 20s when you recorded that. And, and ironically, I mean, you can hear everything. Now there’s a lot of music things that a lot of the folks that watch this show don’t know about but I remember there was like a bass all the way on the one side of the speakers. I mean, it seemed like I think in the 60s and 70s it was cool to really make things stereo put.
Well, to be honest with you that you know you go back to the Winston’s was 1969. And their whole album was done on four track including the big hit single we had the name of the four track and I always tell the story know that we had recorded the basic rhythm section we’re done. So long thing then we had the boat boat was to come in, they had their own lead vocal had their own track, but we bounced this stuff and all we can do in the last track with assembled a fool a horn slash section and a string section violins, violas, etc. in live musicians in the studio as well as for background singers. And one of the background singers play tambourine behind the back because And that was all a one track one pass. Yeah. So everything had to be gotten together, everybody knew their parts, there are parts of good skills a messed up or screwed up or anything, you had to redo everybody involved in that track back back to the beginning, so to speak. on that particular big hit song we had called color and father, there was no space that you could actually punch in anywhere. There’s stuff going on all the time. So I’m somewhat amazed that we were able to do the things we did, and I don’t. And to me with my thinking nowadays, there’s no way I could reproduce that now. goes up my mind. Well, let me go there, you know, that’s what back then that’s what you had to do. You’re limited, you’re limited, but you didn’t know that.
You know, you just tried to make a good sounding recording a good sounding record. I do not make mistakes. And you know, it’s amazing. You know, there’s, if you go on YouTube right now, I don’t know if you’ve seen this. Pete there must be some software that lets you isolate tracks out of mono mixes. And I’ve listened to Beatle isolated guitar parts and bass parts and, and songs that I love. The guitars are really out of tune. But I don’t care because it’s just it’s just magic. It’s still magic to me. Well, I’m gonna I’m gonna do a little this is this is a little sponsorship. I’m going to talk about right now on February 13. This This show is brought to you by next level PCL marketing.com that is a live marketing event that I’m doing with my good friend Rodney. Did you ever hear of Milton crab Apple will bill Okay, so well how Coleman is Milton crab apple and he’s my partner in the next level PCL marketing. Well, we do online marketing. In fact, we’d love to have you as a guest I’ll send you a link to it. But anyway, go to next level p Seo marketing.com. It’s going to be a full virtual event on how to use the internet and how to use my parts how to use audio and video to market houses How to say the right words. And he still melt grab Apple, but his real world is his teaching bug guys how to improve their business. So there’s our little
a little older show. Recording without back in the day. We went to Nashville. Yeah.
Did you work with the session of john Willis and? Yes, okay.
Steve, Nathan. Oh, no.
Well, you know, I did a session up here recently with john Willis and we were talking about milk crap. I when he said, I play it on all his records. He In fact, how had a record called the bird, which was a big hit for Jerry Reed. And john played on that. So I didn’t know you knew john, but that Hey,
does he play them? Everything I’ve done at Nashville.
Oh, he’s amazing. What an amazing. I’ll tell you one thing you throw a rock in the city, you had a guitar player or a singer. They’re amazing people. All right. So I figured what we do is I’d like to at least do two more things and then I’m going to respect your time. But what let me ask you another little technical question. Isn’t your audio engineer? What do you do to keep from you know, popping the microphone what do you what what did you use to recommend to people? Did you back in the day have pop filters or did you get them to stand back? What What was your toy you know,
the only pop filter I had back in the day say out of a Norman youe seven and there was a windscreen is made out of foam that you could push up over the windscreen and everything and I hated the way that sound so hated the way it sounded. So always I would not use a windscreen of any kind, I would kind of turn the microphone make try to find that place and everything so when they did it a plosive you know, like a pop You know, it would jump out at you try to find you know, even from singing alone, you know, do a live session okay? You need to turn your head just a little bit when you say that word or we just need to find that permanent position that you’ve got an angle into that microphone so you do not hit that capsule straight out. If you hit it straight on this what’s gonna call us calls that that pop real loud pop now and when I get stuff and everything I listened to vocal tracks and solo and his pops in there I can digitally go in there and kind of control those so you don’t hear lips.
Oh. But see that creates creates a whole lot of work if there’s a bunch of men there, man.
Yes. So, but but I use a windscreen now you know that’s a little bit more transparent. Then the then the whole, that big phone thing gets you stuck on the microphone icon like, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, even with that, you know, you still got to kind of somewhat times create an angle. The Best Sound of me is when you are singing straight on. But it’s just quoting who the singer is and how many pops they do. And all that stuff nowadays is kind of like I won’t travel risk, the choice of a performance, because there’s a poppet if what they perform sound real good, I’ll just remove the pop digitally and take the performance.
But that that just goes to prove that no matter you know, how good a microphone it is, and and how conscientious engineer it is, if a burst of air gets onto that capsule, it’s just going to make that loud. Pop third,
yes, you rest with the thing. With a condenser microphone thing, if you get too much more stir on that capsule, it’s going to crap out, it’s going to either stop working or start sounding distorted and everything and and I had to send away a couple of normal USA items to get recondition because they’ve gotten so much spent on so to speak over the years. But I’ve tried to warn vocalist without those things for a long time. And of course, now you got an infinite variety of windscreens that you can use will help that situation.
I want to document a couple of fun stories that have nothing to do with internet audio. They’re just, they’re just a couple of fun stories and then anything that you want to contribute. And then if we have any questions, we’ll take them. And I tried to keep the you know, we’re almost at a half an hour here. So I don’t want to take up much more your time, Ronnie, but I’m just okay, we’re good. I just I’m just so honored to have you here. So number one, you know, when you were a kid, and the Winston’s came in to Lefevre studios there in Atlanta, Georgia to cut that album. And they needed beside. They recorded the old Amen. I guess that was a spiritual I don’t even know if it was a public domain song or not.
Yeah, it was fingers public domain so you could republish it, whatever.
And it was an instrumental
come into the studio just to cut the song cover and father, which was r&b Song of the Year. That year was really so so everybody thought that was a hit song. And nobody ever thought well, we will release a single you got to a side and you got to be sad. We normally put a different song over beside so people buy the 45 they’ve got something else to listen to other than just the main Bert main version of one song. So we cut cut the track on the car and father’s And finally, you know, somebody said, we got to kind of beside so what do we got? They didn’t have any more original material. I think my manager I have when I was playing in a band. He was involved in that project. His name is Johnny B. and john abuse in the control room. He says Why don’t you guys play that instrumental thing that I heard y’all play the other night some club they were performing in. So that was the emphasis cut. Amen. Amen. Brother. And I had no idea what we were getting into, or what would become of that later on. Because I had completely forgotten that song and recording till somebody called me and said, Ronnie, you know, you recorded the biggest breakbeat in music history. I said what are they asked me said, you know the significance of the beside of color and father I said no, I don’t remember. I don’t remember what it was. And he proceeded this guy out of North Carolina, he came down and he bought a CD, there was like 51 cuts on there. That that beat, there’s eight measures of drummer playing right by himself that that was incorporated in as a sample and these 51 different songs that he played me, little pieces up. And it’s mind blowing. I had no idea
until 30 years later. So when you recorded that beside now was it already was already set up from coloring father, did you have a different session? Oh,
I don’t necessarily remember that. It was I just remember we if it had to be pretty close around there. You know, it’s kind of like I don’t know where we’ve gone through the whole process of recording and overdubbing everything on color and father. Probably a little bit of that. And the drums are usually set up in the same place in the studio. So what is the big deal? to kind of set everything back up and record that song, and basically, it was the only one or two takes of that song that we did. And it was done, you know, go, that’s pretty much live performance anyway.
You know, I bet you kids today cook that really are into hip hop, which you can see, you know, I’m not much of a hip Hopper, but yeah. But do you remember, you know, did you have a lot of microphones on the drums or because, you know, the snare drum and the bass drum are, are pretty pronounced in that drum break? Which is, which was the appeal to the, to the rappers. But do you remember how you set up the microphones that day? Basically,
do you remember where those exact microphones with the lafeber sound, whether it was recorded, there was a small choice of dynamic microphones and a large choice of condenser microphones. So So the combination of both most most everything is like, basically my, you know, like, snare, one mic on the toms, maybe, maybe two mics, one mic on the kick drum. But it was kind of an ambient situation also that there was other musicians on the bass tracks over the came time for the drummer to take that break. There was a lot of interplay from just the ambience of the room around this noun, and it’s a very distinct sound. And once you hear it in any, any song, it’s immediately identifiable. And it spawned a whole genre music over in England called jungle. And it’s all based that that genre of music is all based around those eight measures.
That drummer and you had no idea what you’re creating that day in it.
No, it’s just a something they did it but a blade, those who didn’t do anything extraordinary. It’s just, you know, the, you can hear the ride cymbal, the snare and kick really well. And it’s just, it’s almost a phenomenon. When you put it in with other instruments and add instruments around, you can still get that.
Right, right. There’s a documentary on hip hop that talks about the significance of it, and it’s just, it’s just I just wanted folks to know that you’re, you’re hearing a guy that was there the day was now I’ll tell you something else that’s that the world loves and knows that that you witnessed and and I want you to tell it tell the story of of what Ronnie Van Zandt said to you on that, you know, Ed King, who just we recently lost and he was living up here in Nashville. He was one of the writers of Sweet Home Alabama. And did he play the opening guitar licks on his Telecaster guitar?
Yes. Yes, it was Telecaster.
And the opening guitar licks to Sweet Home Alabama are just, you know, iconic.
I mean, what else could play that riff?
With the minute that comes on to be a three chord song, yes. But you hear two notes, three notes of it. You know what’s coming up? Oh, yeah. So talk about what Ronnie says and what he’s a blow Blow there. Blow people’s minds of what he was saying to you. When he was doing his vocal that day?
Well, the thing was, you know, it’s kind of like he would cut the track and I don’t remember how many overdubs we’ve done on the track of that. That that time and everything but it was time for Ryan to put a vocal track on there. And so so I had the vocal mic set up outside of the studio and I think Ronnie went out there basically put on his headphones and when the music started on the playback he said turn it up and and the meaning I got was turns his balls up a little bit more to hear real loud and that got an owl Cooper had the you know the whatever it was, you know, kept como room it’s gonna leave that on the intro the song and everything is not an iconic thing. And when you hear that it it’s twofold. You know, I know the real meaning of that. But the real you know, what is perceived as real meaning of that is rock and roll baby Turn it up.
But he was asking you to turn these
headphones bit.
Well, and there’s one other story that you told that I want you to tell right now that we’re you. You got to be the voiceover intro of an allen Tucson record. tell that story well,
Alan Tucson, the great songwriter, musician, producer, from New Orleans, and he came up he and his partner Marshall seehorn came up to a fabric sale and they kind of liked the sound they were kind of trying different studios because they were having some pretty good success. Some artists Allah was producing enough they got to Atlanta with a fiber sound that’s they decided that’s where they were going to kind of settle down. So every month or so they’d come up spend a week, low fiber sound. And so we would kind of lead Dorsey and who is a pretty, pretty big artists and everything and so so as an engineer, I made the console and it’s not like digital now where you see time in front of you can kind of instantly go to anywhere in the song back then you put it you slated the tape, which put it a low frequency tonal there, and you and you vocally slave what take it was, is like, this is everything I do from from Now don’t be funky. Thank you. And it’s kind of like so I didn’t think anything about your speaker. I just got off the turnip wagon from South Georgia. So everything I do from now which is the opposite. But I like to
eat we
go and to this day anybody listens that song? I’m still on the intro that song doing that? I don’t I never got a royalties.
So
leave doors to the artists and he had a big sitting near Macaca. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he had a couple of pretty big hits. Before that. And Alan tusshar used the instrumental band called the meters as his rhythm section. And so could a couple albums only meters and, and several different artists and Tucson also wound up producing mala forevers first first album.
Well, we have one good question here. We’re gonna wind it up. But this is from my good buddy, Jeff herring. And what do you what is the biggest audio change you see coming in technology or the way way things are recorded these days? What do you see anything on the horizon? That’s
big. I think the digital stuff will keep expanding to the point that that any, any soul music, you can, you can kind of make it happen without actually somebody sitting there performing anything, I think the the kind of, you know, using the sampling or using the loops or doing adding this or that it’s still it’s just like, the will, I think it will contain to be worth all that is improved and improved on to the point where maybe kids got less all this stuff, the bottom line is kids are going to listen to this stuff and everything. And then they don’t really know what they’re missing from the old stuff. So I think they’re, but they’re still there. You know, they’re, they’re impressed by what they hear. And I think stuff will keep on getting better and better. The fact the way we are living right now and everything during this COVID stuff, that’s a lot of people just kind of watching at home. And it’s kind of like you have all the tools in this digital format that allows you to do a lot of things. I don’t think it’s necessarily a change, just an improvement. And as we go along, I think some people actually go back and listen to some of the old stuff. And then that still has some relevance, it has relevance to me because that seems like you’re in the 70s. And we kind of got to a point where things started sounding really good analog. And I think there is still that mystique of balance less try to recapture What’s so good about that analog and not to the point that opened our eyes will go back to analog. It’s just that everybody there’s a smart people that know what, how, what how that the analog sound came into being what was the what was the process that happened to make it sound analog and make it sound good. You just got the knowledge to develop plugins and software and everything and replicate that. So I think that I don’t think we’re going to go to a point where Everything is going to start soon. It’s so good. It’s completely different than what it was in the 70s.
No, I thought I totally agree. I mean, it’s just I remember George Martin wrote a book that I read called, all you need is ears. And that’s what I think a lot of people are depending on technology and software. But they’re not developing their listening skills, their hearing skills and the comparative skills to what’s really, really good. I mean, I know one of the things that that I did when it especially when it comes to music, is I put something up on my speakers that I know was good, or at least in my opinion, and to see that then I’d compare it to how far I’ll follow. And, and that, that just made a huge difference. Huge difference. I must be watching this on Facebook, she put a link up to the amen break. So if anybody in Facebook goes to our links here, you’ll be able to see those. And, and one of the things I’m going to tell Jeff is, and I don’t know if you’ve come across it, but there’s no way that I know of the internet speeds are not fast enough to do virtual synchronization. Meaning when it comes to podcasting, we’re we can have a dialogue and record it. And we don’t know that there’s a millisecond time delay. But when it comes to having musicians playing together over the internet, I don’t know, have you come across anything that
I have not been involved with any of that. So I know that it’s possible. Some people do that, but most, most of the time is it’s not an interplay between musicians and everything, through the internet. Everything’s piecemeal.
Well, what people are doing is they’re sending their parts to one another, and then on their own machines, but there’s no there’s no way for musicians all over the world to hook up and, and record at the same time, like you, you and I used to do with people coming into a studio and playing. So I had a friend who is a Microsoft computer expert. And he said that it is physically and timewise impossible to synchronize. Because even if the speed of light, which is what the speed computers connect that it’s not fast enough to get everybody completely insane. So maybe, maybe somebody will figure out a way to make that thing.
There’s no substitution my past several years, I’ve had the opportunity to up Nashville several times I work in primarily I’ve worked in bourbon, anywhere from six to seven live musicians in the studio at the same time playing off each other. And that’s an experience. I would not trade for anything. Those musicians themselves. I absolutely love that also. Nowadays, it’s kind of like, you know, it’s just, you know, you play a few tracks, put it together, you pick this part from that part. Okay, that sounded good there. So let’s copy and paste it there. So, so it’s more of a how you go about making a record now as opposed to dealing with a live musician performing
well, there’s something to the magic of human beings getting together and, and feeding off the energy of each other. And listen to music and and you witnessed a lot of and engineered a lot of great music. And I’m gonna wind this up, because we’ve already gone 45 minutes. But this, you know, I could talk to you all day and and I look forward to seeing you again, my friend. And thank you for sharing your life with with this interview. And folks, I’m telling you go to Rodney mills.com. I’m telling you, I used to get people all the time, Rodney saying, Can you make this recording more intelligent to hear you know the words, they had a recording and they they wanted to eliminate the background noise and stuff. And I think maybe some things that folks need to know, go to Rodney Mills calm because you’re very reasonably priced for your talent. I’m going to tell you that,
well. I’ve kind of gotten that for my life. My poor, I’m self sufficient, almost, you know, and it’s kind of like so I don’t have to worry about escalating or competing or anything like that. I’m just maintaining.
You maintain amazingly, and I just can’t thank you enough for being here. So folks, go to Rodney mills.com. And, you know, Google Rodney Mills, check him out. Listen to some of these things. Look at the links that Mary put up. And we’ll see you in a couple of weeks with another episode of Mike Stewart dot
live
Everything audio and video for the internet. Bye bye rod.
Bye Bye Take care of my
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Michael Stewart
Welcome, welcome. And good morning, Mike Stewart live, Happy New Year everybody. Here it is 2021, the first show of Mike Stewart dot live the website all about audio and video marketing. I’m glad you’re here. More importantly, I want to start thinking about let’s focus on positive things for 2021. I’ll tell you what 2020 was so filled with so many things that were frustrating that even though they were frustrating, there were things that were good that came from it. But there’s a lot of things that I know have been frustrating a lot of folks. And so anyway, this show today is about positive things, setting goals. You know, one of the things that I like to talk to people about and I like to remind folks of, I don’t care what your business is, you need to work on your business, not just work in your business. That’s kind of in the message and kind of the theme that I always try to do I’ve been doing for years. But really more and more today. For 2021. Let’s work on our businesses. And one of the ways to work on your business, no matter what your business is, is mastering audio and video technologies, audio and video content marketing. I mean, that’s why I do this. I do this as a community service for my audience. I want folks to realize that if I can do this, you can do this. It’s not that hard. And I really got an exciting guest this morning, who is a local business colleague of mine. She’s a successful real estate agent here in Nashville. And she uses the very same technologies that I’m an advocate of to help generate business for her real estate business. And we’re going to hear all about that. So without any further ado, I want to introduce to you my friend and colleague, Miss Meredith Smith. Meredith.
Meredith Smith
Good morning, Mike. Happy New Year,
Michael Stewart
Happy New Year to you. I’m so glad you’re here. You know, the reason I wanted to have you as I remember, I met I met you through one strategy that I recommend for every business owner, is to go out to networking groups. And I remember the day I met you at our networking group, which by the way, I’m going to put the link up there for people that don’t know about it. It’s called networking. Today International, anti great group of local business folks, and you were there. And you caught my ear that day, you said I’m a real estate agent, but I do YouTube video marketing. And I went, Oh my gosh, I gotta get to know, the folks that know me know that video. And audio marketing has been my passion for 20 years before there was a YouTube, right? And I said, Okay, if this real estate agent didn’t talk about mortgages, or there’s markets going up or down, or I got all these listings. Now there’s all the typical things. The one thing you said the very first meeting earlier, is that you wanted to interview people, for your YouTube videos. And I thought, Okay, I gotta learn what, what is Meredith up to? This is, this is amazing. So my first question for you in this interview is, you know, we know, and my audience should know now, Meredith is a successful national real estate agent. She’s a realtor. So what doing video has done for your local business? Just tell me the story, how you got into it, and what’s going on with
Meredith Smith
it? Right, right. Well, so I, I’m entering my 18th year of real estate, and when I relocated to Nashville, it was in 2017. And I knew nobody, I had no sphere, nobody, but I know, I’m very outgoing. And I’m not shy, and I’m willing to try anything. So it was 2018. And I needed to rebrand myself in Nashville, as, you know, a real estate professional, and also needed to try to figure out, you know, I was still learning the market, how am I going to get people to know like, and trust me, and the strategy I came up with it just it’s evolved over time, was to start doing video, not just real estate videos, but start interviewing other businesses, because I’m still getting to know people. People are getting to know me. And if I can interview a business, I can serve them, I can help get their name out. But also people can get to know me while I’m interviewing so people can see, you know, how I interact with people. And you’re also you know, I’m showcasing a business. And it’s, it’s something that I completely take on and I loved it. So it was basically be can consistent interview, do a couple interviews a week and just keep pushing the content out. And then it started to evolve from there.
Michael Stewart
So you’re telling me that you are doing 200 views a week on average?
Meredith Smith
Well, not well, I was at the beginning, I was doing as many as I possibly could so I could get the content. And I’ve gotten so busy now with with real estate that I can’t do as much as I used to. So now I’ve got a slot every, every Thursday at two, I do an interview, I live stream on here on stream yard with a local business. And I also get on at two o’clock on Mondays to either interview someone or put out a real estate tip. We’re going to talk later today at two o’clock. Yeah, I’m
Michael Stewart
a guest on your show today, which I invite folks to come back, we need to, we need to know how to subscribe to your show to as well, because, um, you know, the thing that I think that is a lesson here for my audience, and I’m seeing some comments here, and we’re gonna take questions, be sure to if you got questions, right, here’s Meredith, who her expertise and her background and for years and years is making a living doing real estate. And I know you’re a professional real estate agent. But you’ve got past the learning curve. I mean, how many real estate agents even know stream yard exists? Bravo.
Meredith Smith
Yeah, I don’t know. Not many in the when I met you that first day. And I will never like going into a networking group. I ask. I don’t I don’t tell you, you know, it’s obvious I sell real estate. But I want to interview you. That’s that’s my ask. When I go to a networking group. It’s it’s let’s get together. And because of COVID, that’s why stream yard became so important because now I do interviews with my stream yard show.
Michael Stewart
Well, okay, but pre COVID. You How are you doing interviews? Tell us the process that you were making your content, what would you do
Meredith Smith
got it. So I would go to the location of the particular person, I would bring my camera and my tripod. And
Michael Stewart
that was at a phone or a camera,
Meredith Smith
I would use both. This works just fine. But I also would bring my Canon camera and with my boom mic, wow. And I that I bought to do real estate pictures, I don’t take my own pictures anymore. I hire a professional for that. So I get great use out of this camera now. So basically, I would go, we would do a couple takes, I have software called Filmora. It took me months to master and I now do my own editing. It’s so simple. But if you don’t want to deal with that, bring your iPhone and use your and you can edit it right on your phone. But I like downloading it I like being able to see it I like be able to manipulate the sound. And now that I know how to do it, you know, it used to stress me out getting all this new content because I’m like, Okay, I gotta get this edited and done. But now it’s like, boom, boom, boom. And I’m in it’s out there and I
Michael Stewart
yeah. Okay, there’s the lesson, folks. Here’s a professional real estate agent who took the time, you know, I did a course on Filmora. Because that’s a that is a good editing program for the PC. So I assume your PC?
Meredith Smith
Yes.
Michael Stewart
Okay. And and of course, if you’re Mac based, a lot of people use iMovie. And the iPhone has a free iMovie app that does anything. Yeah. And so so you were doing interviews, so you are actually getting in the car driving to somebody location, scheduling, what, that’s how important it was to your local business to get these interviews correct.
Meredith Smith
salutely. And, and what what was remarkable was the response from the business owner, that he would take the time to do this to showcase me because Mike, I would put their information, like I wouldn’t even make the call to action me, the call to action would be the business that I was interviewing that particular day. And a lot of people were like, you know, they would take the video and they put it other places. So I don’t just provide the content, I provide you the YouTube link so you can put it wherever you want. And it doesn’t have I’m not plastered throughout it. It’s all about the business owner. And I it, it was one of those, you know, I’ve gotten to know so many people by doing it. And so many people have gotten to know me, and just from me taking the time to do that interview. The whole purpose was you know, not to get business but you know, for to get that brand recognition, and doing the videos has turned into business for me and it just was something that just evolved. You know, it’s become this great thing now that I you know, I’m so proud of and i’m not i’m not gonna stop, I’m gonna keep going because I just I enjoy meeting new people. It’s a lot of fun.
Michael Stewart
Okay, so all right, here’s what I’ve heard folks. We have a non video internet video person originally because we all started out as non online video people. And you, you you got you learned how to shoot it, how to edit it, how to post it, and how and then it became a story that built relationships that I want to get into To the networking and the relationship building of how that brought you business, I want you to come in and give some examples and talk about some of the results. So where were you putting these videos, when you first started,
Meredith Smith
when I first started, they would go, I post them to my Facebook business page, I’d make the post, I would add closed captions, and then I would share it to my personal page so that my personal network could see it along with my business network, I would then put it on LinkedIn, with a with a blog. And then I would also always put it to YouTube so that I could easily share it with whomever I was interviewing. So I get it. And then I have a website that it will also go to under my blogs. So it kind of it, it goes to and I can repurpose it in other and use it, you know, over and over again if I want to. But you know, I have I have when I do an interview, when I put out new content, I have a process, that it’s always the same, I always post the same so that people can know what to expect.
Michael Stewart
Give me the good. Let’s give out your web address, because this is also my podcast. So So spell it out and spell it out. And then I’ll put it up on the screen here because we already had a question from my good friend Tom out in Portland. He wants to know what your channel is. So what is your website first?
Meredith Smith
It’s Meredith. Sell t n.com. So Meredith sells tn.com. Okay. And I, yeah, my Facebook page is pretty easy to find. You can just look Merrick Meredith sells tn. And that will be my Facebook page. I have an Instagram page. Meredith sells tn you can see there the
Michael Stewart
America sales tn.com. I hope all that good social media is linked from that website.
Meredith Smith
If I have a YouTube, I have all the links up at the top of my page. So you should find that thing. Yep.
Michael Stewart
All right. And is your YouTube channels look a link from Meredith? Okay, see, folks. You know, that’s one of the things the big things I preach and do myself and I tell everyone have a portal have a central, you know, Meredith sales, Tennessee? Oh, my gosh, if you can’t remember that, then we’ll work on it. But But the thing is that that becomes the portal. I mean, everybody knows Google is the portal to search. eBay is a portal to buy Amazon. You know, I always ask people, what is Amazon? And they say, well, it’s a store that sells everything. Yes, it is. But it’s a portal to people with credit cards already pre programmed. It’s a search engine for buyers. So it’s all how you look at but it’s still portals are very important things in the internet. So that is married is portal. So all right. So you started out with the equipment of nothing more than you had a good camera that you bought to take photos of listings?
Meredith Smith
It’s a five year old camera. It’s nothing fancy
Michael Stewart
DSLR is it does video as well
Meredith Smith
as video. Yes.
Unknown Speaker
Okay. And,
Michael Stewart
you know, one of the questions I used to get years ago when I was teaching video was the number of what camera? Should I use Mike? And my answer was always one you know how to run. You know, those Canon cameras, they got a lot of settings on it, they got a lot of adjustments. So that’s what I love about, you know, cell phones here is that the cameras are amazing. They’re easy to use. And you know, you can start using it tomorrow. So nobody cares at the bank what camera you use. Now, let’s let’s let’s go on. So you’ve mastered that you’ve got all these things in place. Let’s talk about when did you discover stream yard and by the way, my affiliate link to stream yard is join stream yard.com. So I got to give that out. Because I wanted more and more people I don’t care. Look here Here is a local business entrepreneur who learned stream yard. Now what has been the experience of using stream yard since COVID?
Meredith Smith
Oh, well, I went when we went into lockdown. I was I struggled. I was like, Oh my gosh, I can’t interview people anymore. I did a few videos on my own. But I’m like this isn’t working. And my friend Matt Brown at the Nashville marketer reached out to me and said, I’ve got a program that I’ve discovered. I want to interview you on it. And this is what it’s all about. So that was April. And then I then I flip the switch, and I created the show conversations with your Nashville realtor. I’m Meredith Smith. I am your national realtor. And now that’s that’s what my stream yard show is called conversations with your Nashville realtor. And ever since I learned how to log in, I’ve been using it and I think I’ll continue to do the stream yard because I think we’re going to be in this COVID situation for a bit longer. And I’d rather keep everybody safe and just interviewed this way I think. I think it’s a great program. I love it. I still have a lot to learn about it though.
Michael Stewart
Well, you know, the thing that that I’m such an advocate of it is, you know, one, we’re safe. Number one, number two, how convenient it is send a link and and most people, and you know, I’ve actually done tests and I don’t know if you know this, Meredith but when people log into stream yard on their phone, the quality is amazing.
Meredith Smith
I have had a few that have logged in on their phone for me to interview and it’s gone great. Oh,
Michael Stewart
yeah, because you’re getting, you’re getting the video and audio recorded at the same time. So if you really get proficient at live streaming, here it is. The editing time becomes nothing, you know, the interview is I mean, when I I’ll be honest with you, I’m an advocate of zero editing. I like doing a show and, and and when I get done, it’s posted and it’s ready. Well, you know what we this is the other thing. So So what equipment are you using for stream yard? What is that?
Meredith Smith
I’m using an HD webcam with a mic. And I’m using my HP laptop, and I had it plugged into a big screen here. That’s it.
Michael Stewart
So what brand of webcam? Is it?
Meredith Smith
Oh, it is?
Michael Stewart
Is it a Logitech or is it a different brain?
Meredith Smith
It’s an F HD camera? It’s I got it on Amazon for 40 bucks. It’s 40 bucks.
Michael Stewart
Alright, well, we’ll have to, I’ll have to research that. Cuz
Meredith Smith
you I also use a ring light, I have a ring light to kind of light not my office. Because the lighting isn’t great. I’m still working on the lighting. But yeah, it cost me know the equipment doesn’t cost much. You know, it’s a monthly subscription to stream yard and it’s worth its weight in gold. With what I can produce from it.
Michael Stewart
We’ll see I love that, you know, I keep trying to this is not online marketing. Now. This is this is local market brand awareness. relationship building strategies. So I tell you what we’re gonna do I want you to tell me what tell me some of the takeaways of positive. You’ve only been here in Nashville for a little over three years. Correct. Here’s what it was.
Meredith Smith
I was a licensed broker in Maine. I started in 2003.
Michael Stewart
Wow, Maine to Tennessee. Well, that that’s, that’s awesome.
Meredith Smith
Yeah. And people were like, You’re crazy. Meredith, you know, how are you going to do that? I’m like, I can do it. And it’s just you’re not being afraid. I’m not afraid to talk to someone, I’m not afraid to pick up the phone. I’d much rather be in person. That’s why I love nti, the networking group, because you can meet so many people, and they’re there for relationships. They’re not there to sell you. It’s all about serving. And that is the that’s the hallmark of my strategy. And my my brand is serve, don’t sell period.
Michael Stewart
Oh, you can’t learn a lesson from what Meredith is doing, folks. I don’t I don’t know what to tell you, other than I just I admire what you’re doing. If you can do it, if I can do it, it’s just you know, how hard is this? We just show up in our offices. And we have a friendly conversation and it creates content that could build a relationship that turns into business. So talk about some of the wins that you’ve had, since you’ve done this in just the three short years that you’ve been doing it?
Meredith Smith
Yeah, well, I didn’t really take off with the video until mid 2018. So it hasn’t been that long, a year and a half. Yeah. So it didn’t take long. I was doing a few interviews. And a particular gentleman that I interviewed, you know, he was like, what, what, what, what do you want for what am I going to have to give you to get this, I’m like, you don’t have to give me anything. Just give me your time, your content, I want your content, your story. And it that particular interview evolved into a friendship, which has evolved into several real estate transactions, and a referral to another gentleman. And it’s going to be a significant amount of revenue from one video taking the time to get to know someone to let them share their story. And they liked they liked my process. And in that process they wanted they they were like I want to do business with you. I think you’d be great. And it’s going to generate it’s going to be over the from 2020 to 2021. And it’s going to be a significant revenue source just from one video.
Michael Stewart
Well, I gotta tell folks, you said that 2020 was an amazing year for you. And out of all the negativity and craziness
Meredith Smith
in spite of COVID and all the craziness, staying creative thinking outside of the box. 2020 was my largest selling year ever in real estate,
Michael Stewart
the biggest year in a new city. Folks, if you don’t hear the message from what this lady has done, and You
Meredith Smith
know, it’s this this is what?
Michael Stewart
video and online video marketing, relationship building. It’s not just marketing, it’s content marketing is relationship that know like and trust factor is what put it over the edge. Well, I’ll tell you what we’ve been going 20 minutes. Normally I have a sponsor. Well, today’s sponsor, and then we’re going to, this is your opportunity. If you have any questions, we’ll wrap up with some questions. And any final thoughts you have, Meredith, but today’s show is brought to you by project that is a is something that is a passion for me. It is, I’m in a band called The Box Tops. And Meredith, you’re too young to remember the box top. But my buddy Gary Talon and I A Gary was a founding member of the Box Tops, they had a hit record called the letter, which was a number one record. It’s one of the biggest records in 1967. You can Google the letter and find out about the box up. And I got to be a full time member of the Box Tops last January. And we were on tour we had all kinds of tour dates, and COVID killed that, you know, I got to play five gigs. And they were really nice shows and all of our 2020 shows had been consistently being pushed out in the future. Because here’s Guess what, nobody is playing live again. Nobody. So this is my online project. You know, I want to show this little thing here. This might be interesting. But 14 years ago, my good friend
Unknown Speaker
Armand Morin, I
Michael Stewart
created a fictitious artist called Michael Lee Austin. And we took Michael Lee Austin to number one in Billboard. And may 13 2016 14 years ago, we proved that with the Internet, and I have high, very passionate fan base, that you can monetize music. So I’m doing this with Gary, we call ourselves mash Memphis, a blend of Nashville and the Memphis sound. And I’m going to have the world debut of our song, which is essentially telling people how to support music. Until we can play live again, the song is called until we can play live again. Here’s the world premiere of my Nashville memphis.com song. Well, they’re
Meredith Smith
very good.
Michael Stewart
You know why I can play a song on my show? Because it’s my show.
Meredith Smith
Literally, that’s so cool. I’m so excited to have been a part of that.
Michael Stewart
Yeah, well, I thought, this is something I’m doing for 2021. In fact, that song is basically, you know, talking about here in Nashville, we’re in Music City. And I don’t care who you are, whether you’re somebody that you know, plays down, you know, on Broadway, or like us, we have a Beatles band that plays around, we started getting some momentum before COVID and, and all that’s gone away. And so rather than hating the internet, I’m trying to tell the music world embrace it, you know, the chorus of the song says, you know how you can support us. It doesn’t cost anything, add us to your playlists, exactly. You stream our music, it supports us. And so I’m looking forward to the day we can play live again. And and that whole song was built through the internet. We did everything going back and forth. I taught Gary who’s an amazing singer and guitar player who didn’t know how to do virtual sessions. And then now we this is I’m gonna move the camera there’s my new recording studio. And we did that whole record virtually without ever having to you know endanger our lives. We don’t Oh album and it’s it’s Nash Memphis calm. So just documenting. I’m going to be semi promoting it. Now. We’ve got a couple of questions here. And thank you, Vicki. Vicki says that was awesome. And of course my message here is we’re here’s another first. There’s never been a band named a website.
Meredith Smith
I love Yeah, that’s awesome. No,
Michael Stewart
another words are the name of our band is Nashville. memphis.com. So in other words, when you say the name of a band, you are giving out our web address. So cool. That’s a marketing strategy. All right, we got some questions for you some good ones. First of all, but here’s some great comments. This is Tom Brooks. loves your comment know like and trust your right on. So what is your channel? If you want if you wanted to search the channel on YouTube, how would you search the channel?
Meredith Smith
Um, it’s just Meredith Smith Nashville realtor. Yeah,
Michael Stewart
okay, great. All right. This is my good buddy. This is a content marketing. Guru expert, wonderful friend knows his stuff. That’s a great question for you. How long are your interviews And what kind of questions do you ask?
Meredith Smith
Great question they can it can be five minutes to 25 minutes, just depends on what kind of content or what kind of questions are are. And the questions are either you give them to me, because I’m not an act like, I’m my financial advisor, I feature bi weekly. And I have a hard time coming up with a question sometimes. And he’ll we’ll discuss what what does the show look like? What do you want to talk about? So if you’ve got some hot button topics or anything like that, feed me the content because I’m not I’m the man. I know enough. But I don’t know everything. So I want to make sure that the information that’s showcased is going to be useful for the viewers.
Michael Stewart
Oh, Jeff says, I did this to a great and he said he’s not a guru. But I like saying that because it makes him mad. So but going back to Jeff’s question, what are the average shows like I try to stay at around a half an hour?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah,
Michael Stewart
we’re already at a half an hour with us. But I took
Meredith Smith
12 to 15 minutes is the average time.
Michael Stewart
Okay. And and so you let slip. But like, for instance, today, I’m the king of, of winging it. So I had, I just figured I just get with you, we’d have fun. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. But I also had kind of a mind. You know, I wanted to do two things with you today with questions wise, prove that somebody who is not an internet marketer is using these strategies. Alright, we got another great question here. This is from you’re gonna love this. Meredith. This is the owner of Grand canyon.com. He’s and you talk about a guy who has really generated leads through an amazing, an amazing domain name, you ought to check it. Go check out Grand Canyon. This is Carla. So what do you do to prepare people you interview from their iPhones or smartphones?
Meredith Smith
Honestly, um, they they’re typically I asked them to, if they can be in front of their computer. I that’s what I asked them. But as far as you know how to prepare them, just make sure they have a stable Wi Fi connection. Otherwise, we’re going to freeze up the whole time. So if they are on their iPhone, or smartphone, all they need is the link to log in. And that’s it. So just make sure you’re you’re not using not using data and that you’ve got a nice Wi Fi or you’re if you’re at home, you’ve got a strong connection.
Unknown Speaker
Okay.
Michael Stewart
See if we got any other questions we got. We got some of my friends being smart aleck. So I won’t show those. We, you know, had some comments. Tom loved the song. Thank you, Tom. So Dan Carlin, thank you, but, but this is a chance here. If you if you got any curiosities of how a local business realtor is using online video marketing? This is your last chance to answer the question or I guess the main thing is, if you’ve got any final, final closing thoughts or comments that you’d like to say, I’m gonna put your website back up your again. Yeah,
Meredith Smith
I think to close it out, Mike, thanks for having me. I’ll never forget the first time we met because we were just drawn to each other because we were doing similar things. And I you know, I love commenting with you. I love connecting with you. And figuring out how to, you know, evolve, keep evolving this video marketing, because I still have so much to learn. But if there’s anyone out there that would like to be interviewed. Don’t be shy, please reach out. I would love to chat with you. My website is right here. My cell phone is 615-969-0406. I am a full time realtor. I work all the time. So I’m always available. So thank you so much, Mike. I love sharing my story. I have so much fun with this. It’s a great, I guess side gig. And I would love to teach people more about how to do video because it’s so easy. And if I can do it, anybody can do it.
Michael Stewart
Well, that’s great. Well, you know, we’re at the 30 minute mark, and I don’t see any other burning questions. Oh, well, I’ll tell you what, here you go. There you go. Jeff, Jeff, reached out to Meredith or I’ll make sure you get her number. Jeff is an amazing content marketer. And you guys, you know if nothing else you guys need to connect today. I can tell you stuff about Mike. Thanks, Jeff. So, with all that being said, this is Mike Stewart live. If somebody wants to tune into the two o’clock show this afternoon or go back and see some of your shows. They can find that out at Maritza sales. tn.com. Right. Is that correct?
Meredith Smith
Yes. They’re just gonna they’re gonna click on the Facebook link, because it’s going to be it’s going to stream on Facebook, and it’ll be right on my Facebook page.
Michael Stewart
All right, then. Bye. Bye, Meredith. I’ll see you today and thank you so much for being a part of Mike Stewart dot live.
Meredith Smith
Thank you so much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Merry Christmas 2020 – O Holy Night Mike Stewart & Wayne Moss
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I have been creating Christmas Music videos for the last 14 years, since 2006 before there was a YouTube. It is a tradition I love doing and love sharing with you all as a musical gift to the world.
Here in Nashville, my dear friend Wayne Moss is a legend studio musician who played on more hits than he can remember. “Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison, “Jolene” by Dolly Parton, “Blonde on Blonde Album” by Bob Dylan, and 1000’s more at his studio Cinderella Sound in Madison TN.
Wayne played the guitars at his studio and I recorded my keyboards at my studio I call Cinderella Percy Priest. It was an honor for him to let me add my arrangement of keys and sounds to his amazing performance. Hope you enjoy for your holiday this year. Mike and Wayne.
Below is a playlist of my previous holiday music Christmas cards.
Microphones & Internet Audio for 2021
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Good morning. Good morning and welcome to Mike Stewart dot live. I hope folks are having a good holiday season this year in 2020. The craziest year I can remember in my life. But any right here it is another episode of Mike Stewart dot live. And today I want to talk about audio and things that I’m doing with audio and microphones for 2020 people are getting in their seats. Take a look. See here we got. There’s my good buddy, Dr. Bill Lampton How you doing? Bill ready to hear some advice from, you know, no need to change on the snowball, but we’re going to talk about the different microphones available. Any questions, comments, you can put them in the comments area, and I will add them and address to them after I go through what I prepared for you guys today. So anyway, um, number one, um, here’s what the the presentation is called. It’s called microphones and audio editing and sweetening overview primer for 2020. And, number one, I want to talk to you about what I started getting interested in audio as a kid, obviously, my hero was the Beatles and all those great recordings. And in fact, here’s some pictures. You know, when I started reading, recording magazines and studying about audio back in the 70s, and the 80s. I’d see these pictures of the Beatles and they were all around this big big microphone called. And I found that it was called a Neumann u 47. And in fact, I learned that that was a microphone that was built in Germany was invented back in the 30s and 40s. By Telefunken, and of course, all those great Frank Sinatra records, you can see there’s a picture of Frank Sinatra. More importantly, you know, what was it about this microphone? Why did they use such a large microphone to do the vocals? Well, we all learned early on that large diaphragm tube microphones and condenser microphones, those are the type of microphones they were the best for recording the human voice. And of course, you can see that’s, you know, who my mentors were using. So, you know, I thought, well, I’m gonna, I want to try to get me one of these, you 40 sevens? Well, as you can see, I just recently looked at this is a USD u 47 $17,000. It’s for sale right now today, you 47 vintage Newman, like the ones that Beatles use. And like the ones Frank Sinatra used,
I thought, well,
seven, you know, and they, you can get them for around $5,000, four to $5,000. And evidently, because this is a vintage old, original. It commands a higher price is a little out of my comfort zone of paying that kind of money for a microphone, I said, There’s got to be another way of using microphones. That’s not that expensive. So let’s talk about the different microphones that are available today in the different technologies that you can use, you know, well, here’s one of the things mics are better today, and they’re cheaper today. These are some of my favorite microphones that are what are called USB microphones. And you know, one of the tried and true microphones that I’m speaking over right now is the USB. I mean, the Audio Technica 2020 that’s it on the left there. And then the Yeti snowballs, Yeti snowballs, make all kinds of microphones, those are fine microphones and their USB microphones. Microphone I recently bought is called the road NT Mini. That’s it right there in the middle. And I am really blown away 99 bucks. That’s the microphone I bought to put in my computer bag to take with me. So if I need to do any computer audio, or live streaming or anything that I need to do, I have that portable microphone. So if you’ve not bought a microphone, I am blown away with the quality of the NT rode our od e mini that’s the one in the middle. And then a lot of folks a lot of people are using what are called XLR microphones. And the reason I’ve got that up there is you can see the cables down there at the bottom that have the three pins. I’ll put my mouse over here. You can see right there, those for those of you watching the video and if you’re listening to the podcast, an XLR connector is not USB. You have to have a mixer to plug into your computer or any kind of device but these are traditional the Way microphones were built, you know, for years and years using the three pin XLR connector. And that is a Shure microphone, and it’s a great one. And in fact, I’m going to buy one of those, I still have an audio technica 2020. That’s what I’m talking on right now. If I was to pull up my video right here, you can see, you can see that. Let me see if I bring it over here. I can’t say there it is. That’s the microphone I’m talking on right now. And it is still a great, great microphone. So we’ve kind of talked about microphones, that little blue box there that is what’s the Shure microphone needs what’s called a preamp booster. And so in other words, XLR for most applications is really a more advanced level, you can do just fine with either the 8020 USB, any of the Yeti, like the snowball blue or the Yeti like that one. And now this new NTR, rode for 2021. That’s one I was pretty impressed with. Now computer software is it’s soft, it’s free, and it’s cheap. A lot of folks love audacity, audacity works on a Mac or on a PC. There’s a zillion tutorials for audacity on the internet. You can do amazing work with audacity, I’m not a fan of it. Because I started with on PC with Sony software, audio studio, they’re now up to version 14. And then of course, if you’re on a Mac GarageBand comes on all Macs for free and GarageBand is amazing software. So if you’re on Mac GarageBand or audacity are both great resources, they’re both free. Um, when it comes to audio on a PC, I am going to be demoing and showing you audio studio. I’m still using audio studio because I’ve been using it for years. There’s nothing I can’t do with audio studio. And that’s the software’s I recommend. These are the basic audio skills that you’ve got to master. Number one, you need to get the good microphone working with your computer. And then you need to know how to hit the record button. And then we’re going to talk about marking mistakes. And the ways I used to do it before software got more advanced, and then going to talk about normalization.
And then the format to save audio for the internet which is especially what I call the podcast resolution which is 44.1 which is the resolution or the quality 16 bit 128 bits per second 16 bit is there’s there’s higher bit rates. 16 bit is perfect for podcasts and internet audio. And 128 is what’s called the stream, right that’s the internet connection you need to have for this audio to string. So I’m gonna pull up my camera right now I’m gonna stop showing. And this is what we used to call a clicker we used to use this before software with market. fact this is from my old web design company here you can see sound pages.com. And what this thing would do would make a click. And that’s how we used to mark mistakes. And let me go ahead and share my screen on Sound Forge. Here we go or audio studio. This is what I’m used to using. And I’m going to do these basic demos of how you mark an edit in an audio editing program. And pretty much all of the same audio programs work exactly the same way. So for instance, right up here in the corner, I have a record button, all programs is going to do that. And let me show you hit record. And one of the things that you can do, you know, you should have some sort of level meters. These right here, green going up and down, are letting me know that my microphone is working. And when I hit the record button right here, this red button, it will start recording. So let me show you how you start recording. I am now recording audio for a podcast. I’m now recording audio for a video voiceover I’m now recording narration that’s going to be an audiobook any oops, I made a mistake. I did a click that marked it. I did a thumb snap that marked it. And then on my keyboard I can hit the letter M for Mark. That’s what software added years later. Now let’s close this or stop it. You can see there, that right there was the clicker. And that right there was my thumb snap. And then down there on the end that the letter one is the software marking. So the whole purpose of making marks is that when you make a mistake, you, you do what’s called a pickup. So in other words, I knew the mistake was here, because I marked it. And then I know that right, here’s where the pickup is. So if I highlight the mistake, and I go to edit, and I cut it out, that takes out the mistakes. And if I made a mistake, I can undo it and bring it back. That’s called non destructive editing. And then until I save the file with my edits, so one of the things I always used to teach people do is the first thing you want to do is save your file in a folder, so you make a folder for your project. So let’s go here and do this now. Audio project, whatever you name it. And I go in here, and I save whatever the name of this file is, this is demo podcast on edited. So in other words, I want to save an unedited, 128. mp3. That’s what I want to say, you could save it as what’s called a WAV or an AI file at high resolution. But you don’t need to, you’re just taking up a lot of hard drive space. So if you save everything at mp3 128, CD quality, whatever your program is, save it now you’ve got an unedited version. Now, if you make a mistake on your edits, you can always get it back. That’s the reason I always did it that way. So I look at my marks, I don’t even have to remember where the marks of where the mistakes are. Because I mark them with my either a clicker, my thumb snap, or some sort of software annotation. And then when I cut out my problem, problems. And let’s say that that was another mistake right there. I cut it out. Now I’ve you know, let’s say I want to take out that blank space there a highlight the blank space, and I cut it out or I can delete it, clear it whatever I want to. And now I say that, again as a 128. And I call it
as something like Final x or final edit whatever I want to name it. So now I’ve got both things. Now one of the processes that I do with my audio is I do a process called normalize. And what normalize most all programs will do this, it enables you to get it as loud as possible. See if I don’t know if you could tell it, but the undo it here, you see your watch those blobs of blue, get bigger. And normalizing just gives you a little bit more volume. There’s other processes, but that’s the main thing that you want to be able to do is do you know edit out what’s bad, what’s left is good. Basically, your markers let you know where the bad things are, you might want to preview and then by playing them, you can hit play and make sure it’s right thing. And then you can either cut it. If you made a mistake, you can undo it and get it back. That’s called non destructive editing, like I said, so let me let me get out of this. I’m back here. Again, like I said, there was my silly little clicker. That’s what we used to use back in the 90s when digital audio was first was first, you know invented and they wasn’t software to be able to market. And then we’ll go back over here. Let me share some more of my slides. Because I got a little bit more here. So just to review, this is what we went over. record sound pretty easy. Mark the mistakes, a thumb snap, make go ahead and bring my camera up here to where you can see me when I do this thumb snap, I just get my fingers up here. I can mark a mistake like that. In other words, hello, I made a mistake. And you do what’s called a pickup normalize and then save it as a 44.1 16 bit 128 audio file.
Now
I’m going to go over here to my slides again, and we got a few more things we want to talk about. When it comes to sweetening, this is a little bit more of an advanced strategy and this requires something like I multitrack program Audio studio is a limited multitrack program. Now in Audacity, and in GarageBand, those are multitrack programs. But I was a Sony fan. And so I learned acid Pro. And now you can get acid music maker for about 49 bucks, and it’s perfect if you’re PC based. But what the only difference between sweetening means that you’re taking mp3 or WAV files or AI files that you’ve recorded, and you’re assembling them into a final mix of layers. And you can adjust the volume levels, you can bring in sound effects, you can bring in commercials and jingles. You know, it’s one of the things that I’ve been doing with my podcast is, you know, I edit those in. But you know, one of the things that I love is recording interviews. And I use join stream yard to record Jay interviews. Because when somebody is hooked up to stream yard cloud system, the very system I’m using right now, I can get a high quality mp3 between two people. And then I can bring it into either asset pro or sound audio studio and edit it. And then of course, a lot of internet marketers have Camtasia you should own Camtasia if you’re an internet marketer, my gosh, there’s so many things that you can do with Camtasia. And Camtasia is an amazing multitrack sweetening mixing program. It has just like it has multiple video tracks, you can have multiple audio tracks and adjust the levels, edit out and assemble a program. So this is a good place to talk about, you know the use of jingles. But why should you own a good microphone? Why should you learn to use these softwares? Well, number one, these are the skills that I think are needed for any business. A great microphone is so affordable today. The rode podcaster the Rode anti Audio Technica when I started you know we were looking at those 1000 Studio microphones that were just out of reach for us they didn’t make those kind of microphones for computers back in the day but now they do and what can you do with a great microphone? Well, you can do a podcast a live stream like I’m doing right now. YouTube and Facebook video content product creation Camtasia recordings, audio and video commercials. Coaching I do one on one coaching with my microphone, go to meetings zoom Skype. And then of course I do one on one networking meetings to build business so owning a good microphone it’s there’s no excuse for not owning a good microphone anymore. We’re gonna go to the comments now and see if there are any questions this is a great time for you to be sure to put in your questions. All I’ve got so many good friends here. Here’s my good buddy Jeff herring so glad you’re here and my good buddy Carlin bunting all the way out there from Grand canyon.com still using his a 20 tt at 2020 USB. And folks, the world famous Chuck boozer Gee, Chuck, it’s so good that you’re hope you’re doing well. Hope you’re staying safe. Just outdated itself. Sweet. I love that. My buddy up and wonderful. north of the border in Canada, Michael, Chris, good to see you here. My pest control, buddy. Hi, Michael. Good morning. You use the Rode podcaster and Adobe Audition all great programs all It doesn’t matter. Nobody at the bank says what equipment did you use? And let’s see if there’s any questions any Carlin says still use at your recommendation most modern gets simply edited and video and Camtasia now. Yeah, sure. I mean, back when I started, there was a there was only so many things you could use. But now there’s so many great options. And folks, here is a internet marketing legend, Kurt. So good to see you here, man. Good to see you again, brother. Hey, let’s catch up soon. And there’s one of the most precious ladies in the world. That’s my daughter, Lindsay and Lindsay, what’s the platform for podcasts? WordPress, and we’re going to be working on that. You’ve got the microphone, hopefully got the computer, maybe you can make those things happen.
And
thank you, Nina. Yeah, this is all about making content and building an audience. In fact, every time I do these things, I see more people showing up live which is so much fun to have this kind of interactivity. Tom says he has no question. Well, I know Tom, a lot of this is basic stuff for you. But there’s a lot of folks out there that may still be struggling with what microphones are cool. You know what software is good, you know, what are the basics and and of course, here’s Mikey says, I’ve been using the Blue Snowball, amazing microphone. In fact, I had a Blue Snowball and I gave it to my good friend, recording legend Wayne moss as a Christmas present. And that’s why I replaced my Blue Snowball with I thought, well, I’m gonna try out this nti anti road, and I love it. It’s been great. So
thank you. That’s my my darling daughter. I’ll call you later. So we, uh, let’s see here. It’s great to know that audio video training originally CPU is still foundation. Well, you know, one of the things Carlin is the principles of editing, mixing and sweetening. You know, they haven’t changed since the invention of movies. I mean, the masters of movie soundtracks from the i was i was watching a movie on Netflix just recently. And when I watch this movie about comedies, forget the name, it’s not Matt Martin. Anyway, it’s the guy who wrote Citizen Kane, for George, for Oh, my goodness, I’m having a senior moment here. Orson Welles or some wells had this particular writer and they were just talking about all the soundtrack and all the sound mixing stuff that they did. Back in the 30s. Back, you know, back, you gotta remember, movies were silent until about 1923 24. Somewhere in there. The first sound movie was the jazz singer with Al Jolson. And then of course, Steamboat Willie was a Walt Disney audio, movie. And so mixing of sound and Orson Welles. Thank you, Kurt. Golly, I can’t believe how the older I get, I think my hard drive is just running out of space here. But any rate, um, or some whales? So we’re getting some questions here. Um, Michael says, Do you recommend for podcast hosting, I use anchor FM. Ah, I like putting my audio up in my WordPress website. And I put my media files on Amazon s3 Cloud. That’s my preference. A lot of people use Lipson, a lot of people use pod bean, a lot of people use. What’s the other one? pod bean? There’s blueberry hosting Lipson. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of good ones out there. But as long you know, the only reason I don’t want to put it on anchor FM is I’m not sure if it allows you to use a WordPress blog with it. And that’s what I’m a big proponent of so anchor anchor may be great, I just have my way of doing it. And I’m, it works for me. And at the end of the day, build an audience. And and of course, whatever system you go with, you know, it’s hard to move it and what I like about by putting it on Amazon s3 and using WordPress, if I had to move it to a different system, I wouldn’t lose all my content. And I don’t know what the terms of service are with with anchor so I’m not not so sure about if there’s any issues with privacy, Maggie says concern about privacy issues. I don’t know of any that. All I know is that when I keep a secure WordPress website, and I put my files securely up on Amazon s3, everything works the way I know it’s do it. So it’s kind of like, you know, what’s the best microphone? What’s the best camera? What’s the best pod? podcast? hosting service. If it works, and it’s affordable. That’s all it matters. Okay, and somebody says they’re using captivate, which, quite honestly, I’ll investigate it. I don’t know. Mikey says anchor is great. They make it easy to Well, that’s good to know. So folks, you know what, pick whatever is best for you. So let’s see if we got any other questions here. Um, you know, we are brought to you today by Mike Stewart everything club, but we got a deal going on at audio claws. And thank you for that great recommendation. Is there any other questions that have anybody has here because we’re getting close up to the half hour point. It’s so great to see so many of my old friends. Kurt, give me a call sometime. I’d love to catch up to what you’re doing these days. Good to see you Maggie, Michael. Um, I’ve got to remember that this does become my podcast, so I got to make sure it’s not too visual. I tried to describe everything in an auditory format. Um, hope everybody’s staying safe. I hope Everybody is getting used to going virtual. And of course, I just wanted to have a little bit of an update that, you know, one of the things about what doesn’t get old, what doesn’t get outdated, is good content never gets outdated, good microphones last a lifetime.
And then more importantly, software changes, software gets better computers get faster. You know, one of the things about software’s and technology, they’re constantly getting faster, better. And of course, whatever was good six months ago is now outdated. But the good news is, is content marketing is I don’t think we’ll ever get old. Because content marketing started with Gutenberg and the printing press. And so content marketing will always be there. Good sounding audio is always going to have a place. In fact, when I listen to old movies that were made, you know, go back and listen to the Wizard of Oz, that movie was made in 1939. You can hear the dialogue, you can hear the sound effects, you can the music and the vocals, everything is you know, it’s amazing. We’ve been getting good professional quality audio, because of good microphones and good audio processing and recording techniques. Since you know, almost 300 years. So, you know, good audio starts with a good microphone, and good strategies and good techniques. And that’s what I wanted to cover today. Um, more importantly, um, let’s see, I’ve got one question here says, I need a good lapel mic for my phone and some blogging, any recommendations? You know, I have seen several Bluetooth, cell phone lapel mics, and I haven’t tested them. There’s a couple out there, they’re different prices. And maybe I’ll do a show on lapel mics. Because I’m, I don’t do a lot of out in the field recording. Because Because of COVID. I don’t go out in the field that much. So, but that that would be a good idea for a show. So bill says thank you, I love all these great comments. It’s very supportive the to get the support from you guys. And you know, submit your questions to me by email, there’s at Mike store dot live, there is a question submission, suggestions for things that you want me to cover in the future. And you know, anything like that. So if that’s a, it looks like nobody has any burning questions. So I appreciate you to another one of our sponsors, I want to remind you, we’re brought to you by domains, you control.com and dot live secrets at domains you control. I highly recommend that if you’re going to do a podcast that you get a dot live URL. In fact, this show is streaming at Mike Stewart dot live if you don’t own your dot live URL, you know, be sure to consider to go to domains you control and own that dot live. And of course, if you want to call me and reach out to me, I publicly put out my phone number 770-826-3662 love to talk to you. And I’m going to end with what Maggie says. Merry Christmas to you and to all of yours. And thanks for watching this episode of Mike Stewart dot live