EPISODE 135: JAMES STODD

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

RYAN: And hello again. Thank you so much for checking out the podcast. As always, I very much appreciate your time. I try to actually say that each episode because I Genuinely do. I also genuinely appreciate the feedback I get from people in real life. I'm coming off the NAB's radio show in Dallas. That was actually an amazing event. TM Studios, my, you know, quote-unquote day job, my main job, we had a very excellent performance at the Marconi Awards. So look for the TM Studios socials and, you know, wherever the heck we are. We should get some content from that out there. In fact, no, I know for sure right now there's at least one video, some live stuff from that on Instagram or maybe Twitter, but definitely Facebook. So whatever, check it out. We were pretty excited about that. I'm very proud of our team for that. So not much more to say in the intro today except for one, if you would like to rate or review this podcast, it would mean ever so much to me. If you would like to reach out to me, the best way to do that is, I mean, unless you just know me and you have my email, you can obviously email me, but it's on my website. or just use the contact form there. I've had a few people suggest guests for the show, which ended up being excellent guest suggestions. So if you would like to do that, please do. Also, comments or questions for upcoming guests. Then, you know, sometimes people say, hey, I, you know, I loved that episode with so-and-so, can you pass along this note or put me in touch? That kind of thing. Happy to do it. So today, as we move right into the guest today, James Stodd is a UK-based radio imaging producer. He has been our around the block. He's had a lot of very cool jobs, currently working at Celador Radio in the south of England. I know he has his hands in multiple stations. He's the group production director there, also classic rock imaging producer. He contributes to Benztown as well, so he's got his hands full. Like I said, he's been around. a couple of his major gigs— he was at really Capital at its peak, he was at the Capital Network when that first started, in fact, and he was also at Capital FM in London. But he's been around. We talk about all of that, we some tech and, you know, UK radio in general. But just, just, he's very good at talking about this business. I just wanted to say that. I've known him now for years. I've seen him on panels at shows, and he's just very good at talking about this business and what we do. If you'd like to visit his website, it is surprisingly titled jamesstodd.com. Go to the show notes page on my website, ryandream.com. There's a lot of stuff. He gave us some pics, lots more audio than you'll hear right now. more links to reach out to him. But generally speaking, he's on all the socials and you can just search James Stodd and you'll get him. So here's a quick montage that he put together. I really couldn't have done a better job, so I didn't. I placed this right in the show and then we will get to it, the interview with the one and the only James Stodd. I just got fired. What's up guys, I'm Sigala. It's Meghan Trainor. I'm French Montana. And I'm Ella F. On Fire. The most hit music. Damien St. John. On the radio. This is Sam FM Breakfast. Your feel-good music. This is the breeze. : Right here. Capital Radio at 5.8. Capital. : Power FM. Hit it up really loud. Power FM. 103.2. I love it. Power FM. B-R-E-M-B. Birmingham, South Wales. Number 1 hit music station. This is Is Red Dragon FM. Hello, hello, I love you. Oh, thanks, that's very kind. Won't you tell me your name? It's Jack. 3, 4. Delving through the archives and taking you on a musical adventure. Hey baby, this is the Ronnie Wood Show. All the hits, all the biggest hits, play back to back. Hit music. Capital 95.4. London's hit music station.

RYAN: And, here we are again. There is some great audio from the guest today, and he is the group production director of Celador Radio, James Stodd. James, first, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

JAMES: Thank you, Ryan. Hello.

RYAN: All right, so I met you years ago now. You were kind of like the epitome of the British gentleman to me. You just seemed like a very kind, peaceful, person who, who really knows his stuff, and when you speak, I kind of was ready to listen because you have that air about you.

JAMES: Well, that's very kind. It's very kind? I'm pretty, I'm pretty chilled out. Pretty chilled out. And I, —

RYAN: You are, right?

JAMES: I'll talk to whoever, whoever listens. I don't know, I don't always know if what I say makes any sense, but you know.

RYAN: Seriously, you're definitely one of the nice ones. Nobody has anything bad to say about you. I know you've had a really nice career. a variety of jobs, and we're gonna find out more about, you know, the past in just a few seconds. Just tell me, in fact, let me start a little bit about your current job, just so we get a baseline for where you're at right now.

JAMES: Okay, so Cellar Door Radio, I've been here since about 2012. It's a company that was started by the guy who created Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, a guy called Paul Smith. So that was his sort of background, and he made his money in TV. He always wanted to run radio stations and he bought a couple and then kept on buying a load. And I came along after the company had been around a few years and he had a sort of a station called The Breeze, which at the time was a sort of pop station. It didn't really fit anywhere, a sort of hot AC, well, it wasn't even hot AC, it was an AC, but not in the sort of American way of describing it back then. And it had Jack FM, which was a typical Jack FM station, and then And over those sort of 7 or 8 years, everything has sort of developed and headed in certain directions. So The Breeze now is a super soft AC station, a big network of about— I'm going to get the number wrong— 18, 20 stations. They're all small licenses that have all sort of built into this network across the south and southwest of the UK.

RYAN: Okay.

JAMES: Then we have Jack FM is no more. It was replaced by a station called Sam FM, which is now sort of rock, classic rock, smattering of '80s in there as well. And so that we've got a big— that's on the South Coast and over in the Southwest in a city called Bristol. And then we've got a little CHR station that serves about 40,000 people called Fire, which is down on the South Coast town of Bournemouth and Poole, commercially number one, audience number one, fun station. That's a sort of fun release. So I have a sort of mix of jobs, AC, sort of rock, classic rock, and CHR all in one job.

RYAN: That's— I love that. to me, that, you know, when working in a, you know, in a cluster, in a group, even in a region, the ability to, to work on a lot of varying formats seems— I, you know, I think it's a pretty big advantage to a job. Agree?

JAMES: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And I think it sort of feeds, feeds different areas of your interests and abilities as well. And also, if you're having a, a day where you're just getting, I can't make another one of these, you can switch into something else.

RYAN: Yes, yes. No more CHR today. I can't do it. I need to take a break. I need— yeah. I apologize if you said this at the very beginning. I just wanted to make sure. Where specifically are you based out of?

JAMES: So I work out mainly— I work out of our station in Southampton. So in the UK, on the south coast, sort of right down at the bottom in the middle.

RYAN: Yep, absolutely. No, I know Southampton from, you know, knowing the Blueprint guys.

JAMES: Of course. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. around here, or certainly have been around here. And yeah, we're about sort of 50 miles out of London, I guess.

RYAN: Excellent. And then you said the South and the Southwest area, is that generally where Celador Radio's stations are?

JAMES: Yeah, we're pretty much sort of South of England and the Southwest, go all the way down to Devon and the sort of West of England, Bristol, down there. And then we sort of spread up a bit up into Reading, up near Heathrow Airport. We've got a station up near there. So yeah, all over the place, but mainly south and southwest.

RYAN: Yeah. Okay, cool. And then group production director. I don't know if that means you have a team of one, you know, kind of tongue in cheek. Do you have a team? And what's the team like?

JAMES: It's a team of one. It's one other person. I have a guy called PJ who is a brilliant creative producer and voiceover.

RYAN: Nice.

JAMES: I've known him for years and years. He used to be a producer at a station called 210 FM up near Reading, and he also used to do all the comedy pieces and topical production bits on Heart Breakfast out of London, which is now sort of owned by Global. But then that big show up there, yeah, he used to do all that sort of stuff. And then he worked at Jack FM in Oxford, a different Jack FM owned by a different company. And now he What's the state—

RYAN: sorry, this is a tangent, but what's the state of Jack FM, the brand and stations in the UK right now?

JAMES: Well, it's still going. It seems to be doing pretty well where it is. It's still essentially the original Jack FM in Oxford, has 2 or 3 spinoffs which are on air there and then on air on digital radio various places. They have a national station called Union Jack, which It has a bit more comedy and sort of only plays British music. And then they have a couple of other spin-offs as well. They keep on adding them off, but it's mainly the original station and its spin-offs, you know. And then there were a couple of other stations like ours that had it as a sort of licensed brand, but they no longer exist.

RYAN: Yeah.

JAMES: I don't think there's any other sort of licensed brands elsewhere, but they're certainly still going and they're always very creative and they're still doing pretty well, I think.

RYAN: I think it's similar to here. I think the Jack brand blew up huge and then, you know, and this has happened with a lot of different, even just genres and radio formats, and then, you know, a lot of those original stations faded away, but we're left with a few that just do really well. It's odd to me.

JAMES: It's certainly— it was certainly one of the reasons I came down here to join Cellar Door and had certainly 3 years working on Jack. And it was certainly an antidote to radio in terms of you could do things differently and be very creative. So it was certainly something I'd always wanted to do when it had come along. And so the fact I'd sort of gone got to do it was great. I mean, it's a funny brand because once you're ingrained in it and you understand it, you really sort of get into it, but it's really hard for people outside of the brand in terms of sort of programmers and producers to get their heads around sometimes. Listeners seem to get it because they just hear it as a thing and it's a bit different.

RYAN: Mm-hmm.

JAMES: But programmers who like things done the right way or the normal way, don't always understand the Jack way, which is the whole point.

RYAN: It seems, yeah, just to kind of maybe cap that, it's definitely a, you need to commit to the bit or it's not gonna work.

JAMES: Absolutely.

RYAN: You need, you got to go all the way with it or, or it ain't gonna work. And I think we probably saw that on a variety of different failures of that brand where they tried to bring in too much normal radio stuff, probably.

JAMES: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. Yeah.

RYAN: So again, I'm gonna take a step back here in a few seconds, like I said, but just what else are you into right now? I think you have your hands in a few other things outside your, you know, quote-unquote day job, but what else do you get into work-wise?

JAMES: Well, here it's mainly imaging and sponsorship and promotions and sort of commercial side. We don't make commercials, but we make sponsored programs and sponsored promotions and things like that. So that's my main thing. And I sort of, I divide, I tend to do most of the imaging side of things and PJ tends to do most of the sponsorship and paid-for side of things. But then we sort of step into other stuff, other projects as we go along. So that's my main work thing. And then—

RYAN: Right.

JAMES: Then outside of that, I Work, I don't know if you'll get onto this in a bit, but I work with Benztown contributing to their classic rock, Avalanche Classic Rock Library. So working with a team producing content for that as well, which is, I've been doing again for about, since about 2012 and really enjoy that because it's again a different side of my skills and a different format to work with.

RYAN: Yeah, that's what I was getting at. And I'm sure we'll talk more about that organically throughout the episode, or maybe we won't.

JAMES: We'll find out.

RYAN: It's a mystery to both of us. No, but, but I've known the guys at Benztown for years, since almost since they started. I always loved working with them, and I knew you were— so in 2012, and I may be kind of going about this in the wrong way, what happened in, in that year to have you take this new job and also have you start working with the Benztown guys?

JAMES: it was— well, it was, it was mainly, due to— well, the Benztown thing, we'd been talking to them about anyway, but, at that time I moved from living in London to move back to the South Coast. And the idea sort of was, we'll see how it goes and see how, how much I necessarily want to keep on going up to London. and, because I was at that time, I was working, out of radio imaging. I was still working within radio, but I was working at the BBC, making radio promos, mainly for TV shows. So, you know, if there was, if there was a new episode of, Top Gear, or there was a BBC campaign for, you know, a digital radio, or there was a campaign for anything the BBC was doing. I tended to work on documentaries and things like that, but I was doing that side of things, and I'd done that for about 3 years. And I wanted to move back, back here, down to the south coast.

RYAN: Yeah.

JAMES: And at the time, there was an opportunity to do something with Jack FM, particularly. And so it sort of seemed like the right time to move and do that.

RYAN: Nice. So I guess let's go all the way back and that'll take us back through there. But what was your very first job in audio period? Just what brought you into the industry in general?

JAMES: Well, I started off, I wanted to be a jock. And I did that through university, I did student radio. And I was on the college station there. And then from that, I started at my first station, which was called Radio Mercury. It was a huge station based in a place called Crawley, which is near Gatwick Airport. So one of the sort of 2 London airports, it's just around there.

RYAN: That's the one I flew in and out of.

JAMES: Yeah. And that's a huge— it was a huge sort of station. And I sort of went in there and I was there for 5 years. And I started out being like a tech op, a board operator, a couple of times a week for their outside broadcast they were doing. And then I started working in the newsroom, going out in the radio car, editing interviews, doing travel news, doing sports reports, and then doing the odd weekend overnight shifts. And then eventually after a year or so, I ended up as a producer on their AM station, which had a format of music and speech. So I was sort of booking guests and producing one of the shows there. And then ended up doing the afternoon show on that station when it flipped format to just become music. And I was still doing sort of odd weekend shifts on Mercury FM as well. So that was the first 3 or 4 years. And then the commercial producer left. And at that time, I'd already started every time I could get into the commercial production room. I was going in there and that's where I learned how to use my first audio editor, a digital audio editor, and started making bits of production. There wasn't such a thing as an imaging producer back then, you know, such a long time ago. It was just, you know, that was most of the imaging as such was made by the commercial producer. And if there was a promo needed, someone would write it and someone would make it.

RYAN: Yeah.

JAMES: So I tended to sort of start making those sort of things. then ended up being the commercial producer when the commercial producer left. And so that's that first 5 years, I sort of learnt lots of things and did lots of things in lots of different areas.

RYAN: What was your first digital audio editor? Do you remember?

JAMES: Yeah, it was a British system called SADiE, which was designed— I think it was designed first to sort of go in at the BBC, and it sort of did work or looked a little bit like It looked a bit like a sort of tape machine in terms of its controls. When you wanted to make the cut, the icon was a razor blade. And there were things like that. But I was actually taught how to use it by the commercial producer who'd sort of learned how to use it. And it was actually a really, really good system. I used it there and I used it at one of my later stations for a while before moving on to Pro Tools. But it was a good system because you could overlay lots of tracks and do lots of things. But it was basic in terms of there were no sort of, at the time there were no plugins or anything like that. It was pretty much what you see is what you get. And then any processing you had to sort of do outboard through a compressor or Yamaha effects unit or whatever.

RYAN: Yeah, no, that's cool. So yeah, I guess oftentimes I like to say, well, what were the key jobs? But for you, I don't know, either the next job or your first big job, what was next?

JAMES: Well, next I did a year after that at a BBC local radio station. where I was making the promos and they didn't have an imaging producer. I was making promos and bits and pieces and also sort of studio tech hopping one of their breakfast shows, which was down the line. So I only, I did that for about a year and then I moved on to a station in South Wales. So we're now heading west into Wales, the west of the country.

RYAN: Mm-hmm.

JAMES: And it was a station called Red Dragon FM. Which was again, it was a big city station in Cardiff, which is the sort of capital of South Wales, I guess. And it had just been bought by the Capital Radio Group. So Capital in London now, the company that originally owned it, Capital Radio Group, had bought up quite a few stations in those few years up to about 1999. And they had a number of stations on the South Coast and one up in Birmingham and, one up in Oxford or whatever. And they'd bought this, this station in Cardiff as well. So I went over there to be, I said head of production. There was only me there, but it was, yeah.

RYAN: Yeah.

JAMES: but that was great because it was, it was suddenly in a, a station in a big city. And, it was essentially a, a sort of clean sheet of paper, and, sort of get your teeth into. being really creative in a different sort of format.

RYAN: And so, I guess maybe one question to ask is, were you one of these people that had like a job, a new job every couple years? Were you able to stay in a couple different places for long periods of time? How did your trajectory go from there?

JAMES: Well, you know what, this is the thing that sort of looking back on it, I sort of, I'm a bit annoyed I didn't, at the time, you know, I wasn't particularly good at reaching out and sort of making contact with new people. And back then, obviously, there was no no internet or SoundCloud or Facebook or anything like that. So actually getting to know the people who were running production in these places was pretty hard to do. So if I look back on it, I would have probably pushed myself a bit more when I was in Crawley at Radio Mercury to try and do the next thing. So I'd been there for 5 years, I'd been at the BBC for a year. It was never ever doing something for a year or so, then moving on somewhere else. You know, I was at Red Dragon for 4 years. And it was, again, it felt about the right amount of time to sort of learn stuff and achieve stuff and do stuff.

RYAN: You weren't one of these people that had a— I mean, you've had a rather long radio career at this point. I ain't calling you old, James. I'm just saying, you know, anyway. You've had your badge of honor of having been laid off or fired at some point, correct? Because it seems everybody has to do that.

JAMES: Well, yeah, but I've actually been really, really lucky. Have you? Because it sort of— actually, when I was at Red Dragon in 2002, there was a big restructuring of the Capital Group. And because of that, they essentially got rid of local producers in local stations. And the idea was to create this, the original Capital Network, which was Capital in London and BRMB and Power FM, Southern FM, Fox FM, Red Dragon. I'm sure there's one I missed. Invicta down on the South Coast and down in Kent. And the idea was to have this sort of network where there'll be sort of centralized production and centralized music and and a little bit of shared programming as well. And so, at that point, I, along with all the other producers, ended up sort of going for a smaller number of jobs based up in London. And I was lucky enough to get the job of head of production for that network, which then meant I could then pull in some people from the other stations who were already doing that job. So at that point, I sort of went up to London and ended up pulling in David Wakefield, who now runs On The Sly, and Ali Rezaqani, who used to be in On The Sly, and he does his own stuff now, and a couple of other guys who have sort of been part of that and have been part of other things. And so suddenly we had a bigger team with more experience, and actually there were guys who who knew a lot more than I did, I think. You know, I sort of helped sort of lead them along a way, but actually, you know, technically, and the technical proficiency of some of these guys was amazing. And so suddenly it was an opportunity to learn new things from new people as well.

RYAN: I didn't want to gloss over this, but we're talking about getting your job that brought you to London, and you're physically working in London now at the network, at the station and the network there.

JAMES: Absolutely, absolutely. And the reason I got onto that was because I was lucky and I'm sure we can go back to that, but I was lucky to survive that axe. Then there was probably another axe when a merger happened and I ended up moving across into just working at Capital in London. And then about 3 years later when Global came along, that was the one where I— them and me, we sort of went our separate ways. And that was the right time to do it as well because I I was ready for the next thing. And I think I'd sort of done what I could, and it needed to take a different direction. And lots of people who had been there no longer were. Yeah.

RYAN: And I was gonna say, I think, again, anyone who works in the radio business, you know, in the States and the UK and elsewhere, where big, you know, corporate entities started to play a role, and that happened in that era, pretty much everywhere, we can all relate to the whole, well, The climate here isn't the same anymore, or all of these people aren't our people, so they're going to go away. Those types of things happen. But let's take a step back there. So I went in 2016 and saw the facilities there on Leicester Square.

JAMES: Yeah. This was before then. This was before even Capital had merged with the GWR Group. So this was a much smaller— I mean, it was in Leicester Square and there was a lot of stations there, but it was a much smaller entity.

RYAN: So, what was it like then? So, this is where they're just starting or they're— what's happening?

JAMES: Well, I mean, Capital had been around for years, you know.

RYAN: I didn't mean that. I meant they're like merging the networks or they're creating the networks.

JAMES: Well, they've created this original network of 7 or 8 stations. And, you know, to start with back then, you know, this was when Capital still had Chris Tarrant on breakfast. You know, this is the— this is— this is a guy who was like the equivalent of Elvis Duran. You know, he'd been around for years and he was on, you know, he was huge. He was the guy who presented Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on TV.

RYAN: Mm-hmm.

JAMES: And so it was him and all the big names who were on Capital. But mainly their main stations were Capital and Capital Gold. And I think at that time XFM, which is now Radio X, that was in the— that was in the building. But that was about— that was sort of about it. It wasn't at that point when they had all these other brands.

RYAN: What year was this when you got there?

JAMES: So this was 2002. Oh, okay.

RYAN: I thought it was a little later.

JAMES: Okay. Wow.

RYAN: So, so what, as far as in the landscape there though, you know, like Radio 1 and, you know, the non-commercial stations, like what was bigger at that point? What was stronger? It was—

JAMES: the battle was between Capitol and KISS and Heart and Magic. So pretty much in London, in commercial terms, it's the same big ones.

RYAN: Right, as it is now.

JAMES: And it was pretty much tended to be Capitol and KISS fighting, flip-flopping between the two, and then Magic was sort of punching up as well, and Heart was really starting to punch up. So it was a big time, as it still is now, but it It was back then, it was, that was when the battle started back in the, you know, the sort of 2000s, I guess. And what we're now, 2019, and then it's still going on in some way, shape, or form. we know with the other ones like LBC sort of pushing strongly as well, being a speech station and, you know, other brands who've sort of come along.

RYAN: What about the BBC radio brands though? Where were they in the mix at that point?

JAMES: They were, they were still strong. I mean, Radio 2, would have been strong. I can't remember if it was as big as it is now, because it's huge now.

RYAN: Yeah, right.

JAMES: But it was certainly pretty big. I mean, they would have still had, you know, Terry Wogan on Breakfast, who was on there for years. And they would have still had some of the older school things on there. And Radio 1 was still a bit older school, but some of the new names were in there as well. But yeah, Radio 1 was sort of there, but it wasn't necessarily as big as it got.

RYAN: Mm-hmm.

JAMES: So it was all sorts of different things. And the challenge then quite often, certainly in the 3 or 4 years, well, from about 2002 to 2007 or so, was capital did tend to change a little bit because of what was happening elsewhere. So if You know, if KISS— sorry, if Magic was coming quite strong, then Capital went a little bit more AC. And then if Heart was coming a bit stronger, it went a bit more hot AC. And then if KISS was getting a bit stronger, it went a little bit more CHR as well. So it became a little bit of a chameleon. And I think that was some of the problems and the challenges.

RYAN: That's not usually—

JAMES: yeah. No.

RYAN: Sorry, go ahead.

JAMES: We ended up, you know, it changed its name or how it was referred to on air 3 or 4 times, you know, Capital, Capital FM, 95.8 Capital FM, Capital Radio, Capital, you know, 95.8 Capital Radio. But I mean, it's— we sort of changed and logos changed and lineups changed. So it was, it was an interesting time.

RYAN: Yeah, that is. Do you think, Capital was doing that leaning back and forth more than other stations were, or was that just typical? Like, was KISS also doing the same thing?

JAMES: No, I think KISS has always been cool cool. It's always been the cool one. And Capitol, it was, was always big, but it was all, you know, it was always— Capitol had the balls. I mean, they still say, you know, the biggest balls or whatever. Well, in that sort of mindset sometimes. But back then they had the, they had the attitude, whereas KISS had the coolness. And, you couldn't— but they could try and be cool, but KISS just was cool. and so that was, that was always the, the challenge, you know, to, to, to fight and get that. Because your parents listened to Capitol, whereas the kids listen to KISS. And so to try and get the kids listening as well, that was sort of a harder job they had to do, particularly with a breakfast show that was, you know, had been around for years and had— it was just a different, almost different from the rest of the station as well.

RYAN: So when you were there, what was the team like? How big was the team you managed?

JAMES: Well, when I was doing the Capital Network, I think there was about 5 or 6 6 of us in the team. And we sort of said, again, that was spreading out and doing all the production for this network of stations. Because the Capital, at the time when I was first there, Capital's production was mainly looked after by one other person. And he sort of looked after Capital and we looked after the rest of the network. And then stuff that sort of we shared, we'd sort of work on together.

RYAN: Yeah.

JAMES: So it was mainly the other stations, but I thought it was, you know, 5 or 6 of us doing it.

RYAN: At the time, how big, like how many stations were on the network? And in fact, compared to now, I assume it's much larger now.

JAMES: It's much larger because they were individual stations and they all had individual program directors. And whilst there was a sort of a brand sound, they'd all had their individual sounds when they had individual station sound producers. So whilst they had the producers now, the majority of them were working within the team in London. They all sort of wanted to do it a little bit differently. So because of that, they— each one would sound a bit different depending on where the programmer wanted to go. So they've been playing the same music and they probably have the same voices, or mostly the same station voices, and they probably have the same jingles or elements of the same jingle package, but it didn't sort of align. So it was very different. And they had different station names. You know, there were BRMB for Birmingham, you know, or Power FM was a bit hotter down on the South Coast. Southern FM was a, you know, big station down in Brighton. So they had different names and different sounds.

RYAN: I don't think I knew that. So when would they make reference to Capital on the air?

JAMES: Oh, there was no— they weren't part of— there was no mention of Capital at all.

RYAN: So they didn't even say like, you know, BRNB, part of the Capital FM network?

JAMES: No, no, no, no, it was just an organizational network back then. The original Capital FM network was a network of stations. We had the same sort of logos, but again, they were variations. It was completely different from this, the proper network.

RYAN: So really, in what way was it even a network?

JAMES: Well, it was an organizational term back then. I think the word There were the odd shared programs that ran across all the stations at night. There's a guy called Steve Penk who did a sort of phone-in show and a guy called Jeremy Kyle who did a late-night live show on some of them. But even if they ran across that network, you know, all the local idents would drop in with local station names and things. So shared programming rather than a network, a shared programming network.

RYAN: So yeah, it was more like, I mean, here we call it syndicated programming. It'd be you're lifting the content of the show and placing it on your own station and then branding around it however you want to.

JAMES: Absolutely. So I suppose they were the same, they were a network in terms of a thought and a sort of structure and a management structure, and some of the promotions they did were the same, but nothing more than that.

RYAN: Hmm, wow. So how long were you in that position, or just in that environment, that network job?

JAMES: So that existed for 3 years up till 2005. And at that point, GWR, who were the other big group who, well, there was GWR and there was EMAP back then. And GWR had a, again, they called it, it was a network of stations and there was probably 20, 25 stations All with different names, all with local daytime shows, but a shared evening show and a shared late-night show, which networked together, but again, weren't part of the GWR network. They were their— I'll get it wrong because I wasn't part of it. Yeah, that's okay. But they were sort of part of that team and They, that company came in and merged with Capital, took it over really. And over that next 6 months, they formed the One Network, which was most of those stations apart from Capital, which Capital I think was in the One Network, but again did its own thing and was Capital and on its own. And again, they had shared programming and shared shared production resources and shared thinking in terms of strategy, but it wasn't the same in name. So, it wasn't identical. And so, they had individual local regional identities.

RYAN: So, you say, what did you say, that was 6 months? You mentioned 6 months.

JAMES: Is that true? It took about 6 months for them to come in and start arranging things. And at that point, I moved over to purely working Working on Capital in London.

RYAN: Right. Okay. So, what was that to you? In your mind, was that a lateral move? Did you feel like that was a step up or a step down?

JAMES: Definitely a step up, because it was working on the big station.

RYAN: That's what I would have thought.

JAMES: I just wanted to make sure. But yeah, it's also a case of, you know, get me away from this madness, because it was a little bit odd.

RYAN: Yeah, because that does seem like madness. Madness to me.

JAMES: Yeah, so it was great, but it did, you know, there definitely were culture clashes. You know, it's a good example when we did a network show from the Brit Awards, so a bit like the MTV Music Awards or whatever in London. And Johnny Vaughan, who was the host of the Capital Breakfast show then, hosted this program on Capital and also ran it across the rest of the network. And because they did, Capital never sort of, well, they did very few of these sort of programs. And it was a live program. And at one stage, at least once, but not many times, he said, it's Johnny Vaughan, Brit Awards, Capital FM. And of course he said the station name of Capital FM on any other station across the network. And, you know, the amount of rubbish that went around the next day about, oh, the fact he mentioned Capital or whatever. What they sort of failed to see was he was saying that when he was talking to Madonna. And so it was a case of, right, okay, so he's mentioned the big station, but he's got Madonna on your station.

RYAN: Right, wow.

JAMES: So it was definitely a different sort of culture back then in terms of thinking. But again, that was a good challenge and it offered up lots of different challenges even in those sort of 2 or 3 years on Capital, Because the format kept on changing and whatever. So you had to change your styles along the way.

RYAN: And it sounds like, because I knew you worked at Capital, obviously I've always been a big fan, and I've had plenty of people on here that have had some connection to it or even still currently work there. But you weren't there that long, it sounds like, because it sounds like Global's about to come in here in about 2 years.

JAMES: Yeah, yeah, it was about 2 and a half, 3 years. years I was there, but it was long enough to do lots of things. You know, I got to— we worked with— the first year I was there, a new program director came in from Australia, a guy called Scott Muller. And when he came along, he brought in Geoff Thomas to work as our sort of production consultant. So that was great because I sort of got to learn some some really interesting things from Geoff's way of doing things, which was really good. And, you know, we also had to sort of mount or just face some different challenges, I guess, really, from a station which was really, really having trouble, you know. And I think we tried lots of different things. And I'm sort of really proud about what we tried.

RYAN: Yeah.

JAMES: But equally, very, very, very able to sort of put our hands up and say, yeah, we didn't get it right. And actually, what they did next was what needed to happen, you know. And when Global came in and took on Capital, you know, the first year or so, the production was pretty boring, but it was really simple. And it said the same thing. And it says Capital, you know, hit music, Capital, hit music.

RYAN: Right, right.

JAMES: And it allowed them to sort of reset and and say, this is what we are. Because I think back then we didn't know quite what we were. We were trying to do lots of different things and some stuff worked and it worked quite well and some stuff didn't.

RYAN: And it's hard to know what works when you're throwing 15 other things at the wall with it. Absolutely.

JAMES: You know, whatever we did, we did really well and we tried and the quality was great. But, you know, we were trying lots of things and, you know, sometimes you have to try a lot of things to make it— try and make it work. And sometimes it doesn't work. And so when it moved on, it was the right time.

RYAN: Well, it was really weird.

JAMES: I've said this to people before. I felt really— it was almost like a bereavement leaving it, you know, because you're so sort of ingrained in trying to make this thing work. And so when it's sort of taken away, it's really, really weird. And I couldn't listen to it for a good year or so because you sort of feel—

RYAN: I think that's understandable.

JAMES: But I'm okay now. It sounds great.

RYAN: Oh, good. You got past it in the next decade or so?

JAMES: Yeah, no, it didn't take that long. But it was weird just to sort of hear it and then say, well, It's all changed, you know. But I think, I think that's the thing that happens sometimes, you know. You get, you get really close to a project, you know, and yeah, and you're really passionate about it. And I think you sort of need to have that passion sometimes to, to take you through it.

RYAN: Absolutely. I mean, I think you should demand, you know, employees that, that feel that way also, especially if you know it can be great and you know you're close, you know, you know you can get there and you know do— like, that's the tough part. It, you know, you were almost there.

JAMES: Absolutely.

RYAN: Sounds like. And I like to kind of mix in some other topics as we move along your journey here. But in those years, I think technology was advancing pretty significantly, you know, because I started in college back in, you know, '90— I don't know when it was, '99, '98. So I had Cool Edit, and that was like I was the only one in that station who had never really looked at tape, much less touched it or cut it or anything like that. But anyway, then the digital editors start to go crazy from 2000 on. For you, what were some big advancements, things that really helped your workflow in that era?

JAMES: I reckon by then I was well and truly sort of converted to Pro Tools. So, you know, that was great. And the fact you could see back in the last 2 or 3 years of Capitol, we'd sort of— we'd made a little— it was all networked together and we could share audio. And that was much easier because even back, you know, previous to that, you know, to import audio, you'd have to open the CD drive and put in a CD and import your music or whatever. So that was good. But I mean, Stuff like that, I think, was the most useful, just the speed of being able to do stuff and also how we had it all linked into the production system, the playout system, and how you could just literally sort of bounce something down straight into it and then load it in and it was quick. Whereas before it was a sort of 2-stage process and then load it onto another system and then having to do something else on another system. So it was trying to get systems to talk. And I think, I guess even more, but when we take a step back a few years, when we had that original Capital Network, just distributing audio to people, we had a system which was really basic where you'd select a file from one bit of the playout system and then select which stations to send it to. And then you'd have to send it real time down the line as a sort of data packet or whatever. And then when the GWR guys came I mean, they had a really clever system which was much more intuitive, and you could send audio and see shared folders and stuff like that. So it's— as that developed, that sort of helped speed things up and helped you transition stuff and transfer stuff to the right places.

RYAN: Yeah.

JAMES: And then, and even just basics like, you know, naming systems and file conventions and things like that. And obviously we got better at doing those sort of things, which you needed to, to allow you to sort of make sure your assets were in the right place. Mm-hmm.

RYAN: What about Mac versus PC? Were you generally on one platform the entire time? Did you go back and forth?

JAMES: I— when I started on Pro Tools at Red Dragon, they— it was sort of like good news, bad news. Yeah, good news, you can have Pro Tools. Bad news, it's on PC.

RYAN: It's on PC.

JAMES: And it was— it was on Windows NT, and I just remember it being a You know, you'd want plugins, and of course that wasn't available on a PC, but it was only available on a Mac. And so getting to London where they had it on Mac was a sort of a godsend. So it was Mac all the way really after that. Although, I mean, we still had, you know, Adobe Audition and bits and pieces you have to use PC for. You can't escape it somewhere. But yeah, it's always been pretty much sort of on the Mac. from then on in, really.

RYAN: As technology made things getting, you know, get faster, as some of the things you just described, but also just the processing power, I guess I would ask your production work, what are some of the main changes you saw over time?

JAMES: I think what has changed, because even back then, sort of in in 2005, I was essentially tied to that studio, to that production room. You know, I couldn't go and work in the office, you know, I couldn't without having another Mac and, you know, rack-mounted system and goodness knows what to be able to load up. Whereas, you know, now I can, you know, I can sit on the train or sit on a— I could sit on an airplane, I guess, and make stuff if I wanted to.

RYAN: Yeah.

JAMES: And I don't need anything plugged into it bar the bloody iLok, which one day I'll get away from those. Absolutely. Well, you know, I guess there's a cloud one, but I haven't quite got over there yet. But you can almost do everything without having to have something plugged into it, you know. So suddenly you've got so much more flexibility in terms of how you work, you know, because before— here's an example. It's a few years old, I guess, but with Ben's Town, sometimes, you know, if an artist dies, there's always a tribute, you know.

RYAN: Yeah, we did the format for that one.

JAMES: Yeah, and with classic rock, you get that quite a lot. But Tom Petty passed away overnight. I wake up 6 in the morning, hear it on the news. I ring my program director at Sam FM and say, look, this has happened, should we make some sort of tribute piece that we can run on the breakfast show? And he goes, yeah, absolutely. You know, I could, I did that, you know, sitting downstairs at home, getting the interview clips from servers and whatever, put it together in an hour, get a bit of voiceover from our voiceover who can just email it to me. I can send it up and load it straight onto the playout system and it's there. Yeah, back, you know, 10 years ago, it would have been a case of I couldn't even been— couldn't even have considered starting that. I might have been lucky enough to have a laptop with Pro Tools on, possibly. if I, you know, I did have it and I had the M-Box plugged in and whatever, but then actually I'd have had to do that and then dial in or file transfer it or whatever. But actually, more likely than not, I'd have had to go into the station and do it. And so actually getting, getting something done that quickly might have been—

RYAN: Yeah.

JAMES: Harder, particularly if there was no one dedicated to doing stuff for the breakfast show that day, it might not have happened. So you can react to stuff quicker, you can change stuff quickly if you need to, which is good because you can— it's easy to do. So I think that side of things and the speed of what you can do on the computer has really helped. Of course, the fact is the more memory and processing power you've got available, the more tempted you are to put more things on there.

RYAN: Yeah.

JAMES: So it doesn't necessarily help. it. And I think that is always the challenge, and it's certainly the challenge I'd come across when I talk to an intern or someone starting new, when they're saying, well, what equipment do we need, or what plugins do we need, and what this do we need, and whatever. And it's always a case of, you don't need any of them. You need the ideas first, and you need to learn the techniques, and then these things are stuff that you you can layer on to add polish and make things sound a bit better and do different things, but you don't need everything and you don't have to have Pro Tools to be brilliant, of course. I never really learned Adobe Audition, but if I had the time and I'd taken the time to do it, you can do great things on there. You can do great stuff on Audacity if you—

RYAN: For sure.

JAMES: If you take the time and that's all you've got, because it's more often it's the idea and then it's how you polish that idea. idea and do more with it, I suppose.

RYAN: Yeah, right. I, I, I liked that. We— you and I were talking about actually meeting at the Imaging Days a few years back, and I think we weren't talking about that on the podcast, but I liked the session, you know, where, where producers were working in other DAWs, you know, that I— yeah, you know, Ableton or, you know, sessions like that, just to, just to hammer home that, you know, the, the real great ones of It's just all about the output. It doesn't matter how you get there.

JAMES: Yeah, I think the best interview challenge I ever had was when I— I mean, this is a long time ago. It shows how old I am because it was a BBC local station I was at. And the challenge was, we're doing this show, write a script for a promo trail. and then go in there and make the promo. And you sort of go into the studio and that station, when I joined, it didn't have a digital editor at all. All it had in that production room was a mixer, a couple of quarter-inch reels, and a couple of NAB carts or whatever, and a CD player for production music. And it was a case of make a promo. You thought, well, God, yeah, okay. And I'd done stuff with tape lots, you know, so I knew how to do that. But it's a case You wouldn't necessarily get someone to do it on tape, but just giving them Adobe Audition and a CD of music and a couple of sound effects, no plugins or whatever, it's all about the idea first and what you're actually going to do. You can use lots of ingredients to make an amazing cake. You can also make an absolute dog's breakfast. Yeah.

RYAN: I'd like to talk about some resources, just things you have found in your storied career that have helped you get better at this work we do? Whether it be seminars or just other human beings or the web, etc. But things that jump out at you as, you know, that really helped me advance.

JAMES: Yeah. And I guess this sort of stuff has happened later in my career than earlier, you know, because again, Back when I started, there weren't all the resources of all these imaging podcasts and programs with collections of audio and examples of what other people are doing. There were things like, you know, occasionally you'd get that California Downloads or something, California Aircheck cassettes and things. And of course, there were Dano Day's CDs and things which I had and listened to, and you'd listen to Dave Fox talking or whatever. But there wasn't necessarily tons of resource and websites and tutorials and things like that. So you sort of learnt it by getting to know the odd person or just listening to those sort of things and trying to emulate them. Whereas now there's so many more resources around, you know, so I, you know, you've got your podcast, you've got the Chris Nicholl had that whole series of podcasts, the Radio Imaging Podcast. You've got Dom Evans' podcast. Benztown do their Voiceover Stories podcast. And there's, you know, there's a million other sort of things as well.

RYAN: Andy's Fiver Fridays.

JAMES: Yeah, those sorts of things are brilliant because they're just things you just look at and go, oh yeah, okay, I hadn't thought about that. And you go and try something new. And I think the fact now that there are those and there are those production Facebook groups that you either actively take part in or more like me, you sort of stalk on and go, oh yeah, that's interesting. And you look at those sort of things. You get to sort of hear of other people and reach out to other people who are doing those sort of things as well. And even things like the Imaging of Days as well. That was a great conference to go to the first couple of times when I went, and I'm going again this year. Yeah, good stuff. But just meeting people, different people. I remember particularly meeting meeting Brian Apple, who's now at Sirius, you know, and he'd, at the time, he wasn't doing radio, he was working in the computer games industry doing audio for games and things. Having long chats with him about stuff.

RYAN: Fun stuff.

JAMES: Yeah, and just those sort of things, meeting people who are doing the same job as you in different countries, in different formats, in different ways. Suddenly, your sort of, your network gets bigger and better, and you've got people you can talk to and ask a question about, or, you know, find out if you hear something they're doing and try and understand how they're doing it and ask them, which is great.

RYAN: I find for me, I need to see it. That helps me personally, you know, the most. I have a hard time, you know, reading about how to do stuff or even just talking about it. So that's why I love those, and the Imaging Days was really great for me because I really liked just seeing it being done, and I can— that's more actionable to me than anything else.

JAMES: Yeah, there was— I tell you, there was one thing. I mean, there's one thing I use, and I've used a lot since before then, which was just to sort of mask an edit, you know, if you need to transition into an edit. I'll quite often use a sort of reverse reverb on that note just to sort of blend it in. But I think it was one of the guys from Radio 538, who maybe it was Chris or Nils.

RYAN: Yeah, Nils.

JAMES: And they— it's the same sort of thing on a vocal, but instead of a reverb, it was a delay. And they just went on the screen and they had their settings and whatever, and I just took a note of those and came back and thought, I'll just try that. Oh, that's good. You know, suddenly that's just a little thing, and little things like that, you know, and And that's simple things I learned years ago about— in fact, years ago on tape of getting to an end of a piece of music and then having a sudden end with a reverb just to create a tail. So just now, even now, if I've got an edit where it's not quite working, the last beat or the last note, duplicating it and making that a reverb tail and having the next thing come in and with a reverse reverb, suddenly you can blend it and whatever. And it's stuff you couldn't do way back when. And then suddenly finding, oh, hang on a minute, on this reverb plugin now Now, if you press that button, reverse— what, reverse? Oh, it does all of that stuff instead of having to do 3 things. You know, it's little bits like that, which are time savers, which suddenly become just part of your workflow.

RYAN: I didn't want to gloss over what, you know, what happened after Global took over. But is this— I mean, any other major points in your career there? I know eventually you said you ended up at the BBC for a little bit, and then obviously where you are today.

JAMES: But after Global came along, I had a year or so where I freelanced for a bit, and then I joined a company called Puretonic, which was set up by Steve Pygott. And they were the guys who essentially created with Real World Production Vault. And they were creating tons of the content. We created most of the content with their them and the guys in America. And so for about a year, year and a half, I was working with them on Production Vault. And at the same time, I'd started already freelancing in this team I ended up at, at the BBC. And so while I was at Pure Tonic, we were still doing projects for the BBC, but through them. So that's how I sort of transitioned into the BBC really.

RYAN: Nice.

JAMES: And then the BBC was just a very different thing because it was essentially managing the creative and managing freelance producers to make this stuff and then making some stuff myself. And they were big projects and they were challenging projects, but after 3 years of doing them, it did feel a little bit like I wasn't making much myself. And I think when you get that sort of decision of, do you want to be a person who tells people to do stuff or be a person who actually tells people and helps people and does it yourself? I sort of prefer doing the stuff as well because I know how to do it and I'm very bad at seeing someone going, trying to teach them how to do it and then not wanting to take over and say, no, this way, this way. And it's a sort of tough trait. I've come across lots of people who are the same. they're very good at doing what they do. And when they get offered the chance of doing less of that, but more of something else, it's quite a hard decision to take.

RYAN: I think it's a pretty good skill though, you know, just managing creatives in general. You know, it takes a certain sensibility, I think, to do that. And those that can, you know, be a creative amongst a group of others, but also manage them well, I think that's a pretty major skill. And I assume you must have been pretty good at it because you had a job like that on multiple occasions for, you know, a variety of years.

JAMES: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the thing I learned, and I learned it most, I think, when I was in that team of 5 or 6 producers in that Capital Network, was everyone is different. And all of these producers are different. And everyone has Everyone has an ego that needs to sort of breathe, and some of them, some people will be very open and share what they're doing, and some people just like to get on with it and then sort of go, "Dunna, there it is." And and you have to sort of learn with other people. You know, I had one person who used to, you know, he you never know quite when he was going to come in. You know, he might be might be there at nine o'clock in the morning, might be there at three in the afternoon. But then he'd work through till, you know, 3 in the morning or whatever. And we quite quickly sort of got to the understanding that, you know, this is what you need to do. This is when I need it.

RYAN: Yeah.

JAMES: I trust you to make it.

RYAN: And don't miss a deadline and your schedule can be what you need it to be.

JAMES: Absolutely. And I've been very lucky to have pretty much all my bosses since then have always been the same. You know, they say, this is what needs doing. doing. This is the deadline. This is the standard I expect. This is when I need it. And as long as you deliver it and consistently deliver it or overdeliver it, then, you know, how you do it and when you do it is up to you. And I think that is a sign of how you can use technology and use systems to give people flexibility in a sort of work-life balance.

RYAN: And actually, technology has really in fact, I was going to bring us here and you just said the word technology. But no, for real, are you pretty much a super tech geek? Are you super savvy on all of that, or do you consider yourself more of a, well, I just know what works and I do it?

JAMES: In terms of actual sort of production tools and things, or—

RYAN: Yeah, everything tech. I mean, you know, are you a big computer geek? Are you— do you know all of the plugins? Do you know You know, I know, real—

JAMES: no, I get excited by them, but I don't have to have all of them. I will hands up say I don't really know how I make what I make sound how it does.

RYAN: Okay.

JAMES: It's sort of— I sort of do, but you know, it just does it. And I sort of— it's been experimentation and trying stuff and adding stuff in, and I don't even know If I use everything the right way. I'm, you know, I've been really lucky to have people who work with who are very technical and really understand how these things work. You know, George Taylor, who was at PureTonic and is at Imager, I mean, he has a forensic understanding of how those things work.

RYAN: So I got to say, you cut me off because I had— I was going to say, on a scale of 1 to George Taylor, where are you? That was actually— I was about to say that.

JAMES: Okay. Goodness me, I'm flat in the middle of that 5, I would imagine.

RYAN: Okay.

JAMES: I absolutely can make stuff and I know how to sort of make stuff sound, but then you come across some of these people, Andy Jackson, Real World, people like that, Chris Nicholl as well, they really understand the nuts and bolts and the real maths and science behind it. I sort of glue it together and make it work and I've managed to get away with it for 20-odd years, you know, and it's a case of, I think, of course, you need to. And if I was starting again, I wish I'd been able to do a course that sort of sat me down and gave me all the real science and proper understanding. I've sort of gathered some of it along the way. But so I just—

RYAN: But at this stage of your career, do you wish you knew the real scientific reasons why everything is working the way it is? You know, why we set a reverb like this, why gain staging is like, you know.

JAMES: Yeah.

RYAN: Or are you— oh, so you do want to know. So you're not fine just kind of being in the dark?

JAMES: And I should do it, and I do every so often. I tell you what, I spent, I spent a couple of hours, a few months back trying to get my head around, let me get this right because I've forgotten what it is now, on the, it's completely gone from my head. It's loudness, the EBU loudness.

RYAN: Yes.

JAMES: The proper, you know, the— I haven't got the term for it, but the loudness scales and how you can use these meters and how it's different from, you know, VU and PPM and whatever. And I watched lots of videos on it and I read quite a lot and I thought I sort of understand it. I think I understand it a bit more, but I want to go back to it again because I think that sort of scale, there's never a right or wrong answer, but I think there are better ways we can do this, particularly in a sort of more digital world and where people are listening to things lots more on smart speakers and things like that as well. So yeah, in answer to your question, yes, I am technical and I sort of understand a lot of it, but I'm no major expert on it.

RYAN: Sure, sure. I'll just drop this quick one then. You know, everybody has a million plugins, and oftentimes it's said nowadays with whatever DAW you have— digital audio workstation— the stock plugins are probably good enough. You know, that's the other reality. So if you're looking to dive in and you want to buy Pro Tools, that's fine. And what it comes with, what Avid sends, is pretty But that all to say, aside from all the stock stuff, do you have a sort of desert island plugin? Is there one that you find yourself using all the time?

JAMES: Alongside all the normal ones— oh, actually, I'm gonna cheat and I'm gonna say 2.

RYAN: That's fine.

JAMES: One is Little Microshift from Soundtoys, which was a free one, but it's sort of part of the bundle now. But I still use Little Microshift, which is the free one, which just gives this lovely little widthy thing to it. And the other one is a Waves one, which is a sort of secret, which I never hear anyone talking about. It's not secret at all, but it's a bit of a lazy thing, which is called Vocal Rider.

RYAN: Oh yeah.

JAMES: And I put Vocal Rider on my— at the end of my sort of VO chain and sidechain it to the music level, and then at the end when I'm ready to mix it down, I just run it through and it just automates and it just pushes the voice up where it needs boosting. It's a lazy thing because I've sort of done it as much as I need to, and then I put that on and it goes, oh, magic, and it just sparkles through a bit more. So it's a brilliant sort of shortcut thing. I mean, I think there's Bass Rider as well, which does the same thing but sort of rides and does a similar sort of thing.

RYAN: Yeah.

JAMES: It's just a little useful gadget. It doesn't do much. But yeah, I love it.

RYAN: And you use it kind of sparingly, I assume, so that it's not like going to give you that effect of pumping or that the voice is kind of flying.

JAMES: No, not at all. Yeah, it's not too big. It's very subtle. It's just a little bit, it does it, but it's just giving that extra boost, which sometimes just pushes it above where it should be or makes it sound better.

RYAN: And you put it on your, like, on your vocal bus? So I'm assuming you have, you know, X amount of vocal tracks all running through some kind of vocal bus, which then is doing some EQ and compression.

JAMES: Absolutely.

RYAN: So, so if you have an L2, let's say, at kind of the end there, you put the Vocal Rider after that, or before the limiter?

JAMES: This is where we come to— this is where we come to, right?

RYAN: See, I would think you'd put it before the limiter because I've never done this.

JAMES: I'll have to look at it. It probably is, but, you know, again, it would works. So, you know, yeah, yeah, this is the thing. You get these things to do. It's probably not doing what it was intended to, but it does something and it works for me, you know.

RYAN: So, and this is a perfect example of, you know, you, you figured this out, it does what you need to do. And whenever you figured it out, now you're probably working with templates.

JAMES: Yeah.

RYAN: Or you're— so it just, you don't even see it anymore. Like, you don't even look at that anymore. That's just in your template.

JAMES: Although, yeah, to be fair, annoyingly, you do have to switch it on every time. It never— when it loads a session up, it's always switched off. It never seems to— oh really? Again, it's probably a setting, but it's actually quite useful because it's not being used. And then when I'm ready, I just go, oh, hang on a minute, I just need to do Vocal Rider. And I can, I can absolutely tell when someone has made something and I listen through to it and go, it's not, it's not quite right. And I said, have you put Vocal Rider on? Yes. And then you do it and it suddenly punches through. So it really, really does help.

RYAN: Yeah, you know what, I'm assuming you're not gonna— you can't check it right now because you're recording into your DAW.

JAMES: I'm not, so I can—

RYAN: Oh, you can check it? Okay, good. I wanted— I was gonna say just shoot me a screengrab and I'll throw it on the site. Yeah, but no, just tell us because I'd be interested to trying that out. I mean, obviously I could figure it out. I can throw it on my vocal bus and move it around and adjust the settings, but I want to know how James Stodd does it.

JAMES: Okay, you know, let's just have to pause the recording right a second. That's why I—

RYAN: Cool. Okay, so you've looked at Pro Tools now. What do you got?

JAMES: How's this for consistency? I've got 2 vocal sub mixes on this particular session, one for the female voice, one for the male voice. On the female voice, it's right at the end, and on the male voice, it's before the L2. Before—

RYAN: oh, you are using an L2 though, so I got that right. Yeah. So go the female chain. I'm assuming you have multiple female VO tracks, mono VO tracks. And those are all bussed to your female vocal bus.

JAMES: Yes, and all of them have as the first plugin that Trim plugin. That's another tip. That was a Dom Nero thing where when I looked at this session, I go, oh my God, of course, yeah, I should do that. So that's there first. Yeah, so they all go from— to a VO bus. And there's one for the female and one for the male.

RYAN: But what's on the female? So it goes Trim, then some EQ, then an L2. Then Vocal Rider.

JAMES: There's also a— got on this, we've got Ultra Maximizer in there, L1's in there as well, and a bit of reverb.

RYAN: Oh yeah, nice. But the Vocal Rider's last of about 5 or 6 plugins on that chain?

JAMES: Yeah.

RYAN: Cool. And then the male, you have probably similar plugins, but you just have the Vocal Rider before the L2 as opposed to after.

JAMES: Absolutely. Yeah.

RYAN: Nice. So the answer is there's no right answer and do however the hell you want and just make it sound good.

JAMES: The answer is there probably is a right answer, but I've—

RYAN: So this goes back to what I was saying, that you might not know everything.

JAMES: I definitely don't know everything. Absolutely do not.

RYAN: There we go. Hey man, you know what? Let me, let me see here. I think we, we hit tech, but I guess I would say Anything else gear? You know, we talk about software so often these days because you can do everything in the box basically. Is there any outboard gear you use, obviously besides your computer and a microphone? Besides those 2 things, is there any outboard that you have to have?

JAMES: No, not at all here. I mean, here at work, I don't even have a studio. I'm just in the office, so it is a MacBook Pro Pro, and it's an Avid Fast Track audio device and headphones, and that's it.

RYAN: Yeah.

JAMES: At home, I've got a— I don't have a— my audio device is a Soundcraft Signature 12 multitrack desk, which is something that Chris Nicholl put me onto, which plays very nicely with Pro Tools. And I've got some Tannoy Reveal 502 speakers and a microphone at home if I need it.

RYAN: So, when you're at work, you're actually producing in headphones?

JAMES: Yeah. The thing is, it depends on what it is. I mean, I will come and check it on speakers, but I just know the sound so much from where I am. I just know that if it sounds fine on my headphone mix, it will be absolutely fine. But I have got the same speakers as we have in the on-air studio at home, so I'm sort of hearing it the same way through that as well.

RYAN: Sure. Yeah. Anything to say about producing in headphones? I know obviously some people hate it, some people are fine with it. Is there any tips or I don't know, do you have anything to say about that?

JAMES: Well, I think you have to know your sound and you definitely, it's definitely Obviously, you do need to listen to stuff elsewhere when you need to and when you can. And I do more of the sort of bigger project things I do at home so I can do that and I can listen through those monitors or send it through other ways if I need to. And if it's a big project, I'll even mix it all down and put it onto iTunes and then go and sit in the car and listen to it in the car and see how it sounds.

RYAN: But, you know, I think that's underrated, by the way. I think we need to do that more often.

JAMES: Well, yeah, because the number of times I'm driving along and I hear something I've made when I'm in the car and I can't hear the bottom end of it because obviously you've got all the road noise and stuff like that. And so you think, oh, that's not quite right, you know. And I think the more often you need to hear it going through other devices and things and smart speakers, particularly finding a way of throwing it through one of those, even if it's You know, bung it on and turn it to an MP3 and bung it so you can hear it through your Amazon Alexa in mono and from a tiny little tinny speaker. It's not a real-time solution, but it's certainly definitely worth doing.

RYAN: I don't think I've told this story, but I mean, in a long time, I'm pretty sure I've told it on this podcast, but I had my first full-time radio job and I was, you know, a board op, but I was also doing my first bits of production. So the first time someone was paying me to produce something, and it had to be one of the very first things I made, so excited I even went to the car to hear it air the first time. So it was a promo for something on the station, and when I heard the promo air, all I heard was everything except for the voice.

JAMES: Because it was out of phase?

RYAN: Exactly.

JAMES: I did the same thing. Definitely did one of my early things did it out of phase and I couldn't, couldn't hear it. And then I heard it. Oh yeah, right. Okay.

RYAN: Yeah, it wasn't out of phase in my studio, but it was out of phase when it got— because this was an AM, especially this, this problem is more prevalent here, but the AM station we had was summing it, I guess, as opposed to just pulling the left channel, which I guess some stations might do, some AM transmitters do. Yeah. Yeah, that was great. That was a great feeling. To hear, to hear my instrumental promo play for the first time.

JAMES: Well, you heard half of it, you know.

RYAN: Yeah, I did. Sure. I heard, I heard the stuff that took me longer to do. Anyway, using mono voice tracks, that one of the many reasons why that's important. And also go ahead and hit the mono button on your, on your stuff.

JAMES: Yeah.

RYAN: And then, you know, cue it just to make sure. Yeah. Just double-check. You know, it's the basics. Those are the basics that we have to remember.

JAMES: Yeah, absolutely.

RYAN: Well, hey, James, I have a feeling— well, I already knew this, and this is true with a lot of people I bring on. We could keep going, but I probably have to kind of bring us to the end.

JAMES: I have to give you— don't ask me. I have to give you— you're going to say— I'm prepared for this, right?

RYAN: I'm screwing you up though, because I actually wanted to ask one more thing before you get there, I think. I feel bad because, you know, we brought up, you know, you have your quote-unquote day job and you have your studio at home and you do work for Benztown. But is there anything else that you're into that we didn't talk about? Like, are you a musician? Are you, I don't know, are you producing music? Anything else?

JAMES: No, not really. No, no. So that's mainly it sort of audio-wise. My son is learning guitar and he said the dangerous phrase the weekend before last. He said, Dad. I said, yeah? He goes, will you show me how Pro Tools works?

RYAN: Uh-oh.

JAMES: But I think he's so into music and he just likes recording stuff, so I think he may get into music and recording. and that sort of thing. But if he just enjoys it, that's cool.

RYAN: Yeah, well, of course you have to show him though. I mean, let's be honest, any musician that can also do their own tracking and maybe even mixing and, oh my gosh, mastering, look at all the money they'll save.

JAMES: Yeah.

RYAN: So that's a good thing. Okay, final, final question. And I think you were already going to jump the gun, so to speak. So I don't even, I don't even need to ask it.

JAMES: I don't know if this was the question. If you're going to say to me, what is your one tip, right?

RYAN: Of course it is. That is it.

JAMES: Your one tip. I, I can't— don't know if anyone's ever said this before, but you know, this is the 101 basic, all right? It's coming out of there. Never, never, never pay full price for Waves plugins.

RYAN: Oh, I did not— that's hilarious. Okay, so anybody who knows why that's hilarious, but explain why.

JAMES: There is never not a Waves sale. I mean, literally, you know, here the joke is it's always the DFS sale. That's a furniture retailer. But I lost count of the days. I mean, there was another one today, which is a discount on a discount sale. Never, never. You buy one bundle at Christmas in the Black Friday sale when you can buy Waves Gold, normally £800, for about about $120 or something like that. And then everything— because you've got that, everything else is cheap.

RYAN: I, I had to— so yeah, it's, it's kind of— I've seen it all over Facebook too, where, you know, some of the guys will joke and say, oh my gosh, can you believe it? I can buy this plugin for $29 today. Or look, it's another Waves sale, everything's a dollar. You know, they'll throw those jokes out there. I just wanted to find my way over to waves.com today. It is the Waves Festival, an extra 40% off. $200. Yeah, there's always a sale, right? If in fact, who is the person who paid full price for a Waves plugin ever?

JAMES: Well, I think I probably did once for a bundle, you know, that was years ago, but now, no. Yeah.

RYAN: Yeah. Although, I mean, let's be honest. so I bought the, gosh, which bundle? I have one of the real Mercury. Wait, is Mercury the biggest? Because I don't have the biggest. I have the second down.

JAMES: I get confused. I think I got the biggest— I got the Diamond. Diamond? Yeah, I think we've got Diamond or something like that.

RYAN: Yeah, whichever one— Platinum or Diamond, whichever one's bigger. And I think I paid like $173 for it. I mean, that's a hell of a value.

JAMES: It is, but there's a lot of plugins you never use.

RYAN: So yeah, that is— it's like cable TV. I've noticed with plugins, I have so many now that probably 80% of them I never even open anymore.

JAMES: Yeah, that's the thing. Keep it simple.

RYAN: That's a— yeah, okay, so that's a great tip. Nobody's actually said it officially, but it's— everybody thinks it.

JAMES: It's definitely not don't buy them, but never pay full price.

RYAN: Man, that's awesome. Okay, so I mentioned a lot of this in your intro, but I want to say it one more time. jamesstodd.com. You are James Stodd on Twitter and SoundCloud, so they should definitely go there. You're on the Facebook I'll put a link to that. Do you have like a fancy Facebook URL? I didn't even check. I should have.

JAMES: I think I do. It's just James. It'll be James Dodd. It won't be anything.

RYAN: Yeah, I'm sure it is. And plus they can just search you and you'll come up and they should friend you and reach out to you and say hi. Yeah, I love talking about the industry with you. I don't know. What else can I say, James? Unless you have any final words, I want to say thank you so much for being on the podcast.

JAMES: Thank you. We talked about it a long time ago, but it's great to finally hook up and talk.

RYAN: Absolutely. Till next time, man.

JAMES: Bye-bye.

ANNC: Visit ryandreen.com to subscribe, contact the show, and listen to every episode. Please rate and review The Producers Podcast on iTunes or on your favorite podcast app. The Producers Podcast with Ryan Dreen.