MWTM Q&A #26 - Greg Wells 

Greg Wells, Tchad Blake, and Andrew Scheps -- all great to listen to because they have warm personalities, are humble considering their skills & success, and most of all - as Greg Wells shows here - these guys all enjoy talking about their craft and teaching others. Another great video, MWTM!

Loved the salt analogy: "Adding “air” is like adding salt in cooking. It’s nice but when you oversalt it nobody can eat it. You gotta do it to taste. You gotta find the right balance. And there are different kinds of salt."

Caffeinated answers is what we want! Thanks Greg, and thanks MWM! Amazing stuff.

Questions: 1) 1:46 2) 7:59 3) 12:38 4) 19:08 5) 23:53 6) 27:50 7) 32:32 8) 37:15 9) 41:53 10) 46:30

Set the video to 0.5x the speed. Voila! Now it's J Mascis answering questions for almost two hours.

Love this guy. Just watched his Puremix series. Such a great musician and seems very down to earth with a good sense of humour.

I appreciate how he takes his sweet time to answer the questions with a lot of helpful (to me) detail.

On top of being incredibly humble, intelligent, experienced, talented and detailed ... this dudes actually a comedian too LOL fuckin love this guy

Gregg is an inspiration! Talented, knowledgeable, and humble. This was amazing to watch! Thanks!

I like how his voice is mixed in this interview. Very soft and pleasant ^^

„.. and there are different types of salt.“ ;) hahaha!! Men You are an so great person. Like it so much Your Wave stuff and musical creation. Thank You by the way!

One of the best ones yet.

It was probably just a slip on Wells' part @22:21, but The Bomb Squad produced '911 Is a Joke', along with the other seminal Public Enemy records, rather than Terminator X, who was simply PE's DJ.

Thanx! By far the best MWTM Q&A

Thanks for including my question and for invaluable answers.

THE CRISPINESS OF THE VOCAL MIX IN THIS VIDEO

Thanks Greg, some great tips.

Thanks Greg, really great answers, I learned a lot!

Aww, more about the synchronicity between Greek drama and audio engineering! Your waves mixcentric plugin is amazing, btw. 👍👍👍

Great interview!!

I chuckled real hard at the 15:00 mark with the "cold" joke. (It might also be 4:30 am, but that one did get me.)

Thanks a lot! Great interview and great tips!

for me the greatness of Greg was evident and ENOUGH t o be consider a f......n master since Mika....those mixes are pristine neat awesome and the production is a superbly organised massive instrumentation.

I like the two finger gesture when he says masters at 33 seconds😂

Greg, you’re one of my greatest heroes. I am a drummer, piano player, trombone man, guitarist, bass thumper and have toured with each of those instruments in my long and wonderful career. Now I’m studying sound and adding mix engineer to my income stream and for general pleasure. You’ve been a great help with you many videos, thoughts, and advice. Thanks, Steve “Addicted to sound”

did he go Amphion? I know MWTM could have provided PMC or whatever. I'm curious if he did use them.

Awesome vids. Thank you!

Would definitely like to see some of that recording session

I am enjoying this. 🤙🏻👍🏻

Awesome vid Greg. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and tips ...Gold!..:)

I am loving all of these videos, I think y'all are doing a fantastic job of coaxing great anecdotes and advice out of some very intelligent professionals, and I very rarely contribute to the echo chamber of RU-vid comments, but: please use two cameras to record these. If you have one close look and one wide look, you can edit the videos to eliminate the distracting zooming, and you will be able to capture all the gestures of the subject. Thanks!

Very inspiring and very practical, thanks a lot! 🙃

Awesome!

Wow !!! As much as I thought I knew about you, I actually didn’t know you were a drummer. One more reason to keep you high on my list of hero/influences. Steve

I've been a full-time/part-time musician/front-man/side-man in bands for almost 50 years now (my god!). A couple of times Greg Wells, in his clear and refreshing wisdom, refers to the importance of the vocals, the main performance, on a record - at 6:12 and at 35:25 particularly - and I have been making this very point for years when it comes to live work. Having worked as a front man, I know how frustrating it is when you have a musician in the band who just doesn't know when to shut-up during my, or any other person's performance. Less is more. If you're a guitarist, pianist, steel player, sax, accordionist, tambourine virtuoso - DON'T play over the vocalist, and if you must, be mindful that the audience don't give a tuppeny-damn about how wonderful your guitar licks are when the vocalist is offering a beautiful performance. I've worked with fine musicians and, with respect, not so good musicians, and the fine musicians who are *busy* are the guys I LEAST enjoy working with. Must say, Greg Wells is such a wonderful communicator, so descriptive, humble, totally grounded, educating. I found myself nodding agreement on a few occasions. I utterly enjoyed listening to him - I'd drink beer with this guy if he wasn't so busy with his 1000 children lol.. Thanks, MWTM.

Is the song in the outro the one they did for this MWTM?

Thanks

Did this guy arrange battle axe by Deftones?

lol 28:16 where the focus puller accidentally perfectly illustrates what your brain does when you're trying to remember something :P

The Master

Wise man!

“It was muddy and boxy with no air, and it was cold, not warm”. 😂

Greg Wells is a seriously interesting person.

cool interview. i like his passion

i like this dood.... he seems stoned out of his mind...

"caffeinated answers" 😆 Brutus can relate. Warm? Easy. Compare an electric guitar through a solid state amp and an all tube amp. Warm basically means a fatter tone with more low mids and mids. pretty sure most adults can't hear above 11 or 12kHz... I remember an example my prof at MCTC played years ago from 1Hz upward and most stopped being able to hear around the aforementioned.

MixWithTheMASTERS your videos for register users have subtitles in other languages? It could be a differential for users from other countries, it helps a lot to concentrate only in learning what is important!

As for the vocals in question one, it also depends on the style of music. Outside of pop music you don't always want vocals so up front. I have countless albums that I just can't listen to because the vocals are too loud. It's important that you use a producer that knows your style of music.

GREG WELLS IS HARRY POTTER ALL GROWN UP

for someones terms like "mud", "air", etc... could be easy to understand... but i teach to people who needs 2 or 3 weeks and many examples to understand...

Note: that is Aural exciter.....

Do all pro mixing and mastering engineer’s cook ... or do they all just live the metaphors lol thanks for the vid ✌️🔱🔱🔱🔱

I love Greg Wells so much! But it’s not true that adult men can hear above 20k and women slightly higher. Maybe 15-16k if they’re lucky. Having said that, the difference between 15k and 20k is only a few notes and his general point is of course rock solid.

i thought the human ear can only hear from 20Hz to 20KHz

Can we get these same ppl to talk about mics at a lower cost.....these mics are ridiculous expensive and we will never owned those mics.... some are not even made anymore can we come down to the $500 to $2000 mics and hardware plz and plz. Im just saying u47 and u67 we will never own.....

WOAH wrote a song from scratch, breaking new ground folks

Please...give me a list of all the instruments and phrases (like WARM, a descriptive term used to describe the opposite of music that's too digital, in case you don't know what is meant by the term) that are not "cool" so I can avoid them at all costs. I realize that you are a top producer/engineer, and one of my favorites at that...but you are a little condescending. Now, I must go...I have to practice my glockenspiel.

I can't believe some of these moronic questions. It doesn't give me much confidence in today's up and coming engineers.

Am I the only one who picked up that "playing 5 string bass is not cool"? Are there really people feeling this way? How is that relevant to basically anything at all ever?

warm is another term for creamy. if you haven't heard the results of using a neve 1073 pre-amp on vocals, or running your mix through a console or tape machine , then you wouldn't understand the definition of warm/creamy.

Q. What’s air ? A. It’s the stuff that grows on top of yer ‘ead.

yo yo! Here my question brah... Yo. Yo check it, listen... Like, how does I dRoP tHaT bAsS, brah?!? I GOTs to dRoP tHaT b-b-b-b-BASS!

Serve the song...serve the song. An expression very often used. In the era of recorded music, there has been way too much crap recorded. May I humbly add, only “serve” a song that deserves to be “served”. Crap is crap, and should never be captured. What’s crap and what’s not is only subjective to a point. Most “artists” like to think that their creation is worth capturing, but more often than not it ain’t. A great song poorly recorded has more value than a crap song well recorded. Blah blah blah. There are way too many “artists” in the world these days, way too many fragile egos, and a serious glut of quality songs.. No, I am not sorry for being a grumpy old man. IF YOU WRITE A CRAP SONG, THEN DO MUSIC A FAVOUR BY NOT RECORDING IT.

Why is this guy so low energy?

Within three seconds of this guy's voice, I determined this guy is a clown.

"best mic" "SM57" ewww

everything is ok but the voice fake of this guy. pretending lower his voice its annoying.

mixing with the masters, such terribly pretentious words. NOTICE THE LOWER CASE.