Modern Music Marketing

Andrew Southworth (00:00)
Darrick, if you only had one minute to give producers the best advice you could to help them go full time in music, what would you say?

Agent Method (00:06)
The

world is ever-changing and since it has changed so drastically in the past five years, the state of the world, the economic turmoil that pushes people to have to do more things to be able to live in the same manner that they're accustomed to or more or less or whatever. There's a lot of standardizations that each company will give you.

that have to do with their brand standards or whatever. And when you're using a preset inside of a DAW, you have to account for a bit more because then they could also ask you to do stuff like say that the DAW has like a macro system separate of the, like, do you want it to be functional with these plugins or like, there's a lot to consider. It's kind of a good thing in a sense too because you become more autonomous, you become more individualistic, give you new skills and new skills are always better.

I guess there's a positive way of looking at it. Oh, man. I think it would be to niche down into one thing and get extremely good at that and then branch out from there. If you find what you're very good at and get really good at, it's a really solid foundation to then build upon. So that would be my suggestion.

Andrew Southworth (01:27)
Yeah, I agree with that, honestly. Like every single person I know that does music professionally, whether they're an artist or they're a producer or whatever else, know, they kind of usually starts with them being super obsessed with something that they like really, really like. And then it just kind of leads to other opportunities.

Agent Method (01:50)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's kind of essentially what happened with my working with Slate and various other companies that I work with these days, because it was doing videos and getting good at the sound design in those videos. I was doing sound design already, but getting good at the sound design in the context of those videos and then those catching the wind of various companies. And then that leading to...

a different position working with that company and then a different company from the yeah so absolutely it's just it's all about the chain so

Andrew Southworth (02:27)
Yeah, and I'm going let you do an introduction of yourself and go through your journey. But you essentially, you get paid by various companies and probably individuals to make sounds, right? To make sounds of various natures, whether it's making presets or synthesizers or making...

Agent Method (02:48)
Samples or one-shots, loops.

Andrew Southworth (02:50)
or loops or sample libraries, you get paid to do that. So for all producers out there who are like, hmm, I like making sounds. How can I get paid to make sounds? This guy gets paid to make noises. And so walk us through like, at some point you're baby Derek, baby agent method or baby agent. You like making music. What's the kind of like quick journey from that to like you getting your like first couple paying gigs?

Agent Method (03:20)
Right, totally.

Really, it was me in the infancy of my sound designing stuff. was, you know, messing around with synths and the knobs and all that kind of stuff, trying to really figure out what it does just by trial and error. But it was also a lot of me, like I do in some of the videos, like going around the world around me and pulling from, pulling ideas from the stuff around me or the areas that I'm in, like for like...

reverb or whatever those, know, whatever else, and trying to utilize those in the best possible way. So doing that all the time, and I said this on another podcast, I just didn't think it was special. I just thought that's what you do. If you are particularly creative in whatever manner for production, you'll figure out new ways of doing stuff, unique ways of doing things. I just figured it was that thing.

But then, you know, putting it into content form gets the attention of various other companies and then, you know, kind of take off from there. I'm not sure if that answered the question, but hopefully, hopefully that did.

Andrew Southworth (04:38)
Well, so you have this series, what's the series called? It's kind of a short form concept.

Agent Method (04:43)
Yeah,

I haven't done one in a while. They take a long time to do. Let's see if this sounds good. Yeah.

Andrew Southworth (04:49)
see if the sound fit.

Did that content you were making end up leading to you actually getting this type of work or was it something you did after the fact?

Agent Method (04:58)
Yeah, yeah, I was already doing it on a much smaller basis. Various artists would contact me to make stuff and I'd done some stuff for some studios that I worked at. yeah, that was like the first now working with audio companies move. Yeah, those videos were the gateway into all that.

Andrew Southworth (05:29)
Did they contact you?

Agent Method (05:32)
Yeah, actually, I, least by the, the very, the genesis of it, he did actually, Stephen Slate contacted me. We've been friends on Facebook for a while, just through some mutual connections and all that kind of stuff. And he saw the shower video that I did years ago now at this point. I think this is like during the very beginning of the pandemic or even before that. Yeah, I think it was before that.

No, yeah, it was before. And he said, I love this. Can you do this for our stuff, our plugins? And I've had a lot of the slight stuff for a while and I was like, yeah, absolutely, I will do that for your plugins. great, yep. And that turned itself into pretty consistent work with them doing some content. And then I kind of shuffled my way over to Sound Design for Anna 2.

once they picked that up and made that a part of the slate bundle that they have. And just on a side note, Stephen gets a lot of shit in the industry. He is one of the nicest, genuine guys I've ever met in my entire life. He's just one of those guys that just catches a bunch of shit. And it's just like, you guys just don't...

Andrew Southworth (06:52)
for the products? Does he get shit for like slate digital products?

Agent Method (06:54)
Huh?

No, I think just because of his demeanor and how he is and all that kind of stuff, he's a Jersey boy that went to LA. So it's just like...

Andrew Southworth (07:05)
Honestly, honestly like I use a slate microphone I use I a slate thing I've had a slate pass for years

Agent Method (07:11)
Products are

great. I think it's just like, you know, shitposting groups and stuff. Anyways, I'm not trying to make a diatribe. You don't have to put this in there. You can totally cut this out. But I just wanted to have that on camera.

Andrew Southworth (07:22)
Stephen

Slate, wonderful human. Good to hear. But yeah, so that was kind of your first regular recurring work in this was with Slate Digital. Or Stephen Slate's repertoire of businesses. Different ones. How do payments work when you're working on something like a preset pack?

Agent Method (07:26)
Yeah, yeah.

Oh, good question. So that can be project-based like with anything else or preset-based. And then they just take an amount of presets and that can range anywhere from 25 to 80 to, you know, like really big companies who will remain nameless that basically make computers can charge anywhere upwards of like 120 and 30 per...

per preset because it's, know, DIY based and whatever. So I haven't worked with them, but that's what I've been told by people who have. Per preset, so like, the preset.

Andrew Southworth (08:29)
I'm what they'll pay.

of $120 or holy crap yeah I wouldn't know was not expecting it to be that way

Agent Method (08:37)
Yeah.

It

really just depends because if you're working with simply big, like you're not only accounting for just the preset, you're accounting for the macros, you're accounting for how it behaves, you're accounting for how it interacts with the rest of the system. Does your preset cause, does it too big? Is it using too much system power? So you have to compensate for lots of stuff. There's a lot of standardizations.

that each company will give you that have to do with their brand standards or whatever. And when you're using a preset inside of a DAW, you have to account for a bit more because then they could also ask you to do stuff like say that the DAW has like a macro system separate of the, like, do you want it to be functional with these plugins or like, there's a lot to consider. it can be, know, and then, but what the thing is, it's like, that's great if it's that per preset, but you can spend,

two, three, four hours working on a preset sometimes just to get it 100 % right. And so your dollar value is like 30 bucks an hour. You know what I mean? It's like, it really just depends. So it behooves you to be really fast, but then it doesn't necessarily lend itself to a very well thought, well managed, detailed preset. Some people can just crank through shit, especially if you're super used to stuff, but it really just depends on the company.

Andrew Southworth (10:11)
the type of synthesizer and also what type of patch you're making. if you're, if you need to make a bunch of bass patches and you're trying to make an analog bass and a re-space and whatever bass, it's like, those are probably easy peasy, but you get the, you know, the presets where you click one button and there's like a bass, a lead, a drum set. And it's like, this might've taken 10 hours. Why do they even include this? Like how am

Agent Method (10:31)
bunch.

They even

include it and then like those are just fun like showcase pieces like flexing like look what I can do and also what can the synth itself do? But They're hardly ever used and people plus people like dead mouse fucking hate them so like Like I don't know if you have his did his If you saw his master class, I bought that years and years ago, but he but he he he goes off on stuff like that Whatever. It's fucking part of the fun of making it man

Andrew Southworth (11:06)
Yeah, yeah, I bet. Yeah. I mean, as a case study, it's impressive. I forget what synthesizer it was, I bought it like three years ago, and I went in, and there was like a whole list of presets like that. And like, this particular synth could load up like, synths, like multiple layers of synths and samples and loops and whatever. there was like a library of presets that were just like songs. There was like 20 presets that were just like full songs.

Agent Method (11:34)
Interesting.

can't think. What was it called? You know the Okay. Yeah, yeah, think about it. Let me know. That sounds interesting.

Andrew Southworth (11:39)
Yeah, I to look.

It

was like, am I ever going to use this? But anyway, so that's interesting. you said sometimes it's project-based, presets, maybe.

Agent Method (11:53)
Beeper preset, yeah.

Andrew Southworth (11:55)
When it comes to samples or sample libraries, does that work in a similar basis?

Agent Method (12:03)
Yeah, that tends to be more, at least in my experience, and the stuff that I've done with my wife, Iveen, and her stuff, that was, most of the stuff tend to be more project-based, and sometimes you just, but they request an amount, so you can just break that down to whatever that ends up being per the project, per the amount of stuff. And samples can be less, well, it kind of really depends. It can be less.

difficult or more difficult depending on what you're doing with the sample and how intense it has to be and where you're getting the sound from, how much cleaning it takes and all that kind of stuff. Cleaning it takes based on what you're going for. But yeah, that can be more project based. But again, it comes down to the, know, how long are you working on whatever you're doing and that just cuts into your hourly per whatever. So.

Andrew Southworth (12:56)
Yeah. When I, when I talked to Venus Theory or Cameron, like a year or so ago on this channel, he, yeah, yeah, he is. I wasn't expecting when I met him in NAMM that his voice would sound exactly like

Agent Method (13:04)
Yeah, Cam is great.

Yeah, exactly like that. Yeah, that's

how we met. I was standing there talking to Cameron and then I go, you're, and Cameron goes, yeah, Andrew Southworth. And I go, yes, that's the guy. Yes, nice to meet you. Yeah, yeah. That was cool.

Andrew Southworth (13:23)
It was a, yeah, when I bumped into him, I was like, holy shit, you just sound like a radio man. Yeah. You know? Yeah. But anyways, what I was talking to him about this, because he does a similar type of thing you do. mean, he's a guest on do a hundred. And he was mentioning that in some cases you'll have backend royalties on samples or precepts.

Agent Method (13:38)
really good at it too.

Yeah, you can work out profit sharing with some of the companies that you work with. It really just depends on the company and what they're willing to do. Someone like Cameron, he's got a ton of clout and stuff that he's built from being well known in the industry, so he can kind of swing those things. As much as I'm hired and as good as I think I am, because I keep getting hired, word of mouth, I don't have the...

online presence he has. like, don't think I have that bargaining chip yet, but there's that's definitely part of because I'm sure like Andrew Huang can do that kind of stuff and Ben Jordan and all that shit, but

Andrew Southworth (14:28)
That's a good point I never considered. There can be kind of a celebrity aspect to the music industry. You might hire in kind of an artist situation, you're hiring a mixing engineer, mastering engineer, you could hire someone who might be fully like best in the business, but no name recognition, master your song, 100 bucks, 200 bucks.

But if you're trying to get the same guy that is gonna do the same thing, but the last couple of projects he's worked on has been like Taylor Swift, Metallica, just whatever the biggest artists in the world are, it might be $10,000, right? And you're not paying for the time and the skill, you're in that case, you're also kind of paying for the name in a way, not necessarily just for the name, for the, you want that person and so you're,

You're willing to give them a little bit more to be able to say they're involved in the project. When you buy any synthesizer in the world, pretty much, and you see Richard DeVine or Divine, I never know how he's... Yeah, yeah, right.

Agent Method (15:38)
Yeah, you're like, okay, this is real. This is the real deal. Yeah.

Andrew Southworth (15:41)
Yeah, I I don't I can't think of a sound designer that's like, it's very specifically a sound design guy. And that's famous as him.

Agent Method (15:51)
Right, yeah, he's probably the top. And the only other guy I would say, other guys I would say outrightly, but they're both more musicians as well, but their sound design is legendary. Though they may not do it explicitly like Mick Gordon, Trent Reznor, like those level of guys. Obviously they're both incredible musicians and all that stuff. Yeah. And also I don't want to make it sound, hang on. Say it again.

Andrew Southworth (16:17)
like

if you're trying to get Trent Reznor to make samples for your thing, it's like, it's easy.

Agent Method (16:24)
You've you've you've got money and he likes what you do. Yeah, that's cuz that's the only way he's clearly one of those guys like if he's not There's no amount of money that will make him do a fucking thing Yeah, so it's just he's got to like what you like. But also let me clear. I don't want to make it sound like The camera and like Venus theory got those things because he's famous. He's very good They could have just wanted to do that profit-sharing thing just because but I just I'm just taking a guess here

Andrew Southworth (16:53)
No, I mean, it makes sense. It's not like they're going to grab some schmuck. They're not gonna have like Drake, who's a super famous artist make presets for serum or something. Because he's not good. I mean, maybe he's

Agent Method (17:11)
I was about to say, watch him be like fucking really good at preset.

Andrew Southworth (17:14)
You

never know, maybe he's actually in a maze.

Agent Method (17:16)
Yeah, he's like a savant for it

Andrew Southworth (17:20)
But you know, it's like you have to be good. That's kind of a given in anything in music. Like if not good, you're not going to get anywhere, anywhere. You're going be a successful artist. But then around that, it's like that's your ticket into the game. All the other stuff that happens is almost not because you're good necessarily. It's more like, at least in my experience, it's more so how do you handle each job that you're given?

Yes. Did you do a good job? Are you doing the business stuff right? Because your skill set, you had to have that just to get your first, your first.

Agent Method (17:57)
That's the substrate for which everything else is built upon.

Andrew Southworth (18:02)
Cause you don't go from nothing to working with Slate Digital and Cherry Audio and Killer Hearts and Akai and Moog and Baby Audio and Reason, right? Yeah. You get one and then you get the next one. then you tell people when you're going to do the next one, like, I worked on that. You know, they're well actually that's really good. Come on, come on us. You obviously didn't, you obviously weren't a total dumpster fire to work with.

Agent Method (18:29)
Thanks

Andrew Southworth (18:30)
There's no way they would have hired you if you were a douchebag, you were bad at what you did.

Agent Method (18:37)
Yeah, exactly. And being and just being personable and amenable to new ideas and taking criticism well and all that kind of stuff is just so important to anything, any creative industry. And this is no different just in terms of what you have to, sorry, my mother's calling me out of all people, what you have to do to get the job done and

And make people like you so they want to hire you no one wants to work with someone who doesn't who may be really good at they do but is a cantankerous asshat about it, so

Andrew Southworth (19:18)
Yeah. I mean, I own an ad agency and we've turned down work just because we got bad vibes from the potential client. know, email communication was like, they seem a little like hostile. seem like they don't really know what they want. And we don't think even if we did the best job we could ever possibly do, they don't seem like they'll ever be happy. Yeah. So let's just, let's just turn them down.

Let's just not work with them, right? It's not, in a lot of cases, just not worth the money, you know? And I would imagine it's like, why would someone hire you if you're like a diva, you know? So when I met you, we were at NAMM 2024 in Anaheim. And a lot of people that I meet will, if they ever heard of NAMM, they'll be like, well,

why would you go to such a thing? Right? Cause it sounds like it's a place that's just for gear companies to announce gear and companies like Sweetwater and Guitar Center to buy a bunch of and bunch of influencer people to talk about the gear on their YouTube channels. But that's not why you were there.

Agent Method (20:27)
No, no, no, no, I wasn't there, man. I went for the networking, for the meeting people that I have worked with quite a bit in the past, but I've never met face to face, even after years of working with them. So it was a really good chance to start putting faces to names and personalities to faces. it's one of those things, you get in the face of someone, there's a different energy there and you can...

elicit different conversations out of them. You can talk about things that you may not have talked about via email or a call or whatever. It's just a more personable approach. that worked out really nice. And being able to do that and go to talk to other companies that I have had vague contact with in the past, be like, hey, I'm this guy. They're like, yeah. And then talk to them about maybe doing some work in the future and all that kind of stuff. And picking up, looking for stuff. I was there for a few reasons. I was there for...

The networking and finding some work for myself. was there for catching up with people. was there working on getting my wife, Iveen, some interested clients for her stuff or talking about her influencing and or sponsorships for, she plays harp and a bunch of other stuff. And that's actually, we just had a meeting about something this Monday about a new company to sponsor her for harp stuff because I went to NAMM and talked to somebody.

And also for a project that I'm working on with Casey Cavalieri of the band, Wonder Years. He does the record process podcast and all that stuff. don't know if you've seen that stuff, but. we're doing a compilation album for charity with Rude Records and they're out of Italy. And it's going to be like a future punk. It's just this little combo genre thing that I've started building during the pandemic or right before.

And so I was there for those reasons to try to get stuff for all those, talk to various companies, just talk about charity, try to get sponsorships and information for her, get work for me, meet people. It was a lot of stuff, man. And it was, I'm glad that I, I'm really glad that I went and it was very fruitful. I came back with a bunch of information, a bunch of business cards, plenty, plenty of emails to send once I got back.

So, and you were one of them. And here we are. Imagine that.

Andrew Southworth (22:55)
We are. Right.

Yeah, it's a lot of people I think undervalue the networking and person stuff. I mean, we also just went through a global pandemic. So that probably helped. But also going to these music events can sometimes closed off. Sometimes they're really expensive. Like, you if you wanted to go to an all access South by Southwest ticket, it's like $2,000. Right.

Agent Method (23:25)
Thank

Andrew Southworth (23:26)
If, mean, you can go to a lot of stuff for free, but if you want to see everything and attend all the panels where most of the real networking is probably happening, probably need a ticket. It's going to cost at least a grand, right? And even NAMM, I mean, it used to be closed off and it, I mean, I get, get tickets for free just to get.

Agent Method (23:44)
Because a press and that kind of stuff and

Andrew Southworth (23:47)
I ended up having to buy them because I didn't know who to contact for the media one. So I just bought, they call it a network badge because my business is registered as an AMP company. And so we get them for half price, but it's like 375 bucks a ticket. And then I went there and I was like, hey, I have this networking badge, but I have a YouTube channel and a blog and social media stuff. Can I have a media badge? And they're like, show me your channel. I'm like, they're like, okay, yep, fill in your information.

Agent Method (23:57)
cool.

Andrew Southworth (24:17)
So it's like, I have got it for free. just didn't know who to email. They gave me the email address. But, but like, if you're just a regular person and you want to go, I think it's like $600.

Agent Method (24:22)
Awesome.

the ticket I got was, I bought a ticket initially and then I talked to the Slate guys and found out that they were going and I was like, can I get on that exhibitor pass joint? And they were like, yeah. And so they got me an exhibitor pass. So I could walk into places even when you weren't supposed to, which was nice. But like when they shut down, because there's people hanging around just a little bit at the end, once everybody's kind of left and doing their stuff. you can, there's...

Andrew Southworth (24:46)
Yeah.

Agent Method (24:55)
a little bit more of a conversation you can have before they even start leaving. Yeah. So that was nice.

Andrew Southworth (25:02)
Yeah, think these events are super valuable. Every time I go, mean, for me, the reason why I go is one, just, can you tell I like music here, right? I like synthesizers.

Agent Method (25:14)
So

do I, so do I, hang on. Mine's not as impressive as you, but there we go.

Andrew Southworth (25:21)
I don't know, That's pretty sweet. What is that big synthesizer to your right?

Agent Method (25:26)
No, right, to the right. This is a GRP A4. GRP A4. GRP is an Italian company, I think. And it looks modular, but it's all just one big thing. Right, with some modularity up in the corner right there. And this thing right here, I wish I could zoom in on this. This is a Voyetra 8. It's one of the rarest synths. And I don't know if you know that one, but...

Andrew Southworth (25:31)
I

at the start of the day.

Yeah, UVI made a model, like a clone of it, I have the plugin version. It's cool. It have cost like five grand or something.

Agent Method (26:05)
No, it was free. So the keyboard in right over here, this thing on top, is that's the keyboard that came with it. And I was living in, I'm from Northern Virginia, DC area. I'm from Reston, Virginia, right outside DC. And a friend of my brother's just found this keyboard in his garage one day. And he knows that he knew that his friend's older brother was into music. So he was like, you want this keyboard? And I was like, yeah.

I saw that it had a XLR out on the back and I was like, okay, so it's probably like a Rhodes type thing or a Whirly or whatever, like a little compact thing. And I plugged it in and I wasn't getting any sound in anything and I was just like, this is weird. I wonder what this is about. And so I looked up on the back, it's like the VP-K5 and I was like, and then it said, this is the keyboard that was sold with this.

synthesizer unit, the Voyatra 8 by Octave Plateau. And I was like, and I called him, was like, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, is this? Where is this? This is the thing. And he was like, and he was like, oh, don't know, man. And then eventually, a couple of years later, he found it. And he was like, hey, man, I found that thing. Do you want it? I was like, yes, please. And he drove it over the house. And I, you know, I

Andrew Southworth (27:26)
We

we could have sold that thing on Reverb.com for like 10 grand.

Agent Method (27:31)
It is a little wonky now though. It's got like 16 oscillators in it or something like that and they've all got a tune and there is a button that says A440 and then you hit the auto tune button and it literally just starts spitting out A440 and then you start seeing the numbers spin up and down to try to tune all of the oscillators before you use it. This one up here is manual tuning. You just gotta let it warm up and mess around with the stuff. Yeah, so it's wild.

It's a wild, wild, it's one of the first, I think it was one of the first to have digital analog rack mount combo. was like 83, 82, something like that. But it was the first one to use, maybe one of the first, I'm not exactly sure. Someone watching this is gonna be like, wrong, fucking whatever. It has three pin MIDI on the back. It was before they standard it to five pin DIN.

And so I had to get conversion cables, which were not cheap. And there was one pair I found on eBay and they work. And so I can, know, MIDI out and MIDI back or audio in and all that stuff. Yeah. Well, MIDI in too, technically to the computer. And so it's really, it's really cool. I get to use it and I've sampled it. I've made wavetables out of the sounds and all the kind of stuff. Like I really love working with wavetables and all that kind of stuff. You can really, really unique things with wavetables.

Andrew Southworth (29:02)
Probably the first money that I ever really made online outside of little bits of YouTube ad revenue over the years. I've been doing YouTube for like forever. But the first real money I made like on the internet was selling sample packs, contact libraries, preset packs and stuff on my own website.

Agent Method (29:22)
always seems like the go-to because it's simple to do and then you get it out and all that stuff. But it's very difficult to market that stuff I found, least for me, because I have no audience really.

Andrew Southworth (29:32)
Yeah,

well for me at the time I didn't really have that much of an audience either. first, I I had some, I had like maybe 15,000 subscribers but a lot of them were for my... Oh god boy. A lot of them were for my vocal tutorials. So back in the day I used to teach screaming lessons on this channel. So I'm metal vocalist. Then eventually I got tired of making that video, those videos, because it, I don't know, got old and so I...

Agent Method (29:44)
It's 15,000 more than I-

Yeah

Andrew Southworth (30:02)
I was more interested in at the time, which was music production and sound design and all that jazz. But the biggest way I was selling it initially was I would make a preset pack or I'd make a contact library and I would put it on either Contact Hub or Sampleism, which is now, they've been kind of merged together to, I forget what the name of the company is, it's gone. Sampleism.

Agent Method (30:07)
Yeah.

Sounds.com wasn't Sounds.com doing this

Andrew Southworth (30:29)
That Native

Instruments thing, if I go to sampleism, it's probably going to tell me. No? Contacthub.com? What is it called?

think it's like Lute Audio or something. yeah, Lute Audio. They used to be two things, but they were like very specific in only contact libraries or only samples. And they merged them into this kind of monthly subscription thing like years online. Either way, they had this marketplace where people would be going and looking for these things. And for the contact libraries, I found it very easy, not easy, I mean, but like significantly easier to get sales because...

Anyone can make a sample. Well, anyone that knows how to make sounds can make a sample. Right. But not everyone can script a contact library. Right. That was my first like in. It was like, okay, I love music gear. I love like making weird sounds and fun sounds and sound cool and capturing them. But I also know how to code a little bit. so I learned.

Agent Method (31:40)
Yeah, I was about to ask. That's awesome.

Andrew Southworth (31:42)
I scripted my own interfaces and then I would capture like that's how I ended up with this Juno 106 at one point and once I went these other synths and stuff, I would basically be like, well, I can buy this synth. And sometimes it's a cheap synth, like a Behringer Neutron or something. Buy it for 300 bucks. And I'm like, you know, I'll, I'll, I program like a midi thing that's just going to capture these notes. So I just kind of record and then, know, tweak the knobs and let it capture and then tweak the knobs capture.

the biggest work was slicing it all up into samples and editing it. But then I kind of built my own contact libraries and I was like, well, I can do this because I have a background in engineering, like mechanical engineering, but because of that, no software. so that was kind of my like little specialty when I was doing all this. for the samples, my way of fighting against the swarm of like cymatics and everything was just don't compete with him.

Agent Method (32:29)
That's really awesome.

Andrew Southworth (32:41)
You're doing like trap drums or or son holo packs Yeah, know which which are great. I mean I used to buy their stuff all the time. Yeah music

Agent Method (32:49)
Yeah.

My wife, she actually works with them. She does some harp samples and flute stuff and all that kind of stuff.

Andrew Southworth (33:00)
Cymatics? Yes. Nice. Nice. But like my thing was like, well, you know what they're not doing? Dark depressing, clean electric guitar sounds. Ooh. So like, would make these like, I think I forget it calls like sad, like, or sad, emotional electric guitar library. And then what are they not doing? terrifying demon voices and soundscapes.

Agent Method (33:17)
Sad trap, something like that.

Andrew Southworth (33:27)
So like because I'm a metal vocalist, I could make all these scary like, no, where is he? Kind of like scary thing. can scream and so I can make these scream sounds and later.

Agent Method (33:38)
I need to connect you with my buddy Castor. You'll have to look up his stuff, but you would have some perfect stuff to help. Anyway, go ahead.

Andrew Southworth (33:46)
So

that was like, were my ways that I was like, how can I, you know, as you said, how do you get into this? Find one thing that you're good at, be good at it, and then kind of branch out. My thing was like, well, okay, a lot of producers, they're not going to code, right? Musicians not known for being the most technically savvy overall. So coding instantly puts me like, that eliminates like 99%.

Agent Method (34:10)
You're in like, yeah, you're in that one percent.

Andrew Southworth (34:15)
And then like using my weird vocal skills, like that eliminates another 99 % or like doing guitar stuff that's not like for like pop or trap or emo hip hop. It's like, you're trying basically try like looking what's popular. I mean, like I'm going to not do that.

Agent Method (34:29)
Right, yeah.

Right, right. Carve your own path, yeah.

Andrew Southworth (34:36)
So I don't know if,

yeah, and I don't know if on your end, like when you get hired to work on presets or sample pack or whatever, are they grabbing you for like a certain sound that you know how to do? is it maybe this, I do do everything, but.

Agent Method (34:55)
Yeah,

can do lot of dubstep stuff and trancey stuff and pop stuff. I'm working on this genre, future punk, that's essentially like a really, I think a really well-woven combination of the pop punk emo scene with melodic dubstep and more electronic genres. And I make a lot of that stuff. So I spend time...

making guitars sound super weird that could be morphed into growly bass things or like, like AU5 is like hyper growler kind of thing, but morphed around and, just building patches that sound like guitars to replace a guitar to keep that idea of a lock electronifying and bringing forward this idea of pop punk and emo stuff. Now that it's on its way back, which is why, which is why

which is why I started thinking of doing this in the first place. I live next to a high school and one day over before the pandemic, I started hearing like pop punk over like the, because rock died for like a fucking decade there in the middle of 2000s. there's nothing. But I started hearing like someone play a pop punk song I've never heard before and I've never heard every pop punk song on the planet, but it's just like, that's weird. Like I haven't heard that in 12 years, like a dozen years. And then like I started noticing

after a while the kids like walking home and stuff like they started they're starting to look like late 90s grunge before That era came into play. Jinkos are back. Did you know that? Jinkos are back

Andrew Southworth (36:33)
Did you know that?

I have to remind myself what jingles are

Agent Method (36:37)
Jinkos are those insanely wide-legged jinkos. Those are back, dude. I will not fucking wear them, but they're back. So it's like, talk about repetition. And so I was like, now's a good time to start getting into some of that.

Andrew Southworth (36:40)
yeah, yeah

That's it.

Honestly, that makes me a little excited because like my favorite era of music is like late 90s, early 2000s. New metal specifically. Linkin Park and.

Agent Method (37:02)
Yeah, that's why I cut my teeth as well.

Okay, gotcha.

Lint biscuit. Do you consider them new metal? Some people don't. Yeah, I guess not.

Andrew Southworth (37:12)
on

the hip hop, I get it for sure. And all that era of rock and metal that kind of came out of it, you know, mean, like, basically, like late 90s to like 2010, which, of course, is exactly when I was like kind of growing up, right? That's kind of what every favorite music is. It's like I graduated high school in 2010. So in from like late 90s to 2010, I was in my most spongy years.

Agent Method (37:40)
vulnerable for that type of music to take hold. Yeah, me too.

Andrew Southworth (37:43)
Yeah, yeah, You're only a couple years off from me. it's like, you know, you kind of like what you grew up with. And I wonder if the cyclical nature of music is just because like you grow up listening to something, so therefore you love it. And then like you eventually, roughly 30 years later, have kids.

Agent Method (38:06)
Boom, that's it. was gonna see if you were gonna go down the right. Yep, that's it.

Andrew Southworth (38:10)
So like

you have this like 30 year cycles that can repeat because like now when if you're raising kids, if you have kids, then you're going to be showing them the music that you love the most. They're going to grow up being sponges with that. And it's either like they're going to hate it.

Agent Method (38:24)
It's gonna make its way into them one way or another. They may think it's like too old for them or whatever, however that goes, but it's gonna, that's going to influence their thought processes in some level or another, so it comes back around. So that is to say then, that next generation, when they start having kids, they may even play some of the stuff that you played them, but it will be even more different and then eventually it will pass way out. But so like, it just keeps, do

diluting and diluting and diluting as it goes down until it really fades away unless there's like a Ironic revival that comes back or something you

Andrew Southworth (38:59)
You're

listening to a lot of this pop punk stuff and you must

Agent Method (39:03)
I was making it, I was producing a lot of it with some friends like, you know who Zack and Ken are? Z and K productions? No. Down here in Georgia, they did a bunch of bands, All Time Low, Time Tells All, I'm forgetting the biggest ones, Cartel, that stuff. And that's actually part of the reason why I'm in Georgia is because of them. Cause I came down to work with them a bunch of times with various clients. Well, technically the same group of clients just.

different times and I was trying to get an internship with them and they were hemming and hauling about it. They said, why don't you go to Treesound like where we met you back when you came down in 2006. I was like, yeah, all right. And so I went over there, got an application, back up, flew down for the interview, got the job, flew back up, packed up all my shit and moved down to Georgia and I've been here ever since. And so that's where.

Yeah, so that's where that came from. And I forgot my point. because we were talking about... Because we were talking about... We were talking about the genres coming back around.

Okay, and that's the only, that's all I remember. Damn it.

Andrew Southworth (40:16)
Well, it's like you're kind of growing up and making this stuff. It's artists, so like you end up kind of reinterpreting it. Because it's not like you're just making pop punk, you're making this new genre called future punk, right? So you're kind of reimagining it. And obviously you have no way of knowing if that ever takes off. All it takes is the right artist adopting a version of that sound in a way that makes the masses enjoy it.

Agent Method (40:35)
Right.

Yeah.

Andrew Southworth (40:45)
And

then that takes off and then there's a million copycats that kind of come after that. And then all of a sudden you have a new genre, right?

Agent Method (40:53)
Yeah. Which is for sure, man. I've been laying groundwork in terms of, you know, building ideas to just kind of set the walls for what it could be. And then people can knock them down with whatever the fuck they want to do. And like building packs to that end to kind of further like that one with killer hearts called This is Future Punk. I did one with Reason just called Future Punk. And the video for...

This is Future Punk, the full length promo one that I made and put on my channel, because I had to make a shorter one for Killer Hearts. All that video, aside from the stuff that's clearly stock footage, is stuff that either I or my friends recorded in this scene in those days, from like the Northern Virginia DC area where it was really, really big. There was the Ohio scene, the Jersey scene, there was a DC scene, there was clearly a scene down here, there was obviously a scene more Midwest, there was an LA.

like the whole West Coast scene for that and all that stuff. were these pockets of scenes. So my friends would do like the fish eye skate videos and all that kind of stuff. all the footage in there that looks like it's like on an old filter is just old from those times. So it was really cool to be able to put a lot of that into, know, helping define where it came from, what it could be.

And also the EDM show stuff in there, some of it's from EDM shows and stuff, my buddy's DJ and shit like that. But anyways, again, I don't think that was completely on topic, but there we go.

Andrew Southworth (42:28)
Yeah.

It's

all good. all part of the ride. Why, well, maybe the answer to this is like you did, but why aren't you trying to be like a famous music artist? And maybe you are, I don't know, but like.

Agent Method (42:37)
Bye.

Man,

I've been in and out of bands and stuff for a while. I was in and of bands all throughout high school and college, and then I moved down here and got in a band for a while called Avenue of the Giants. I was drummer and then I was the singer at one point, which I fucking hated. I hate being the front man. I need a wall of drums and cymbals be in front of me to feel comfortable.

Yeah. But I don't know, man. It's not that I wouldn't. think I just, it's the same reason that I've got tons of jokes. I feel like I could probably put a stand up together. I just, I'm just, I don't know, man. It's a weird dichotomy, I would like the recognition and not that I wouldn't like to work for it. It's just.

what you have to do to get the recognition is more vulnerable than I care to be, I guess, in a group of people, which is weird because I have no problem talking about anything in front of people. But it's like, I don't know, there's something, there's some locked box I haven't gotten to yet about, you know, working out something. So, I don't.

Andrew Southworth (44:10)
agree with what I ask is because a lot of artists kind of think that the only version of success in music is being like a Drake or Post Malone or Justin Bieber or whatever. there's nothing, one, there's nothing in the middle. either like a nobody or you're one of the most famous people on planet earth for music. Ignore kind of all the people who are, you've never heard of.

Agent Method (44:25)
Right.

Andrew Southworth (44:35)
that they don't have like a hundred million monthly listeners on Spotify. They maybe have 500,000. So you don't know them, but they're a living off of even just their streaming alone.

Agent Method (44:45)
making a living off their streaming. And I bet you all those people are also investing that money in other ways and they're not doing music completely and solely. I do different facets of music completely and solely, like mixing and mastering and sound design and artist development and vocal editing and just straight up editing and like just a lot of live shows and front of house stuff and I can do all kinds of shit.

because I had to, to be able to just find a way to be able to do what I wanted. But I bet you people that can kind of work on it themselves and make enough of a living, because Lord knows I have, any monies that I've gotten from various things is to, the smartest move is to take that and...

Also put it into something else to diversify where you're getting your funds from. It's just easily the smartest. Like, people like... I bet you like... I don't have proof of this, but it would not surprise me if the artists that make the most money at the top, yes, they make a lot from their music and their performances and all that kind of stuff, but 20 bucks says they get more than half of their shit from sponsorships, from where they've invested their money, from the handbags they sell, from the shoes they sell.

from the, I mean, just all the rest of the shit from the merch, stuff that doesn't have directly to do with their music. There's gotta be some level of diversification.

Andrew Southworth (46:22)
Even

for the artist who's not like a super famous influencer, I know one artist that has maybe like three to four million monthly listeners on Spotify. Yeah. And they, you know, that's a decent chunk of change from streaming. Like if I were to guess, I'd probably say they're getting eight million streams a month on Spotify alone. And that would be, you know, $25,000 a

Agent Method (46:47)
I was about to say like 20k, something like that,

Andrew Southworth (46:49)
And then have all the Apple and Deezer and Tidal and yada, yada, yada. And so maybe they're making, I don't know, $35,000 a month off of. Now the next thing though is helping them with some merch ad campaigns. And that's when they did that, they told me they were making about $30,000 a month from their merch store. You know, it's like that piece alone was equal to the streaming. And then obviously they tore.

Agent Method (46:57)
Yeah.

Mm.

Andrew Southworth (47:16)
Well, not obviously, but they tour. do like international tours. do national tours. But I've also met artists who like, you know, not at that much of a level. They might have like 100,000 monthly listeners. they're not making a killing off of streaming, but they're making enough. And then they tour and they make good money and they sell merch. But then also when they're on tour, they'll do like teaching lessons. You know, so they'll do lessons at each stop or they'll even, they'll sell.

Like I know other artists who will also sell sample packs and preset packs or they'll do mixing and mastering work on the side. And the reason is like everything in music is just so damn volatile that, know, Spotify might change their algorithm. And I've seen people like tweet me about this, like, yeah, what's up with the radio algorithm? Like my radio streams dropped by 50 % and now I can't afford my rent anymore.

Right. And that's kind of a, like, you don't want your ability to pay your bill reliance on the Spotify algorithm. That's not a place to be. Um, but like, know, if 20 % of it is that's fine. Cause now you, it's like this other thing, this other business you have is kind of dependent on some different set of conditions and this other business is.

Agent Method (48:15)
Yeah.

Inflation just essentially makes everybody, it forces everybody to become a jack of all trades. You know what I mean? Because I feel like back in the day, which whatever the fuck that was, you probably could live a little more directly from something, that being your profession. And really niche down into it and just niche down into it, whatever you fucking say the word.

and have that be the thing that pays your bills. But, you know, the world is ever-changing, and since it has changed so drastically in the past five years, this... the state of the world, the economic turmoil that pushes people to have to do more things to be able to...

to live in the same manner that they're accustomed to, or more or less or whatever. as much as that sucks because it just creates a sense of busyness and less sense of, it's tranquility, I guess. It's kind of a good thing in a sense too because you become more autonomous, you become more individualistic.

and that can help give you new skills. And new skills are always better in my book. Because there's a positive way of looking at it.

Andrew Southworth (50:15)
Yeah, yeah. mean, there's problems with the way it used to be and you could have one thing in music and kind of pay for everything. There are downsides about it. know, that's a lot of, especially if you're an artist, you were basically a slave to your record label, which you can still be if you want to be, you can still be a slave to a record label if that's your path. And there's nothing wrong with label. I talk with someone who is like a manager at a sub

Agent Method (50:31)
That's true.

Andrew Southworth (50:44)
sub-label of UMG a couple weeks ago. you know, he's involved with like the contracts and the A &R stuff. So finding artists and then getting the contract signed. And a lot of those label folks are actually well aware of the fact that in the past label deals were really, really bad and hostile. And they're very cognizant of making sure that the artists that are signing it know what they're getting into. Whereas in the past they didn't.

Yeah, that's probably it.

Agent Method (51:17)
Yeah, so that's a really important point. And to that point, that's another thing that I've gotten really kind of good at. My brain does well with understanding the logic gates of contracts. So I'm pretty good at reading and understanding those. if I have a contract, I will mark it up pretty significantly to...

Excuse me. Make sure I take care of things in there that I think would be more advantageous for myself than the record label or whatever the case is. Or just balance out because that will just be negotiated back anyways. So you take certain steps with things to kind of figure out where the new middle is. But, so we're gonna get into AI now.

trained a GPT on a bunch of music business contracts. ones that I found on the internet, my own personal contracts, contracts that I've been asked to just take a, be an extra pair of eyes on. I'm not a fucking lawyer. although I probably should have. but I'll send it to you at some point. Maybe we could, we could send it out to some people, but it's,

You have to work with it for a while and obviously always still get a second opinion from actual lawyers. But this thing does it's really tuned in really, really well to help figure out what goes on with music business contracts specifically.

Andrew Southworth (52:57)
a

wonderful application of JetGBT.

Agent Method (53:00)
Yeah,

yeah, it's a language model. Feed it language.

Andrew Southworth (53:06)
It's not like replacing a Probably do that.

Agent Method (53:08)
No, God no, don't do that.

I mean, eventually it It passed the bar with like, apparently I heard like it passed the bar in like the 99th percent, like it's like better than any lawyer we have, like kind of thing.

Andrew Southworth (53:21)
It can help an artist understand a contract, know, and kind of walk through it and make sure that they.

Agent Method (53:28)
That's what it's for. That's what the tool is for. It's for uploading. You can upload shitloads of data. I can't read it. The instantations of each conversation stay with the conversation. The only catch is that you do have to have GPT 4 to be able to use it. But if people are not in there utilizing this as a... Not specifically this GPT that I've built, but the chat GPT or AI as a whole for...

streamlining one's life and even coming up with new ideas, they're missing out because it really, it's all about how you use stuff. It's like, is it gonna take our jobs? Probably one of these days, but not right yet. So just get used to using it and figure out how you can be more useful than the AI, within the AI is for now.

Andrew Southworth (54:23)
honestly think the first jobs that are going to be like hurt by, mean, there's going to be a lot of low level jobs that are affected first, like people who are handling chat conversations and all that, like software engineers for, for like, not like the super advanced software engineers that mean, you know, that are maybe doing more like mission critical tasks or whatever, the CEO of Nvidia, which is, I keep doing the thumbs up thing. Let me just do some fireworks to bounce it out.

Agent Method (54:32)
Right.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Southworth (54:52)
Come on, the fireworks Mac.

Agent Method (54:54)
doing both nice mine won't do it I don't know why I think it's cuz mine

Andrew Southworth (54:58)
but. Jinnia

came out saying that like kids of today shouldn't even bother learning programming because it's just not going to be a relevant skill anymore by the time we're grown up, which is crazy to hear. But I feel like it'll, it'll actually hurt those jobs before it hurts creative jobs.

Agent Method (55:15)
Yeah, because those are very technical, but those are also extremely creative as well, especially when work around with problems and trying to figure out why something does what. It's more problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, as opposed to like outright artistic creativity. But I'm sure it has that wrapped into it. Yeah.

Andrew Southworth (55:33)
Exactly,

it does. And it'll almost make it so that, at least what they're saying is that instead of having to bother learning the ins and outs and intricacies of each programming language, you'll more so be learning the logic. You still need to tell it, like, what are you trying to achieve and maybe how you're trying to achieve it. You don't need to know, you know, I need to, you know, if.

Agent Method (55:47)
problem. Yeah, right. Right.

Andrew Southworth (55:59)
open properties and like you have to format like two equal signs means is equal to and like putting a semi-correct the enclosed like all the intricacies of like a programming language. You don't have to know because the machine's just gonna it's a language model, you know.

Agent Method (56:13)
They can do it all for you, absolutely. I've had ChatGPT write me formulas for wavetables in Serum.

Andrew Southworth (56:20)
That's sweet.

Agent Method (56:23)
So that's pretty cool. So you can get really, really interesting tables out of that. So there's a tip. Go have ChatGPT write you some mathematical equations for XY axis stuff, and it'll make you some wild tables and just go chunk those into serum. So wild stuff.

Andrew Southworth (56:45)
Yeah. So you mentioned you also do mixing work too. And do you do ever, do you any like film, TV or game audio or anything like that?

Agent Method (56:49)
Yeah.

I would love to. I just signed a admin slash publishing writing deal with Empire this past few weeks ago. So I'm sure I'll get a lot more of that and work it on a few things right now. But I've done some scoring of indie films and indie little shows like there's this one show called Dice Lords a while ago by a company called Gazam Media.

and then they also did another show called Rivals that I did the scoring and sound on. And those are cute little episodic comedy web series stuff. So I've done some that I've scored some student films and things like that. Nothing over the top that would anyone would really know. I do like that work. I do like doing Foley and that kind of stuff as well.

which is far more in the sound design realm. And really where you get to creative with all kinds of stuff. But yeah, my mixing is mostly, you know, songs and remixes or whatever, that kind of stuff. I actually just recently mixed a remix, Millennium remix for Caster that just came out, not just came out, I guess came out a few months ago.

on his latest remix album that dropped. So I an Alenian mix.

The remix albums.

Andrew Southworth (58:33)
Were you listed as a featured artist?

Agent Method (58:36)
No, no, no, not a... I mixed a remix by the artist-caster. I the mixer for the song. Yeah, that's such confusing language. Remix album where a bunch of people make remixes. I mixed one of those.

Andrew Southworth (58:42)
was really... ...a guy.

You know what's interesting? Like, you would normally think that the person who's remixing a song would be the person who's going to mix and master the song.

Agent Method (59:01)
Mm-hmm.

And he, well, in his case, in Castor's case, he's absolutely capable. I think he just wanted a second opinion on a lot of this stuff, and so I just took over, and we sat together and did all this stuff, so it was just... Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Andrew Southworth (59:18)
guessing, I mean, another factor is just the time thing. Once you become bigger and bigger and more successful and whatever you're doing, you have less time. And you might have the time to get like the, you know, cause the production side of things is a lot different from the mixing and math. Like usually mixing and mastering is more of like a, like almost like a scientific process. You're trying to get levels, right? You're trying to get the EQ all good. You're trying to get the

Agent Method (59:28)
get really busy.

Alright

Andrew Southworth (59:48)
You know, the loudness and all that jazz, whereas the production and making like a remix, like that's where these like style comes in the most. For sure. You get that producer's flavor of that remix. then, maybe they don't have time to do it. Maybe they want a second opinion. I know Andrew Wong started having someone else mixing master stuff because he had the hearing loss.

Agent Method (1:00:10)
Yeah, is that what's going on with him? I heard something was going on, but I didn't know that's what it was. That sucks. Yeah, I guess I didn't see those. Yeah,

Andrew Southworth (1:00:15)
What he said in YouTube videos.

You

mentioned you had some like weird hearing loss issues.

Agent Method (1:00:24)
degenerative

loss kind of thing.

Andrew Southworth (1:00:27)
It's

he, can still like produce and do sound design and, like, he doesn't trust his ears to like do the mixing because, know, and like, can't hear certain frequencies above a certain amount and here's the minute. that like, makes total sense. Like he can still be creative and make music, but you probably don't want them to mix and master your, your final song, right? And there's nothing wrong with it. Honestly, some people probably don't want to touch that stuff anyways, like

Agent Method (1:00:55)
Yeah, for sure.

Andrew Southworth (1:00:56)
outsource that aspect of my music now too. Like do the production and then just give it to someone else, mix and master.

Agent Method (1:00:59)
Are you cool?

Andrew Southworth (1:01:06)
I just don't have the time anymore to do it.

Agent Method (1:01:08)
Give

it me, let me give it a shot. Let me see what you think. We'll try one of those, you don't have to. just, I don't want to put you on the spot on your podcast. I was just feeling thrown out there.

Andrew Southworth (1:01:10)
Okay.

No, I mean,

I already have a guy that's been doing it for all of my metal band stuff.

Agent Method (1:01:23)
Sure, cool. that's very specific.

Andrew Southworth (1:01:26)
Yeah,

like for my, my electronic stuff, um, that's, that has been me the whole time, but I kind of don't want it to be all me anymore. I just don't have the time, you know, I'd still like the mixing and mastering. Yeah. But if I had to pick between songwriting and being a vocalist and production versus mixing and mastering, the first thing in the chopping block is going to be mixing and mastering. Yeah. It's like, I'd enjoy it the least and I'm definitely not.

the best at it, right? Like I can get enough where someone can listen to it be like, that sounds reasonably well mixed and mastered. But you're never going to think that I'm like a super fancy professional mixing master. And if someone does, they're probably not very good at mixing and mastering.

Agent Method (1:02:03)
Braythe.

You

What's that Socratic, you know, all I know is that I know nothing That's the mark of a wise man or something like that something I fucked it up, but you know what I mean? Yeah

Andrew Southworth (1:02:32)
The better I feel like the better you get at something, the more you become aware of the things you're not good at. You're like, and so I've met a lot of hot shit at what they're doing. And I'm listening. I'm like, these vocals are off time. They're off pitch. The recording sucks. The mix sucks. The master sucks. But they think they did this amazing thing. And it's just because they're new, you know, which is great to be proud of what you're doing. But as you kind of get better, you gain more self-awareness.

Agent Method (1:02:37)
Yep. So easily.

For sure, without a doubt. It's like you now know the right questions to ask yourself to find out if your knowledge is up to par. Because in the beginning you may not even know to ask the right questions. And as you grow, you eventually do. Yeah, for sure. There was this guy, did a post a while ago, I don't know who it was, but he was talking about the stages you go through as a producer and a mixing engineer and it was spot fucking on.

And it was like, like you get your first good mix and you think you're the shit and all that kind of stuff. And then you start hearing other people's mixes that are in the industry and you're like, wow, I'm nothing. And then you go into the mode of over EQing for a while. And then you go into the mode, like they had all these different modes. I was like, every single one was the stage that I passed through on my, and I wish I could find that post. It was really good. But it was so true to this, to this kind of this point here, but.

Anyway.

Andrew Southworth (1:04:02)
Yeah.

It's crazy when you watch like a, forget the account that does it, but it's some subdivision of Joey Sturgis' empire. They bring like a producer on, it's done some like a super awesome metal record, and they walk through the production of that song. And it's very crazy seeing how different producers do their things and how some of them are so specific about what they do. And then other ones are like,

Agent Method (1:04:14)
Yeah.

Andrew Southworth (1:04:33)
You kind of see some of those pitfalls of like, I spent all this time focusing on this. And this guy who's winning like Grammys, he's just like, not doing any of that.

Agent Method (1:04:36)
of

Not any of it. And that's one of the things, like, as I got really good at this and professionally good where people hear my work and want to hire me, hire paying clients, not like your average bedroom producer, whatever, I started realizing I was doing less and less and less in my mixes. And it was just about, like, first of all, room correction. That solved about 90...

5 % of my problems immediately. I could finally trust what I was hearing. That's like an overnight night and day difference. If people aren't doing that, they're gonna fight things they don't even know they're fighting. And now that I've had room correction for so long and things translate very well, I've had to do a lot less. I find that I almost don't compress in a mix.

almost at all. Sorry, my gate is calling me. My, gate to the neighborhood. One second.

It's my wife's cousin. Okay.

It's me.

Right.

But yeah, getting the room correction was such a huge part of that. And I found out that I do less and less. I almost don't compress at all other than like vocals. What I find is I find myself doing way more proper EQing and giving things their own space and parallel stuff. almost, yeah, I think except for vocal and...

and various other things, like hard limiting certain things and like other tricks. Except for like vocals, yeah, I don't think I compress a single fucking thing. It's all about, I end up splitting instruments and various other things into different functional pieces to use them in a manner in which compression would elicit that same thing, but giving you more control.

across a series of faders, as opposed to relying on just the processing power of the plugin. And that is one of the unsung heroes of parallel stuff is, yeah, one of the unsung heroes of separates the men from the boys, the girls from the women on mixing. It's just like a really, it's one of those not really secret things. It's just until you understand how to properly use it,

It's just, it makes all the difference in the world.

Andrew Southworth (1:07:40)
Yeah, that's interesting. What's your opinion on like the whole hardware gear versus software gear?

Agent Method (1:07:42)
So, yeah.

I think light and things that have I say light because like, you some things were optic compressors and light bulbs and you know, Graphite meters or whatever was doing the watching or whatever light and wires having technically infinite resolution is

certainly has its place. I think you can get away with, and I don't mean get away, it's not the right word because it implies like laziness or subpar or whatever, and I don't mean that, but just for the sake, lack of a better word, I think you can get away with.

plugins, everything in the box, no problem. Create a warm mix, all that shit. Don't even have to think about it. I think you can do that without any issue. I think outboard gear, like with anything, unless you are going for a specific sound, it's supposed to sound like it's coming through with Neve or SSL or this particular compressor, you don't really need it. Just do whatever's in your computer.

Those have become in my eyes from what I'm doing.

flavor as opposed to the plate by which you get served your food. You know what I mean? So, Yeah.

Andrew Southworth (1:09:27)
I mean,

I have a consulting client that I've had for a few years who owns a few like pretty legit studios across America. I think he has three or four of them in this chain and he has 30 mixing mastering engineers, producers who work under him. So it's his business.

Agent Method (1:09:49)
Yeah.

Andrew Southworth (1:09:51)
was saying that like they have like each of their studios has like a million dollars worth of gear in it. Fancy, fancy compressors and consoles and you know, analog EQs and whatever, right? All the things and all the kind of things that have name recognition that have been used on vintage records that are popular. And he said that most of the reason why they have it is because they have a very

particular select group of clientele that will actually come to that studio because it has all this gear that the artist wants to use. But for the vast majority of people, like 90 plus percent of their clients, they're doing everything 100 % in the box. So they'll have a bunch of analog gear over here, but they're using the plug-in versions of all that gear because to them, it sounds the same.

Agent Method (1:10:30)
Right.

Andrew Southworth (1:10:49)
Right. Now they don't have to worry about bouncing it, you know, sending the audio back through the unit and recording back. then, Oh, like now that we finished doing it across the, the tracks, have to go tweak that. now we have to route it back through the gear and record it or whatever. And, um, it's just, it's recallable.

Agent Method (1:11:10)
Just in terms of ease of use and speed and efficiency, it's just not practical. So it's one of those things, like, I would almost advise just use it on the way in. Don't like remixing with that kind of stuff, you have to keep going through the console to go out to redo a part or whatever. Just do it on the way in, and then that's the way it is, and that's how you work with it. And then it's...

Andrew Southworth (1:11:33)
Yeah.

Agent Method (1:11:39)
you know, it has its flavor that way. That would be my work in between, having the old with the new and all that stuff. And plenty of people do that. So it's, you know, it's not unheard of by any means, but it really be the only way I do it.

Andrew Southworth (1:11:55)
with some type of nice compressor and preamp.

Agent Method (1:11:59)
Right, yeah, to begin with.

Andrew Southworth (1:12:02)
like

he owns this studio company he's just like I hate this analog crap it's like it's just it's expensive it breaks you got to fix it it takes more time and that doesn't sound any better than all the digital stuff and

Agent Method (1:12:15)
Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Andrew Southworth (1:12:17)
And yeah, and he works in like big projects. don't want to say any of them just because I don't whatever, like, like like billboard top 100 projects go through. And like, that's his opinion of the analog versus digital stuff. And then I go on like some Reddit subreddit or forum and like, there's all these people like talking about how you

Agent Method (1:12:24)
Okay.

Mafia.

Andrew Southworth (1:12:44)
I won't do anything unless my stuff is summed through an analog console. Really?

Agent Method (1:12:52)
Cool, what happens when they make an analog summing console, a plugin that sounds like your console? You're take your console with you on the plane?

Andrew Southworth (1:12:58)
Yeah.

Right? Most people are listening on AirPods or computer, laptop, the phone speakers. And, you know, I honestly can't tell the difference. when I'm like lossless audio versus like Spotify quality, like I don't. Like maybe my hearing's just not as tuned, but like.

Agent Method (1:13:22)
hear that.

You will notice it a lot when you A, B what's been taken out. a really useful feature, the ozone line of stuff that they added with, I think, eight, was the Mastering plugin allows you to preview the bits taken out when it turns it into an AAC or MP3. Yeah, you can hear what gets removed.

Andrew Southworth (1:13:52)
Hear the lost

Agent Method (1:13:56)
and then listening back with it in and out, you go, shit. You do start to notice when those kinds of things, other than the obvious MP3 where it's all tinsely and medley on the top, like from the old days, that's an obvious thing. It's a much, much, much more subtle version of that. So it is very difficult to hear, but once you A, B, it's like, I get it, I get it. So that's a really cool tool. I probably need to install that again.

I to redo my system recently and I'm still catching up with all the re-ins.

Andrew Southworth (1:14:28)
It's

the worst when you upgrade your OS and you go like, download the Slate Digital Connect app, and then you have to download the iZotope app, and then you have to download the Native Instruments Native Access app, and then you have to download all the plugins and get all the licenses and find your iLock, because you threw in a thing over there.

Agent Method (1:14:48)
I live on Pro Tools so I have it in constantly. at least with that I'm gonna do it. What do you use? What's your main?

Andrew Southworth (1:14:54)
I use

Logic for all of my rock and metal stuff and vocals and I use Ableton for any...

Agent Method (1:15:00)
Electronic stuff, nice, nice. Well, Logic was the one I never got into. I do Pro Tools, Ableton, Bitwig, FL, some FL, enough to get around, enough to be dangerous, Reason 12. Pro Tools, Bitwig, FL, and weirdly a little bit of Mixbus, though I don't have it installed right now. and Cubase, I know a little bit of Cubase as well.

I just got into, I don't know, man. Some people work with certain things that were clients of mine and I wanted to be able to talk intelligently about it or utilize some of the unique sound design features, things like Ableton and Bitwig have and FL as well. And I started on Reason, so I always knew Reason. Came bundled with Pro Tools, which I found, cleaning out my house. So we got a baby girl on the way.

And I found all my old install CDs, like the reason 3.5 adapted for Pro Tools. I was like, holy shit. like, can't even like, what do I do with this? I don't necessarily want to throw it away because nostalgia, but no one's going to fucking buy this. Like, it's not resellable. So I'm just going to have a box of useless shit in the attic somewhere. what I'm

Andrew Southworth (1:16:23)
When I moved last time, which was like three years ago, I found my old Logic Pro box. It was like, because I bought it in like, don't know, 2008 or something. It was my first DAW. Maybe was 2009, 2010, somewhere around there. And it was a physical, like white box with like a keyboard on it or something, like a picture of a keyboard on it. And you would put the discs into the computer and actually install from the discs, which is kind of crazy how that's...

hasn't been a thing for so long.

Agent Method (1:16:54)
What's that thing that kids these days don't know what the save icon is? They don't understand why it is what it is. Save icon's... Yeah, it's a floppy disk. Yeah. They just know it as the save icon. Someone like... They had a floppy disk. Did you hear about the thing like somebody walked up to their kid with a floppy disk from like, you know what this is? He's like, oh, you 3D printed the save icon? Why did you... Like they didn't...

Andrew Southworth (1:17:02)
even it's like floppy disk yeah what is the same like

Agent Method (1:17:23)
3D printed, thus save a...

Andrew Southworth (1:17:25)
First camera was a floppy camera. It was like a Sony and you put a floppy disk in and you take pictures and it would save it to the floppy disk. You had 100 pictures or 50 pictures. What was that? My mom did when I was a kid.

Agent Method (1:17:34)
Whoa.

You had one of those?

wow. I don't think I ever knew that they had that going on. That's really interesting because I've got some interesting old cameras and stuff myself. that was like the first big push.

Andrew Southworth (1:17:51)
like the first transition from analog cameras to some type of digital camera. Like the hot thing at the time.

Agent Method (1:18:00)
Would it, would it?

Was the floppy disk modified in some manner? Was it light sensitive? Or would it just write ones and zeros magnetically to the disk?

Andrew Southworth (1:18:12)
I'm actually, I believe it was digital because. And it would be.

Agent Method (1:18:15)
Okay, so it was all just, okay, okay. All

right, some of the first instantations of a digital camera. Interesting, I didn't know that.

Andrew Southworth (1:18:24)
Yeah, yeah, was, it's crazy how much everything has changed in such a short period of, but anyways, man, we've been going for an hour and 20 minutes or so. is there anything you want to leave the people with or tell them where they can find you? We hire you to, to make your mixes or whatever.

Agent Method (1:18:30)
It really is, man. Shit's nuts.

Where's my attention?

Right.

If you are a company that makes instruments, I can totally sound design for you if you want some stuff mixed. do rock and EDM and dubstep and all that kind of stuff. If you want content made, I can do that as well. It takes me much longer than your average Joe to do it, but...

But that's maybe not one of my stronger suits, even if they do have their own little vibe to them. But you can find me on Instagrams, your Instagrams, your TikToks, Facebooks, all that kind of stuff and website. I have some packs for sale up there as well as a bunch of free stuff. And I have a compilation album coming out with Rude Records in 2025 sometime with Casey Cavallari. So look for that. And...

the tool, the contract tool, the GPT stuff. I'll send you that link because you can post that along with the episode. And so people can use that as a...

Andrew Southworth (1:19:53)
link in the description, we're gonna link to your website so we can find all your free goodies and paid goodies as well. Cool man, thanks for coming on.

Agent Method (1:19:54)
Yes.

Cool cool

Thanks for having me,