Episode 104: Marc Vickers

Ryan: The Producers, featuring the most respected international talent in the world of audio production and voiceover. Radio, TV, film, and online. In-depth interviews, industry insights, putting you on the inside. This is The Producers Podcast with Ryan Dreen.

Ryan: Hey, welcome to it again, Producers Podcast. Thanks so much for checking it out, whether you download or stream it on the site. technologically speaking, I I think I've worked out a few of the little kinks on the website, but you know, if you're getting it via iTunes or something, you should be good. If ever you have a problem though, a lot of times people are just kind of nice, like, oh look, hey, Ryan's website's blown up. Oh well, I won't tell him. No, please tell me. Even if you feel like you're going to sound like a dick or something, it's okay. I'd rather— but anyway, I think we've worked out a lot of the kinks, so things should be going well. All right, to this show. Mark Vickers is the guest. Mark is the creative director at Wise Buddha Jingles in the UK. They have their hands in everything. Everything. They are, well, we talk about a lot of the different types of projects they're doing, from very, very edgy contemporary CHR brands to country in the States. Pretty proud of a recent country package they did. Anyway, we talk about all of that. I'm gonna play a demo here in a few seconds. it's about 3 minutes long, probably a little longer than I normally might play, but I've just felt like I listened to the whole thing and I just felt like every bit of it was worth leaving in there. So, I'll point out a couple things. near the top you're gonna hear a Radio 538 package, which I'm pretty impressed with. I know Chris Hardkers, who I've been actually trying to get on this show for quite some time, you know, as a standalone interview, he had some hand in that. That dude is very skilled. and then another big project which just released is the new Radio 1 package, which is kind of an imaging and jingle mixed together product. You'll just have to hear some of that. But all this stuff, you can hear a lot more of it on the various links that I've provided on my website. Just go to ryandreen.com, producerspodcast.com takes you there as well. But you will see it right there on the Mark Vickers page, various links you can click on and go hear more. Upcoming, real quick, you know, I've got a lot of things in the works. I have emails out with people, always trying to work out schedules. I will say the one I wanna hype because it will get done and it's going to be another big one and another fun one, sort of the rejuvenated, the new, the fresh new faces over at Capital in London. They have the Capital Network, Capital FM, Capital, like I've joked in the past, Capital Earth, Capital Solar System. They do everything, they're everywhere. They're a monster CHR brand on planet Earth. And I will be lucky enough to have multiple people from their talented imaging or their Station Sound crew on with me. We'll get that worked out as soon as I possibly can. And otherwise, lots of other cool episodes coming your way, as to be expected. For now, like I said, about a 3-minute demo here. I think it's all well worth the listen, and I'm pretty sure it's not all literally Mark Vickers. No, in fact, I know it's not all, but he wanted to make sure he featured all of the types of things they do at Wise Buddha. So again, this is all Wise Buddha greatness. Yeah. The guest coming up in seconds is Mark Vickers. Age starts old. All, all, all. Radio five three art. Radio five three art. One. BBC. Radio one. One. One. Where it begins. Number 1 for Manchester. Your music, your life. Key 103. The sound of 8 AM. Asian Britain on digital radio and on your mobile. This is BBC Asian Network online, on mobile, and on digital radio where real music matters. This is Absolute Radio. The hits find your favor. It is me, Ronnie. Toronto's greatest hits. Yeah, yeah. Boom 97.3. This is BBC Radio 6 Music. Wir lieben Bayern, wir lieben die Hits. Antenne Bayern. Planet, entdecke neue Musik. Planet. Let's go, Dustin! 88 to 91 FM, BBC Radio 2.

Ryan: And, a pleasure to be joined, you know, kind I've kind of finally been trying to set this one up for a while, but he went and had a kid and that sort of threw a wrench into the thing for me. How dare you? Mark Vickers, creative director at Wise Buddha Jingles. Mark, thank you so much for joining the podcast.

Marc Vickers: Hey Ryan, how you doing?

Ryan: I'm great, man. So, yeah, I tried—

Marc Vickers: Thanks for having me.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. I would have had you on the show a long time ago, but, so it's been a while actually now, but, I can still say congratulations, right?

Marc Vickers: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I mean, it's now— he's about 14 months now. So it's kind of— yeah, thank you. No, I mean, it's crazy times.

Ryan: I think I tried to originally get you on right around the imaging days, 2 imaging days ago.

Marc Vickers: 2014.

Ryan: Yeah, maybe. Yeah, or '15. Either way, it was right around when you were— you had just had your child and you're like, hey, man, you know, I don't know, this is pretty crazy. I'm like, oh, understood.

Marc Vickers: So anyway, Oh, that's right. That was, that was last year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was— sorry, that was 2015. That was the one. And I had—

Ryan: yeah.

Marc Vickers: And we did a panel. I think we did a panel.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. And you were great. I'm like, oh yeah, I mean, I knew I wanted you on the show. But we did the panel, which was great. And I also saw your, you know, your presentation. And I just remember the one thing, and I'll get into this later. And we just heard the demo, by the way, the Wise Buddha jingles, that demo, we'll talk about some of that too. But I just remember thinking, you know, the music that you guys are making is, you know, edgy, it's pop, it's, you know, it is very current, but it's very clean. I feel like you guys are putting an emphasis in making very, you know, good dynamic range, very clean quality music.

Marc Vickers: Oh, well, thank you. Yeah, no, it's fantastic to hear someone say that. I mean, we try to— I mean, I think the thing with all of us guys is most of us are musicians at heart, really. And actually, most of us are songwriters at heart. I mean, I know me and Jem Godfrey, our other creative director, he, you know, we're both songwriters. And, you know, Jem had a pop career in the noughties writing for other various pop stars and had a few hits. And me, you know, and I've always tried to write, I've always come from a songwriting angle. So, you know, for me, I think writing song— writing jingles has always been a— a jingle is squashing 3 minutes of a hip-hop record into 12 seconds.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: And that's always what I've kind of tried to do. And we've— that's always been our kind of angle that we've taken it, just because it wasn't really even a premeditated plan. It was just, it was just the only way that we knew how to write these things. And it ended up being quite popular in the end, which was great. But, but it wasn't a plan from the beginning, really.

Ryan: Yeah, you're kind of starting on, like, my third question. But I mean, or maybe I started us here. But actually, I want to get to your background. I want to get to your bio and kind of like, you know, the basics, the Who you are and where you're from. But let me talk about what you were just talking about real quick, because I think people are interested. You're approaching writing a jingle as if you're writing a song. It's a full song squished into 12 seconds, as you just said. Do you have a kind of a structure for the way you, you approach a new jingle cut, a new theme, a new track? Template-based? Do you always start from a clean slate? Do you chart first? Do you pluck Do you just knock stuff out on a guitar or a piano? What's your process?

Marc Vickers: Yeah, I mean, it actually varies quite a bit because it would depend on the genre and also it depends on what the brief from the client is. Sometimes people want— actually, some clients, especially in Germany, it's quite a cliché actually that sometimes they will actually draw out the exact shape of the structure of what the jingle needs to be.

Ryan: Oh, wow.

Marc Vickers: Which is kind of cool actually because it means that you know you know what you have to do and you, you almost feel more creative within that, with, within that kind of, —

Ryan: The box.

Marc Vickers: What's the word? Box. Yeah.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: In a way. But, but then sometimes, you know, some people will also say, you know, we want to just, we want to reinvent the wheel this time. We don't want it to sound like anything that we've heard on the market and that anyone else has done, which in itself as well is a really fun challenge and, you know, to try and do something totally different. So, and that happens a lot more with CHR. stations. I mean, with AC stations and, and kind of, you know, soft AC and easy stations, it, it, they tend— it tends to be much more, you know, they don't want to scare the pigeons, you know. And it's kind of— you, you end up— it seems to be a bit more standard in structure. But, yeah, I mean, I will kind of start with— usually if I'm writing something, I kind of start out— I know what the vibe is, I know what the feeling's going to be, and then I'll go onto Spotify and I'll kind of listen to a few tracks in that genre. And I'll kind of listen to kind of try and get kind of a common theme between all of them. It could be what the drums are doing, like a sound of production or some kind of, you know, some kind of common thread. And then I'll build the drums. I'll build like a drum— the drums first. I always, always start with the drums first, and build that and kind of just kind of make a skeleton structure of, you know, what the— what, what the timing is going to be of the thing and what it's going to do. And then once I've kind of got that, and I'll usually work on the drums quite kind of quite, you know, quite completely until they're, you know, 80% finished, with all the rhythm parts and all of the kind of little kind of shakers and, you know, bits of kind of side sticks flicking around and all that kind of thing. And then, and then once that's done, I feel like I've got something to really sort of vibe off after that. So then, then I'll kind of— if it's a— if it's CHR, I might be— might sort of do a bass line next. Or if it's, if it's ACR, I might, you know, lay down a piano, some piano chords or some guitar strum. Actually, a lot of the time, because I'm a guitarist really mainly, so I'll strum, I'll just strum the thing out really, really roughly on some chords, you know, strum out some chords, and then I'll build the kind of production and instrumentation around those chords, and then I'll just get rid of the chords, you know, later on.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: So yeah, it varies a lot, but I think I'll always kind of draw out the— I'll always kind of skeleton out the shape of the jingle first. That's kind of always standard.

Ryan: That's cool. I know lots of people, even ones that aren't musicians, are interested. You know, there's the jingle freaks, saying that nicely, out there, as you're well aware of.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, it's a common term in Holland. That's what they call them. We are the freaks. Yeah. Radio freaks.

Ryan: And they love any of this sort of, you know, how does it actually happen stuff. So we'll get more into that because I love it too. I like watching some of the people that are, you know, charting these things out, writing, composing, constructing, all that. But let's go back in time, I guess. let me just ask you right out of the gate, why are you working in this industry? What was the very first step?

Marc Vickers: Ah, ah, well, it didn't actually come about by design, really. I mean, I, I suppose I used to— I thought, you know, I've always been musical since I was a kid. My dad was in bands in the '60s, and played with, actually played with a few people, ELP, and, they actually played with David Bowie once in the '60s.

Ryan: Wow.

Marc Vickers: so he's always been musical. And then he, you know, I grew up with listening, listening to great music, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, you know, Clapton, blues, Hendrix, all really good stuff around the house. And then, I started, and he basically forced me to kind of, at the time I didn't want to do it, you know, to play classical guitar. And I started doing that when I was 7. And I remember, you know, hating it, hating going to learn this stuff. And I— but I persevered with it. I got to sort of, I don't know, grade 6 or 7 or something. And then, and then around that time I discovered— yeah, I discovered Clapton really, and, and blues guitar. And so I just ditched it and, and started just playing along to records that I heard. And, and I sort of learned that— I learned how to play. And I remember my guitar teacher really rapping me on the knuckles for, for my thumb at the back. I don't know, the guitarists will know what I mean. The thumb— when you play classical, the thumb's supposed to be right on the back of the fretboard.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: And yeah, I started to creep over and I remember him saying, no, that's, that's, that's the devil's music. you know, that kind of thing. And then, yeah, so then I joined a band in the '90s and, and played guitar in a band and kind of wrote, wrote songs with them. And, and then, and then I got myself, actually my dad helped me get a, like a Tascam 8-track tape recorder.

Ryan: Mm-hmm.

Marc Vickers: it was a great machine and I just used to kind of record, I used to write my own songs. 'Cause I fell out with the— the band broke up and I thought, well, I need something. So I wrote my own songs on that and kind of did some really experimental stuff with kind of reversing drums and messing around with stuff on that and singing as well. And so I would make these albums on cassette for just anyone that would listen. And really, I'd just give them out to my mates and no one would listen to them. And I remember sending them off to record companies all the time and just, you know, obviously they just completely ignored me.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: So that kind of carried on, and then, I got to a point where— I'm trying to think now— where I had to, I had to get a job. So I, ended up going for an interview in Soho. I don't know whether for people that are in the States, you know, Soho in London is kind of the center of the ad kind of audio post-production industry in the UK. It's kind of the square mile of, you know, all the big post-production houses are there. So I joined one of those called Silk Sound, and I was making— I was just a runner making teas.

Ryan: Mm-hmm.

Marc Vickers: cappuccino, you know, 80 cappuccinos a day. It was a 3-story building, so I would be up and down the stairs all day.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: you know, doing that and then, you know, delivering DigiBeaters, which is something we don't have anymore, all around Soho to different, studios. and then did that for a few years, and then I moved to— they had a sister studio around the corner, called Space, which was, it was kind of— it was a beautiful place. It was, it was themed on a, a crashed spacecraft, and everything inside it was like a, like a spaceship. And they had SSL desks which were, custom made for that, for them. these, they were called Omnimix and Scenaria, I remember. And we used to use like a, a pen to do all of the editing with on a, on a, on a tablet.

Ryan: Oh, really?

Marc Vickers: yeah. Yeah. And so anyway, so they had in that place, they had a small music studio, which, and this is another piece of amazing luck. The guy that was working in there had just resigned, literally just as I got in there. So there was an— it was a fantastic stroke of luck. So I just started to kind of— I was working doing like audio transfer most of the time, and then I would kind of nip in there after hours and write little bits of music. And, and then opportunities came up where ad agencies would come into the studio to kind of finish off the post-production on their ads. And a lot of the time they would have you know, they'd have all the video edited and they'd come in and they'd record, get a celebrity in to do the voiceover on it. And then they'd go, oh, hang on a minute, we've got a piece of music from Queen on this ad. Ah, actually, that's gonna cost us loads of money to license it.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: And we can't— what are we gonna do? And then I would swoop in, I'd go, hi, I can do you a soundalike of that. I'll tell you what, just give me 24 hours, I'll do you a soundalike of that. And for, you know, for a lot, a lot less money. And so that kind of And that worked. And then a few— it kind of became like a bit of a sort of cottage industry going on where I would just, yeah, I'd just be the man on hand. And all the engineers kind of got wise to it and would— because obviously it was good for the studio— that would kind of call me if there was an opportunity and I'd come in and discuss it. And so that started going— so I ended up doing music for adverts, basically, for TV adverts and radio ads.

Ryan: Almost by accident. Yeah.

Marc Vickers: Kind of by accident. But I mean, I always, you know, I never really, I never really liked the idea of writing what someone else would tell me to write, but at the time, but then I found I could just, I quite enjoyed it still, because it's still production. Yeah. And then I think, and that lasted for a few years. And then unfortunately, that studio went, went, went under. So we all got made redundant, which was a real shame.

Ryan: Was there a big, a big period of time where there was a boom in studios? And then there was a Reduction, a severe reduction. I know it happened in the States.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, yeah. I mean, in, in the late '90s, it was the boom time. And I, you know, they'd all talk about, you know, oh, those were the days, the glory days of the '90s, you know, cocaine and hookers and all this stuff. And probably none of it was true. But the boom, there was definitely a boom time. And, and, and they would all, you know, and then I think when this was maybe what, 2002 or '03 or something, I think, you know, it was the beginning of the era of of people being at Pro Tools was just kind of in its infancy and just kind of becoming a thing.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: And I think people were— budgets were going down, and I think the problem that Space had particularly was it didn't move, it didn't update and modernize, you know, and it just kind of fell behind. And then once you lose your client base, you're dead. And it was a real sad, sad day when we all sat down and got told, you know, it was over. But then, so that went, and then I ended up just sending out lots of CVs to various people saying, you know, look, I'm an engineer, but I also write music for ads. And then I did a brief stint at a big post house in Soho for a little bit. And then actually Paul Plant contacted me and said, hey, we've got your CV, we'd like to come and see you. And then that was a bit of a kind of a period of a few months, and then I joined Wise Buddha.

Ryan: Mm-hmm.

Marc Vickers: And I didn't know much about them at the time. I knew that they did radio, but that's kind of all I knew. And I was a real, I think at the time I was very much a bit of a TV snob. I didn't—

Ryan: Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, I didn't, I just, I didn't, I didn't really think that much of radio at the time. And then, yeah, and then, you know, over the years I, I was working as an engineer at Wise Buddha for a little bit, sort of half and half doing half music and half engineering, and then eventually decided to take the plunge and do it full time. And I think it took me quite a while to kind of get over that snobbery and actually realize that, you know, and also to learn that, you know, when you write a piece of music for TV, you know, it's much more low impact. You know, it's not— it's kind of a lot of the music you hear on TV is very soft.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely.

Marc Vickers: You know, and to write for radio, you know, it's got to have instant impact. And that took me a long time to kind of learn how to kind of increase the impact and make it shorter and And actually—

Ryan: and never waste any time. I noticed that, especially the good ones like you, but the good ones that write commercial music, especially for radio, are not wasting any moments in their tracks. There's always something interesting happening.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, well, thank you. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it takes— it took a lot of time. I mean, man, if you hear some of the stuff that I did, I don't think it's on the website anymore. I think we've taken it down. But, you know, you wouldn't— maybe you wouldn't be saying that. It took me a while to get kind of— it took me a while to get to a level where I wasn't kind of getting lots of knockbacks from clients and stuff. stuff, you know, we don't— we're not sure about this. Yeah. And I'd be like, well, what's wrong with it? And then I listen back to it now and I'm like, oh Jesus, that's terrible. so yeah.

Ryan: So tell me a little bit about Wise Buddha. You've been— you're the creative director now, and you were telling me, well, we'll get into that in a minute, but, like, tell me about the facility, the way that people work. Is there— is there one central— I actually don't know a lot about kind of how it's structured there, but a lot of people in one location, or people spread out?

Marc Vickers: Yeah, it's a bit of a— it's a bit of a hybrid, Business, actually. I mean, there's two sides of it. We've got the main building, which has got 3 stories of audio post-production studios. We've got engineers that are employed there that work out of that. Then we've also got a content department that basically creates branded content for advertising, also radio show content. Yeah, radio producers, a lot of them are freelance that work from home. Some of them work from Wise Buddha in the offices. we've also got a, a talent, talent management, department that looks after artists and voiceovers and doing PAs and those kinds of things. And then, and then you've got the music, music company, which is, which consists of the jingle company Wise Buddha Jingles, Imager, and No Sheet Music, which is a production library.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: yeah, so that is, yeah, so that, that's kind of— I know George was on here a few months back discussing Imager, so I'll leave that to him. But, yeah, and you know, And No Sheep Music is our production library, so— and I actually do some writing for them, you know, when I can, when I get a chance to. I really enjoy that because it's kind of a bit of a different thing. I'm client-free. I can kind of write what's in my head.

Ryan: I think you're— if I can say this, I think you're pretty proud of that. I remember we've conversed now a number of times, and seeing the way you were talking to me about No Sheep Music You seem very proud of that. Is that a fair statement?

Marc Vickers: Yeah, yeah, we are. I mean, you know, it's really— it's something that Paul especially has wanted to do for years and years and years. And it's— the beauty of production music is that you write it, you don't know— and then it's like kind of shouting into the Grand Canyon. You write it and then it's gone. And then all of a sudden, you know, X years later, you hear it on the— you're watching TV and you hear it and you're like, well, I wrote that. And it's a crazy feeling because there's no communication. You don't know where it's going and who's using it. I mean, sometimes you do, you know, if you're writing something kind of for a client.

Ryan: Sure.

Marc Vickers: But a lot of the time you don't, so it just comes back and you're like, oh wow. And yeah, and actually, you know, we've done deals for representation with global— with Sony EMI to have it on their websites, and we're with Big Bang and Fuzz in Australia, with Megatrax in the US. So, yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's getting really good kind of exposure now, and it's growing and growing. it's a real kind of project of love, actually. yeah, and it's super fun to, to what to do it because, you know, you can, you get to kind of— I get to, as a creative director, I kind of have an input into what albums we're going to be doing next and what we think is a gap in the market. And, you know, yeah, you know, there's a new trend I've heard a few tracks by that are kind of like this, why don't we do an album like that, you know? And it's great. And then there's There's a roster of composers we've got all around the world that we can kind of say, hey, look, here's a brief, do you want to have a go? And we get some amazing stuff back from them. So it's really enjoyable.

Ryan: You already kind of went this way, so I'm gonna skip down a little bit. I want to hear more detail about the day-to-day for you. You know, I guess, what does creative director at Wise Buddha actually mean? Because we all know the title creative director can mean so many different things. And just give us a little insight on your actual day-to-day. Like today, what did you do?

Marc Vickers: well, actually, actually today I was— today I was working at home.

Ryan: Okay, all right. Wednesday, what did you—

Marc Vickers: no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, I mean, it's like, I'd say, I'd say probably 85 to 90% of the time I'm, I'm producing, I'm writing for clients like I always have. But I think also it's about— so it's listening to all of our output that all of our team are doing and listening to people's— you know, when people send stuff for approval, I'll be in the loop and I'll say, you know what, can you sort the vocal out there? That's not right. Just kind of offering feedback really to the audio output that's going out. Also just kind of nurturing the younger composers that are with us and just trying to kind of keep everybody happy.

Ryan: Uh-huh.

Marc Vickers: yeah, you know, I'm just trying to think of what else. Yeah, you know, helping, helping the younger writers progress and teaching them kind of tricks that I have and, the things that they can do to improve their, their work. and also part of the creative director thing is visual branding, being across the kind of the visual brand, By that I mean, you know, if we do an event somewhere, I might, you know, we'll have to have a stand, that kind of stuff, the website, all the visual aspects of that. And also kind of new audio product ideas that we might want to have, you know, new products we might want to launch, you know, new directions for— if a guy, if one of our guys is starting a package, maybe I'll sit down with him and say, look, this is the kind of direction I think you should go in. And they might say, yeah, I, you know, I thought maybe a bit more like this. So I'm kind of— I'm just on hand to kind of help people. I mean, George actually works in the studio next to me, so me and George kind of talk quite a lot about, you know, he'll say, oh, you know what, man, I've been— I've just been working on this, but I just can't seem to get past it. I don't know why. And then, you know, as happens sometimes, I'll say, oh, you know what, I'll just be that fresh pair of ears that will kind of go in and say, ah, you know what, just cut that bit, cut it down, cut that section down by half, and then that fixes the problem. And he's like, ah, yeah, of course. But because And I find the same in reverse, you know, when you're writing something, you're so close to it that sometimes you just need someone else to kind of be there just to sort of— just to tell you what you probably already knew.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. As far as, you know, the actual— okay, so definitely in composition, clearly you're writing a lot of different kinds of things, you know, long-form music for the No Sheet Music, jingles and all that. But as far as mix, or actually with your hands deep into the Pro Tools rig, Are you somebody who's actually doing, you know, a mix on your music? Are you even getting as far as a final mix? How far are you into the technical side of that?

Marc Vickers: Yeah, well, we do the lot from start to finish, so each one of us does all of it themselves, basically.

Ryan: So you don't have, you know, you compose it, you get it tracked, and then you hand it to somebody else to mix it, and then another person might master it? That's not the way you guys work?

Marc Vickers: No, no, no, it's just, it's all me. And if Jem does something, it's all him, and if one of the other guys does something, it's all them. so yeah, and actually that was born from necessity because, you know, when we started out it was just Jem and I writing and we were both working on our own projects and there was no one else to do it. So we would— we had to learn to do that ourselves basically. and then that's just kind of become force of habit and how we've all worked. I mean, we've all— all of us have got different kind of things, different skills and different things that we're maybe slightly better at than others.

Ryan: Sure.

Marc Vickers: but we, yeah, you know, we, we'll all write, compose our own jingles, then we'll mix them. That's just kind of a given. We'll mix them as part of the finished process. Then we'll send the kind of finished instrumental to the client for approval, and then, you know, we'll do the tweaks if there's tweaks. And then, you know, at the end of having written all of the instrumentals and mixed them all, we'll then kind of face the vocals, and then we'll just record those vocals and we'll mix them ourselves. So I kind of guide it out in advance, and then usually when we're doing a vocal session, I'll guide it all out.

Ryan: I'm quite quite—

Marc Vickers: some people are much more kind of on the fly and want to just kind of riff in the session and make stuff up.

Ryan: Yeah, yep.

Marc Vickers: I'm, I'm really, really, precise. I always guide out all of my ad-libs in advance and all of the kind of harmonies and everything I want it to do.

Ryan: Do you actually put down— do you put scratch tracks down yourself before you even get to the session, or do you just sort of chart them and then know where you're going to want to go?

Marc Vickers: no, I mean, I sing all of it. Yeah, I sing, I sing all of it. I mean, you don't want to— you don't want to hear it, but it's— it at least it tells me what I to sort of know. Yeah, because it's all about— because when I— when you sing it, you kind of get that, like, you think, ah, you know what, you— I could put a scoop on that note there, you know, rather than if you just played it on piano, you might not do it. And I think to sing it means— kind of gives you that realism of what the singer might do, and you could— you can just kind of plan it a little bit better. and sometimes new melodies come out of that when you're singing, because, you know, I, I think you, you just get a more realistic, —

Ryan: Mm-hmm.

Marc Vickers: impression of what the scene's gonna do.

Ryan: When you do a vocal— you're leading me on tangents, by the way, but I'm really interested in this part of it.

Marc Vickers: Sorry.

Ryan: No, it's good.

Marc Vickers: That's how my brain works.

Ryan: Yeah, it's great. I love it. When you're doing a vocal session then, especially because, you know, I've only done vocal sessions in the States, you know, you bring your talent in. Is it, you know, by the hour, or like, you know, here's the cut we're gonna do? I guess what I'm asking is, does it behoove you to get it all done in advance because it would increase the budget significantly? If you were trying to take the time to figure this stuff out with the talent in the studio?

Marc Vickers: Yeah, basically. Yeah, I mean, you know, it is— a lot of singers do charge by the hour, and it is— and actually, a lot of the time, you know, clients will come over for the session, and, you know, you don't have that much time. You might have 3 singers in a day, and, you know, the day will always start at, say, 10, and then there'll be an hour of chat because, you know, that's how it goes. And then, you know, you want to have lunch, and then, you know, before you know it, it's 5 o'clock and 6 o'clock. And so you do have to be, you know, you do have to be quite, quite organized and professional. And, you know, sometimes you actually have to kind of cut the chat back a little bit just to get through what you've got to do. And, yeah, you know, I mean, I would love to have, to have, you know, lots of— and actually I have done a few sessions before where, where I've gone abroad.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: and we've had 2 days in the studio for a jingle package and it's been great because you can really do— I mean, not so great when you get back the next day and you've got, you know, 20 hours of recordings to plow through of the same thing basically 80 times. But, you know, it's really great, but you have to have discipline, yeah.

Ryan: Out of the kind of entire scheme of everything you do, you know, so obviously you're writing songs, you're in there, you're producing vocal sessions, you're, you know, setting it up in advance, then there's mixing, there's mastering, there's vocal treatment, you know, tuning and aligning vocals, and all the different things that you do. Is there anything that you think you, you actually really excel at? And I know I have a lot of friends from the UK. Modesty is definitely something you guys have plenty of.

Marc Vickers: Yeah.

Ryan: But feel free—

Marc Vickers: Oh, Ryan, I couldn't possibly say.

Ryan: Exactly, exactly.

Marc Vickers: I couldn't possibly say that.

Ryan: Feel free to try and get a little immodest or whatever the word is and tell me something you think you're really extra good at.

Marc Vickers: I don't know, man. I think maybe— I mean, obviously the music, writing the music is the thing probably that's the better out of the Yeah. You know, if I had to choose between that and maybe the vocal work and the imaging. But, you know, I'm trying to kind of— you know, whenever you approach a new package, you always want to make it be the best thing that you've ever done, every single time. And, you know, otherwise there would be no— you know, you just wouldn't have the motivation. You know, you always want to do something new and great, and I think, you know, I'm trying to kind of change my sound and my style a little bit and trying to kind of— I mean, the best compliment anyone could give me is, that doesn't sound like you, that sounds different. You know, that's like, that's what I want.

Ryan: I'd be interested to know, you just said you're trying to change your sound and your style, so get a little more specific if you don't mind. what does that mean to you? What, what are you trying to change specifically?

Marc Vickers: Well, I, I, I don't know. I mean, it kind of— I've been— I've got a— I think I've been told that I've got a sound, and, and think that's great, but, you know, and a lot of the people that come to Wise Buddha probably come to us because they want that sound.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: And so, it's a bit of a difficult one sometimes because you want to give people what they want, but also you want to, you want to kind of move on and you want to, you want to be able to do something that's really different and something that you've not done before that's also cool. And because that's a challenge for you, you know, that's you kind of flexing your creative muscle, you know, and you want to, you want to, you want to kind of surprise people and do something that people go, wow, man, I didn't even know that was you. That's great. and, and that's not always possible, but I think with CHR, it's, it's always, it's a lot more possible to do.

Ryan: Sure.

Marc Vickers: Because you are, if they're, they're willing, much more willing to kind of push the envelope. but, yeah, you know, I, so I, I just kind of want to kind of evolve really. And I kind of, I, you know, but also in order to be able to kind of, I mean, I'll probably write and produce a jingle, not with, not the vocals, but I'll write and produce the music, maybe it will take me like a day to do one. So I'll have— so because of that, scheduling is very tight, so I have to have like a palette of sounds that are available to me that I know that work. So if otherwise, because I could spend half a day just searching for a kick drum sound otherwise, and then you just lose your time. So I think I have a palette of sounds, but because of that, it kind of can make stuff sound like, you know, just standard.

Ryan: Very samey. Samey is a really brainy word.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's, that's what you want to kind of get away from. But at the same time, you are you, you know, you're just you. You're just doing what you think is, is really cool. And it just kind of— it's like people saying, well, change your voice. Well, I can't. That's the way that I talk. But, but you kind of— you try to, you know, you try to move on and, and you have to get out of your comfort zone and you have to kind of you know, keep your imagination strong and kind of release yourself from the usual sort of style of doing it. Release yourself from your usual templates and your usual kind of crutches that you fall on if it's not kind of working how you want it to. But for that, you usually need a little bit more time.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: That's kind of it really. And if you don't have the time, you do end up kind of just going to the safe place because you know that you'll get that done for the deadline. So yeah.

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I don't ever really try— I think you're semi-familiar with this podcast, but I don't ever really try to make these, you know, a commercial for a company. And that's not why you're on. You're on for you. But people do, you know, they have a lot of interest in especially the bigger jingle companies. So I've had people on from Real World, people on from— I don't think I've actually specifically had anyone from my studio except me. But anyway, Anyway, other places. Wise Buddha, what would you say, I don't know if you have to break it down to one thing, but what does Wise Buddha do that they really excel at? And also, what do they do that really separates them from your competitors?

Marc Vickers: It's a difficult question to answer. I think we are, I think we've got variety in our sound. Like if you had a chance to listen to the demo, you know, we've done so much stuff, really, really varied. And we have a roster of people that we can call on. Like if you're a jazz station, you know, we call up, we can do that. If you want big band, we can do that. If you want crazy CHR, we can do that, you know. And I think that's been the thing that we've— we did a package for the BBC Asian Network recently.

Ryan: That was in the demo. Yeah, I was interested in that.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, you know, which is the national station in the UK for, you know, people that are English people here that are, you know, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian. And it has, you know, it plays a lot of Bhangra, lots of kind of Bollywood. And that was amazing because, you know, we would have really amazing Indian musicians come in and play parts for that. And it was such a vibe.

Ryan: Did you write music for that package?

Marc Vickers: My colleagues did. I didn't actually.

Ryan: I was just curious. Was I hearing like keys that, you know, nothing was in C major? No.

Marc Vickers: Well, I mean, there's more than 12 semitones in an Indian scale. I don't actually know the details, but Jem and Ollie could tell you. It's really a crazy world of amazing musicianship. And, you know, that's a job that— I mean, I was on the periphery and I saw what was happening and it was really thrilling.

Ryan: That's cool.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, so that's kind of what I suppose what sets us apart really, is our kind of variety.

Ryan: And I think I could add to that by saying I wasn't very, but I was a little surprised when I saw you guys did a pretty major country package. It wasn't the first thing in country you had done, but, you know, thinking of a group that's based in the UK doing a really solid country package for an American country station, tell me a little bit about that project.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, well, that was, that was, that, that's one that I did, and it was, yeah, no, and it was, it was really great. I mean, I, I just, I've, I've loved country music. actually, there's a station— I'll big up Chris Stevens here because—

Ryan: Okay, I was gonna bring him up too, but okay, good.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's got, he's set up a fantastic country station in the UK, and I've always loved country, and we've always wanted to do a package really for a while. And actually, a lot of that was written quite a long time ago, but we had— so I would write the cuts, you know, I'd listen to— I mean, it's contemporary country, it's modern hit country, it's Luke Bryan, it's Dierks Bentley, it's Carrie Underwood, Lady Antebellum, and it's all that stuff. And it's like— and then we would get kind of— we had an amazing pedal steel player. I know that in the States there's kind of 2 camps, isn't there? There's the pro pedal steel and banjo kind of camp of country music, and then there's the ones that don't, don't want that in there.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: And then, and it's like, but I thought, you know what, I really want to have it in there, and as long as I can keep it sounding cool, it won't sound like, you know, Tammy Wynette, hopefully.

Ryan: Well, it depends on the kind of, you know, if like the, the cat up there, you know, you're gonna have a wider range of sounds you can put into their, their package. But like if you come to Dallas, you know, we've done packages for both stations in town The stuff we do on KSCS, we cannot put into Music for the Wolf and vice versa.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it varies a lot. And I think, you know, for the first kind of opening into it, I just thought, well, let's keep it to the hit tracks. And then maybe we can kind of— once we get some footing, we can kind of try and vary things a bit and kind of come up with some new stars. And actually, the singers we used were 2 singers in Nashville that are fantastic. and they were great. And I think it was such a fun job. And it's an updating thing, it's an updating service, so there'll be more stuff added all the time, when I get a chance to do it. We have an update service, which— so it will be updated. but, you know, it was really, really fun.

Ryan: Yeah, that's cool.

Marc Vickers: And again, that's why— that was something that I had to learn to produce in a different style. And that was a real— that's when I really love my job, you know, when I get to do something that I've never done before, and it's super exciting. You know, no more Bruno Mars soundalikes. You know, this is like, this is something new.

Ryan: I'm sure you've, you know, you've mixed songs that had violin in them, but had you ever mixed songs with pedal steel or even a banjo before?

Marc Vickers: No, no. And actually, I found that with the pedal steel, you know, because it was recorded live with real playing, real people playing, it just, it's just easy, man. You just, it just fits in there. You don't need to do a lot, it just goes in and you're like, wow, that just works. I think a lot of the difficulty with mixing is when you haven't got— this is what I was saying at the Imaging days, I remember, you know, when the ingredients aren't right, then it's never going to sound right. And I think when the ingredients are good, you don't have to do much, it just goes in there and you're like, well, there you go, it just sounds great instantly. I've found that when we've had, you know, we've written a package and then we've had real strings put on afterwards, and you're like, it's just, that's it, you know. Yeah.

Ryan: You don't need to mix it, you know.

Marc Vickers: It's got the ambience from the room and it just fills out the mix and it just sounds amazing. So no, I didn't have to do much really, just kind of plunked it in there really.

Ryan: Yeah, that's nice, that's cool, and that's great. I, you know, we, we're in a competitive field, but I just enjoy hearing good quality product and everybody does, especially here, you know, like at TM. I just enjoy it, I think it's great. It's a, it's a different perspective on something, you know, that gets done a lot.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, I mean, I would love to record vocals like you guys do, man. You know, having the— having these amazing singers around the mic and just watching. I've seen stuff on YouTube that— yeah, it just blows my mind. I mean, that's a dream of mine actually, to— maybe I'll come over to see you guys at some point. I'd love to just witness this, the, the harmony of the 4 singers that can— that just know each other and they're looking at each other when they're singing and it's just beautiful, you know. Yeah, that's, that's a dream of mine to do that.

Ryan: Yeah, you got an open invite, man. Anytime you want to, stop on by, we'll set up a session. And although for me, I've enjoyed seeing what we can do with, you know, a single soloist, that's been— as I've learned kind of the more technical side of things, which I want to get into with you, but thinking about instead, you know, you take one soloist, you stack it, you know, 10 times, and you can make anything happen from that these days with all the tools we have.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ryan: And I've just— I don't even really know how to use Melodyne very well yet, but I've just sort of seen the magic of Melodyne. And it's just a crazy world, crazy thing what we can do with music now.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, I mean, George uses it, and I haven't— you know, he explained it to me, and I— because I'm a little bit old school, it just kind of— my brain kind of switched off. Like, it's amazing, and I'm just— I just can't— like, I'll always— I kind of tune my vocals differently to some of the other guys, and I usually just use— I'm very manual. Like, I just— I will do it on the guitar.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: You know, I'll play the notes on the guitar, then I use Auto-Tune, Antares Auto-Tune, quite a lot.

Ryan: And then paint in where you need to go.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, yeah. But I mean, he showed— George showed me some stuff that it does, and it's mind-blowing. You know, you can— if you sing the wrong notes, it doesn't matter anymore. If you, if you didn't get the harmonies, that doesn't matter anymore. I mean, it's— you can just get them, you can put them in later. I mean, it's, it's brilliant. I just, I, I haven't got the, what's the word, patience really, I suppose, to, to kind of do it. I should do it, and I probably, I probably should.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: Because it is— it probably— I'll probably be wishing that I'd done it earlier once I do.

Ryan: But based on that though, you know, forget Melodyne, talk some tools, some must-haves. I guess let's start on the audio side. You can tell us, you know, if you're a Mac guy, you're a Pro Tools guy, what kind of a DAW do you like to work in, and then maybe a couple of audio tools that you can't live without.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, well, I mean, the only one I've ever known is Pro Tools, and I've never used Logic. I've— that's the only— Pro Tools is the only thing that I've ever used, and I, you know, I have a love-hate relationship with Avid, as probably most people do.

Ryan: Most people do, right.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, but yeah, you know, obviously on a Mac. I had it on Windows for a while and it was awful. So yeah, on a Mac. I've just upgraded actually. I've got a— I thought it kept crashing, so I bought a new powerful Mac.

Ryan: Do you have the trash can? The little trash can?

Marc Vickers: Yeah, I tried it. It was a long story. The Mac was not up to the job, so I got, I got one that was, you know, really, really powerful. And so far it's been great. Nice. Yeah, so I've got I've got an S3, Avid S3 desk. I've got like a thing called a Satori, which is a monitor system, Antelope Audio Satori, which I use, which is kind of like a monitor controller. I've got, so that's kind of the hardware I've got. I've got like a Neumann, microphone, TLM, 67, I think. is that real geekery?

Ryan: What is that? What is that good for? What's this, the TLM 67 for those that I'm not actually too familiar with it myself, but like, what's What's the value of that? What's the virtue of that?

Marc Vickers: It's like an all-rounder really, because a lot of the time I don't actually— for my home studio, I don't really record vocals. At Wise Buddha, we've got an AKG, a really great AKG mic that we use for vocals. But here at home, my Neumann, to be honest, most of it is used for recording acoustic guitar actually. And I knew that it was good for that. And it was also— I'm talking on it now, hopefully it sounds good.

Ryan: We'll find out.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, so that's kind of hardware, and then software, you know, oh man, I mean, I could go on forever.

Ryan: How about, I'm assuming you have some Waves plugins. Everybody talks about the Waves, so maybe we put those aside.

Marc Vickers: Yeah.

Ryan: So what do you like to use besides Waves plugins?

Marc Vickers: I love the McDSP stuff. Yeah, I figured you'd go there. MC4, yeah, it's great. I mean, that's on every single master channel of every mix I do. I've got the analog channel McDSP as well. I've got a little kind of curve on that that just gives you a little bit of kind of 4K, just a little bit of kind of sharpness to that. Then I've got actually the Q10, the Waves Q10. I know we weren't talking about Waves, but it's—

Ryan: No, it's fine.

Marc Vickers: It's like I really— I do a lot of mastering on that actually on the master bus of the session, so I kind of do a lot of little kind of fine EQing and like if there's transients that need to go, stuff like that, I'll dip them out and stuff like that. So that's really vital. For me. What else? Actually, I love the SSL. I've got an SSL Duende master bus compressor plugin, which is great. It's really cool. It's a bit of a secret weapon and it's lovely. It's the closest thing to SSL that I've heard when compared to like the Waves SSL and other things. It's really great. I mean, it's made by SSL. So it should be.

Ryan: Sure. And sure.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, yeah. You know, Sonnox Inflator is fantastic. Also gives you a bit of a level booster when you— without actually giving you a level boost, which is really good. What else is cool?

Ryan: What about like something that George was the first one to show me? I think it was George a few years ago. Effectrix.

Marc Vickers: Yeah.

Ryan: Do you get into any of that stuff, or do you think that's a little too gimmicky for what you do?

Marc Vickers: What's your opinion on Well, I mean, it's kind of, it's for imaging. I mean, yeah, I've got it. I used it. I mean, we did, Radio 538 recently, which was, where we, we used it. I used it for some of that. that was a kind of a collaboration a little bit with, Chris Harkers as well, who did some imaging for that as well. And, yeah, and I've used it there and, and, I mean, there's, yeah, it's fantastic. It's one of the, it's kind of a bit like iZotope Stutter Edit as well, which is really good, although it's been used to death, I think, a little bit now. Stutter Edit was so specific that it came in like gangbusters and then maybe 2 or 3 years everyone's like, ugh, Yeah, it got rinsed and now everyone hates it. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, no, I mean, I love imaging trick tools. You know, there's so many out there and there's always something new and it's really fascinating to see it. I wish I could use them a bit more. You know, I mean, I did do lots of the imaging for a station called Das Ding, which was a German CHR station, and I did all of the imaging for that. George, actually George helped me a bit, but it was, I did a lot of that. So that was kind of one of my forays into doing imaging.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: and, yeah, no, I mean, it was— there's, there's so many things. I mean, Native Instruments Komplete is probably— if there's one thing that I would say people should get, you know, if you're looking for something that does everything, it would be, yeah, Native Instruments Komplete. I mean, it's everything. It costs a fortune, but it's great.

Ryan: Well, you can, you know, and there's sales that, that come. I was going to say, what I was going to ask is if one thing were to come on sale, But let me go— and then I was going to ask you about synths or, you know, virtual instruments in that area of the world. Native Instruments Komplete, when I got that, I used maybe like 15% of what they give you, but it felt like a very good value to me, and I got it on sale. But yeah, absolutely.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, yeah, it depends on what you need to do. I mean, I think it's useful for lots of things. It does, you know, if you have to do a variety of music, it's really, really useful because you You have so many different types of pianos and amazing strings and cool kind of guitar patches. And what else have they got there? Actually, I think strummed guitar, strummed acoustic, which I don't think is actually part of it.

Ryan: Just saw that update come. Didn't they just put an update out for that?

Marc Vickers: Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, strummed acoustic too. And that's really good. I mean, actually, as a guitarist, you would have thought it was blasphemy for me to be using Yeah. But the thing about it is it's really great for rhythm chops and stuff that just— it's just bang on in time and it saves so much time. And then kind of real stuff you can do over the top, but it just gives you that kind of, it just— it's instant quality and instantly well-mixed guitars. so that's really cool. Yeah.

Ryan: I'd like to know the answer to this one. I kind of— I'm gonna— I have a guess in my head as to what your first response will be, but when you're getting to make like a really gritty, dirty CHR track and you need some really just nasty synth to kind of put out front. Do you have a go-to instrument or, you know, a virtual instrument that you always start with?

Marc Vickers: Well, which one do you think I'm going to say? I think you probably know.

Ryan: Well, I'll say it because it seems to be the most out front these days, but Massive would be where I assume you start.

Marc Vickers: Oh, no, actually I wasn't going to say Massive.

Ryan: Okay.

Marc Vickers: Massive is great. I was going to say RFX Nexus, and that's the one that I use.

Ryan: Oh, really? I love that, and I don't feel like people are talking about that as much anymore, but you go there. Nice.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, I mean, that's, that's got— the thing about that is that there's, there's lots of, there's loads of updates for it all the time and, and all the genres that are hip and cool.

Ryan: The expansions are, are, are pretty moderately priced, which is nice, but there's a lot of them. Do you have any expansions that you would— so you got the person that has ReaFX and you're like, okay, this is the expansion you got to get right now?

Marc Vickers: Tons. Yeah, I mean, I, I'm a bit of a junkie when it comes to ReaFX expansion packs, but the thing is with those is that you've got got to be careful because people know if you just— because a lot of the time they have construction kits within them. So you press a button and it goes wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, and you're like, ah, that could— I could just use that for like a Major Lazer kind of track or something.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: But you can't. You have to change it. You know, you— it would be so late, and people know that. You know, people would know, oh, he's used a preset from that.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: You know, every— because everyone's got it. Everyone knows what the presets sound like. So you can't just play something in. So you would, you know, you mess around with it. You take the sound and then you kind of would maybe like write a new MIDI track for it so it does something new. But in terms of the sounds, it's really fast, really good go-to for people.

Ryan: Yeah, I don't know very many plugins like that that seem to be so powerful, that can do so many different things, that you can have like 50 of them in a session and it doesn't seem to weigh down your session at all.

Marc Vickers: No, yeah, it's brilliant. It's brilliant. I mean, you see, I was going to talk about Omnisphere as well, but actually—

Ryan: Oh yeah, that's the opposite.

Marc Vickers: It's really heavy. Yeah, it kills your session. And that's— it's like, I'm glad you've got this. It's like, you know, you want to load up a sound and then the little green bar moves across the top. All right, I might just go and have a cup of tea and then come back and then maybe the sound will load.

Ryan: And then I can preview it and decide that that wasn't the right sound and I'll do it again.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you've got to wait another 20 minutes for the next one to load up. I mean, it's, it's just— yeah, they've got to change that.

Ryan: I actually— I got to say, I spent the money on Omnisphere years ago. I really liked it, but I just stopped using it because when you're really in it, like when you're trying— especially me, I'm not really a musician. I'm trying to be a fake one and make some music here and there, you know.

Marc Vickers: And you're doing well, man. I wouldn't do yourself down.

Ryan: But you can't, you can't be like, all right, I'm on a roll here. I know, you know, I've got, I've got a good melody. I, you know, and then you got to wait 10 minutes each time you instantiate a new sound. It's like, forget it. I'm just gonna—

Marc Vickers: And in the end, you just don't bother using it because you just I'll just try—

Ryan: I'll just use ReaFX again. Yeah, I'll just bring Massive back in.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or Silent One. Silent One is another good one, Leno Digital, I think. yeah, that's another good one. But again, that's kind of for CHR. They're very CHR-based, really. I mean, with AC, a lot of the time it's like, you know, it's, it's more live instruments and stuff like that. So yeah, synths always kind of lean towards CHR. but I have to say, I got an amazing guitar— if any guitarists out there I bought a thing called Line 6 Helix the other day, which was— it's like Line 6's new guitar amp simulator, kind of the new version of the Pod.

Ryan: I saw that.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, and it is—

Ryan: Wasn't it on sale on like VST Buzz or something? I think I saw it on a sale recently, which is why I even heard about it. Anyway.

Marc Vickers: It's got like a— it comes as like a foot pedal, or you can get it as a rack mount. And I bought the rack mount one, and it's just brilliant. Brilliant, man. You can go online and find, you know, if you're looking for a guitar sound, you go online and there's a community of people that have created sounds. And, you know, if you think, oh, you know what, I really want something that sounds like Jonny Buckland from Coldplay, on you go, Jonny Buckland, bang, there's the sound. Wicked, fantastic. And it's really great, and the sounds are so great. I mean, some of the John Mayer sounds are fantastic, and it really is cool.

Ryan: They're made though for actual guitar players to play You know, a clean line in and then process that way, or—

Marc Vickers: No, it just— it literally just— you play it in as it is, and then that's it. I mean, it's not like Guitar Rig. Some people use Guitar Rig a lot of the time for, you know, you'll play in like a clean sound and then you'll affect it later with the crunch or whatever you want. I just can't do that. I have to—

Ryan: You got to do it all.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, and with Pro Tools you get latency a lot of the time, so you— it's just— you don't get the feel. So I've always wanted to record in as it is, you know, like a live recording. And then, just because that you get the feel better.

Ryan: Yeah, I think, yeah, for sure, man. I see, this is what happens. We could sit here and talk and, and half the people listening are more interested in the actual jingle world and your life. And now they've just been got— they've gotten pissed off because we've talked about—

Marc Vickers: Yeah, they've all left us now. Now we can really talk freely.

Ryan: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Marc Vickers: No one's listening anymore.

Ryan: They, they stopped the pod. Now hopefully, so we'll maybe take it back around a little bit. Yeah. Maybe something— I had sort of written this question and it was extra long, and I'm not really sure exactly what I'm going for here, but, you know, you've been a— you were a musician first, but you're definitely, you know, neck deep in the actual production world. You mix, you master, all that. maybe an audio-related trick you've learned recently that, that you're like, wow, how did I live without that? You know, it's taken my stuff to a whole new level.

Marc Vickers: Something in that Well, I mean, something actually that the people that are writing jingles to go on air, I think, will find— I mean, it could be something that everyone knows already that I didn't know about, but, and it's, it's rolling off the, the extreme highs and extreme lows. I don't know if people do, if everyone does that or not, but I discovered this recently. Someone told me about it, that if you're— if you are doing a mix to go on air, and you don't do this, what will happen is the mix will go to the— it could be like OptiMod or whatever the latest on-air broadcast compressors are, and it will take into account the frequencies that you can't even hear, like kind of below 30 Hz and kind of above 18 kHz or whatever.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: And those kind of subs and real top ends will influence— the OptiMod will read that and it will influence how loud it gets played out.

Ryan: Oh.

Marc Vickers: So, what some— so I learned to basically, when on the master bus right at the end of the mix, you just get your— you just get like a broadband EQ and just kind of hard shelf off everything below 30 Hz and everything above 18 kHz. And you won't even hear— you don't even hear any difference. But when it gets— so then when you deliver that and then when that goes out to— when that goes through online process— on-air processing, you'll just get that little bit of extra level because it's not— you know, you've limited lots of kind of unwanted sound, you know, that— so you'll just get a little bit more volume and you get a little bit more dynamic range out of it as well. So you just get that little bit more kind of punch when it goes on air.

Ryan: It's interesting.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, so that's a trick that— I mean, it won't make your mix sound any better when you're listening to it, but it's a good thing to do.

Ryan: So some people might— I mean, most people listening are probably like, yep, okay, great, I'll do it, or, you know, but, you know, on your master bus Let's say you end with usually some kind of a limiter, some kind of a hard limiter, just to take care of any of those extra things. After that, you drop even the simple like Avid EQ1, and is something like that you use on both sides?

Marc Vickers: Yeah, well, I use a thing called— it's a Waves thing, Line EQ, I think it's called.

Ryan: Sure. And yeah, and the linear EQ.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, that's the one. Yeah, and I just— I've just got a preset full roll-off, I just click that and that just rolls off those 2.

Ryan: And you put it right after— it's the last thing on your master?

Marc Vickers: No, actually I put it— I think it's about midway through or something. It doesn't matter. I mean, it doesn't matter where it goes. And if you forget to do that, you can always load them back into a mastering session and, you know, you can load the stereo WAVs back in and just put that on the master bus and bounce them out again. It doesn't really matter.

Ryan: It's just eliminating all that stuff that you can't even hear anyway that might be eating up your power, your Yeah, so if you're wondering why the, the, the CHR imaging producer that works at the enemy station, why his stuff seems so much louder, maybe that's it.

Marc Vickers: It could be that. Yeah, it could be that. And it is, you know, apparently it works.

Ryan: Cool. Let's see here. I had kind of 2 things left that I wanted to make sure I talked with you about. Trends. You're— you've already stated that you're constantly trying to, you know, reimagine what you do. You want to change your sound, etc., etc. But if we can think in terms of the entire industry, especially maybe the music side of branding, any trends you see happening, something you see us going toward or away from?

Marc Vickers: Yeah, well, I think actually, I mean, we just finished working on a new package for BBC Radio 1, and that was a really good kind of— when you do that, you know, you kind of, you really have to take stock of what the bleeding cutting edge of CHR music and chart music is doing, and that's really good. because you can find yourself getting lost sometimes if you're doing an AC package for months and months. But with this, you really get to kind of keep an eye on what's evolving week by week with the music industry. And I think obviously that with CHR now, we're moving away from the sort of hard EDM stuff and we're moving away from the whole kind of chopped, kind of really crazy chopped vocals and that kind of dubstep kind of grindy sound into kind of much more more, you know, much more kind of like— I mean, with Radio 1, the brief was to have, make it just sound a lot cleaner and a lot more natural.

Ryan: And more Ed Sheeran and less Skrillex?

Marc Vickers: Well, I mean, not even Ed Sheeran. It may be, I'd say, sort of something like, like kind of The Weeknd, like sort of Zara Larsson and Bebe Rexha and all those guys. And it's kind of much more tracks— the tracks, if you listen, get the BBC Radio 1 playlist or something, you'll see, you know, It's all a lot— it's a lot more downtempo, it's a lot more chilled, it's a lot more relaxed. It's kind of a— it moved— EDM kind of moved into kind of tropical, which then kind of moved out of tropical into kind of getting some more sort of urban influences into that. And now it's kind of a really interesting sort of mash of, of sounds where you have little bits of tropical kind of clicks on the drums, and— but then it's not tropical because it's, it's kind of got hip-hop elements. And it's really, really interesting what's happening. These Moomba sound is still in, you know, the kind of dancehall beats with Justin Bieber's doing and that kind of thing. And, and it's— and lots of tracks are based around that. Like there's a Sean Paul Clean Bandit track at the moment. is that Sean Paul? yeah. And, and it's all based around that Moomba kind of beat, but then that's kind of on its way out now. So it's, it's always constantly evolving, you know.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: I think, you know, probably 115 is the new 128, you know. That's, that's the— 115 BPM is the new 128 BPM.

Ryan: You know, what's the next step, do you think? You know, back to 128, down to 100, you know, 150?

Marc Vickers: I wish I knew, man. I wish I knew. I mean, it's really interesting. I mean, people say, you know, music's boring these days. It's not. It's really good, you know, really clever from a production point of view, from a pop production point of view.

Ryan: I agree. I was actually just thinking, I don't know what the perception is of like musicians on Chainsmokers stuff, but I happen to like a lot what, what they do and their variety.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, I mean, there was a track called Don't Let Me Down, which was, which I, I had to do something similar to that for something. And, it was really great to listen to, get your chops around, production chops around that. And, and then, you know, and even now, like, listening to that, that's actually— stuff's moved beyond that now, and it's crazy how quickly it moves. And yeah, there's always something new. I mean, I said on Spotify, I always subscribe to the kind of the latest pop, kind of playlist that they have, just to try and kind of keep on top of everything that's going on. And, and, you know, it's— yeah, but yeah, The Chainsmokers are great. there's all— I'm just trying to get Spotify going so I can give you some names. But yeah, I mean, The Weeknd is the one really that's really popular.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: A band called Naked as well are really good. they're, they're, they're quite popular at the moment in the UK. And again, that's just— it's quite soft, kind of a little bit of funk and a bit of disco, but done in a new way that's different. And so yeah, the impact has gone down, the dubstep and that kind of grind is over.

Ryan: I did want to say, because I just didn't say it yet, I really liked the radio, the BBC Radio 1, the new package you guys did. You kind of gave it a really— it's pretty simple, but it's pretty impactful. that sort of sonic on the One, that sort of sonic— I don't know, I don't know, it's not a logo, I guess.

Marc Vickers: It's a sonic element. Yeah, yeah. Oh, thank you. I mean, it was, you know, George primarily worked on it.

Ryan: Is that George Taylor? It smelled like George Taylor.

Marc Vickers: It does. And it is. Yeah. I mean, the team worked on the music and George did the imaging. And it was, you know, I mean, the brief was, you know, they wanted to create something based around the One sonic, the sonic sound of One on its own, because on their online branding now, you've just They've dropped the BBC Radio, it's just— you've just got a 1. And, and they, you know, but they also wanted it to be, yeah, you know, more natural, simpler, taking all of the kind of crazy chopped vocals away and, and just kind of having something that's a bit more pure and clean, reflecting what the music's doing now, but also not losing the creativity, you know, and keeping it authentic.

Ryan: That— you got that front and center on the Wise Buddha site, by the way, for anybody, interested. And, you know, the Wise Buddha site, great site to get to. How long does a Radio 1 air, something like that? Because as you've said, music is literally changing daily. You know, how much lifespan does something like that get?

Marc Vickers: Well, it's kind of a rolling process because I think we're going to be doing updates for them quite regularly. So the whole thing will be rolling in the same way as, you know, with Radio 538 and various other stations like that. We keep it— we just keep it rolling. You know, we have shed Jools, you know, I mean, we're booked out. I'm booked out till the summer already, like, with stuff that's been lined up that is happening. And, you know, you just, you just try and keep that thing ticking over, refreshing it all the time with new, new kind of new updates. And yeah, so that with those hit stations, you've got to do that because stuff burns so fast. So fast.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: With AC, it's different. But—

Ryan: And especially on that, like, that Radio 1 package, I felt like the more different kinds of elements, no matter how, you know, harmonically mixed they are and how it all feels very cohesive. The more of that you put in, you know, the different voices and all that, man, it just burns it so fast, I got to assume.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, it does. I mean, actually, we did so many submixes and variations of that that they've got quite a lot of choice to pick from. But yeah, you know, you have to keep it going and you have to keep it constantly changing and new stuff will come out. Yeah, and that's always fun. I mean, you know, it's great to get to work work for these, these people because also, you know, in terms of getting briefs, they're absolutely fantastic. I mean, especially I found Chris Harker's at 538, it's been a joy because, you know, he knows exactly what he wants, you know.

Ryan: That's a pretty smart dude, right?

Marc Vickers: He's a lovely man, you know. He came to— when we got the brief for this, we had to do a pitch, as is the case for most stations these days. we, we won it, we won that. Then they, they came over to London to give us the brief, which is, you know, quite rare, you know, to fly across just to give you a brief. and we spent a day just sitting together discussing stuff, and that was brilliant. And then, and all the way through the process, he's been really, you know, we would have maybe 3 or 4 rounds of feedback per jingle, but all of that was really constructive feedback that I was like, yeah, you know what, he's right, that, that will be better actually if I I did that. And that, that's quite rare also, that, you know, you could get— you could be on to version 4 of a jingle and not be annoyed. It's really good. It's fantastic. So, well, with the bigger stations, you get really, really knowledgeable clients a lot of the time too.

Ryan: Yeah, someone like that and Matt Fisher, you're gonna know that whatever you come up with, whatever, you know, after the rounds of— you're gonna have something you can be really proud to put on the front of your website, you know, to put out there to the world.

Marc Vickers: And it's fun, and the process is fun as well. And it isn't always, you know, and that's why I think, you know, when you've got someone that is really clued up and is a producer themselves, you know, that it just, it just becomes this mutual respect. And it's, it's, that's the best way to get the best out of writers, I think.

Ryan: So I think we're coming towards the end here. Let me ask you my final question. I'm interested to hear how you approach it, but it's simply really words of wisdom. And I like to always relate this more towards the younger person. Maybe it's a musician or producer, whoever you want to talk to. But, you know, for somebody that wants to succeed in your business, what would you tell them?

Marc Vickers: I would say that probably finding your own, your own unique spin on what you're doing. Find some kind of thing that— and it might not even be something you consciously know know, but find a kind of a sound that is uniquely you in some shape or form, or like a trick or some kind of way of producing your stuff that other people don't do, and then just hone that and hone that and hone that and work at that to be unique. And I think that, that's a really important thing, you know, just being different, doing something that is uniquely you, and it's not a carbon copy of someone else, you know, it's not plagiarism, it's something that's different. And then, you know, I mean, they say, I don't know, they say 10,000 hours is the tipping point of greatness or something. I'd probably say it's more like 100,000 hours, actually. But, you know, so I'm probably about halfway there now, I think.

Ryan: Cool. Well, you'll be an expert, maybe, you know, in your last days. Finally, you'll be able to say, I did it.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, 10 more years.

Ryan: Thanks, Ryan. One final follow-up, I guess, on that. As somebody who's looking to get hired by, you know, you or a company like yours, doors. Do you have any advice specifically to that? Because I think that's something I don't get enough on this podcast. But, you know, how many calls do you make? How many— do you show up at the door? Do you, you know, is it emails, snail mail? You know.

Marc Vickers: I'd say it's just, you know, CVs aren't that important. It's just, we just want to know what— if you've produced some amazing music, or you've done some fantastic imaging, send us that, you know, send us a showreel of your stuff. And tell us about how you did it, because, you know, we'll receive something amazing and we don't know, we don't know, did you do that or is that someone else's work? We don't know. So it'd be interesting to tell us, okay, I did this, this is what I did on this, you know, I created this, I wrote the music, I did this, whatever, so that, so that we know what, what your involvement was in that audio demo.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: And then, and then, you know, if, if it's, if you're that, if you're good, we'll call you, and it's simple as that. I mean, I think we are always looking for fantastic people, and we always want younger people actually to come in and learn because, you know, we've got Mike and Ben Townsend, who started out with us, you know, when they were quite young. Ben, who has worked with me on Five Three Eight and worked on Slam in Holland and Megahits in Spain— Portugal, sorry. And he started out, you know, he was very young, and over the years I've worked really closely with him, and now, man, he's knocking it out of the park.

Ryan: Yeah.

Marc Vickers: And it's amazing to see after maybe sort of a few, 3 or 4 years, and it's awesome. And I really enjoy that part of it, and I think that's what we would love to do with someone new, and I think that's how, that's the way to get the best out of somebody. So all you need is the raw talent, and we'll be able to see that, and then we'll call you, yeah.

Ryan: That's great, man. All right, Mark Vickers, creative director at Wise Buddha Jingles, thank you so much for all of your valuable time. I know that you have songs to write and stations to make awesome, but On Twitter, @MarcVickers, and then the little underscore. But, you know, if you just start searching for Marc with a C Vickers, he'll get you. WiseBuddha.com, NoSheetMusic.tv, another great place to go. And then for a little more George Taylor but still some Marc Vickers stuff inside of it, imgr.com, Imager. Anyway, any final thoughts or ways that you'd like people to connect with you or Anything else?

Marc Vickers: well, just, I mean, if you want to hear our stuff with that, with, you know, very little, time and effort, you can jump to SoundCloud, which is—

Ryan: Oh yeah, you're right. Yes, I've got it. I've got it right here. It's, soundcloud.com/wise-buddha-jingles. They can also hit the SoundCloud. I forgot to mention that one. Yeah.

Marc Vickers: Yeah, and that's the easy way to hear everything. No, fantastic. Well, thanks for having me, Ryan. It's been really fun. I hope I haven't talked your ears off.

Ryan: No way, it was great. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate it.

Marc Vickers: Thanks, man. Speak soon.

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