Andrew (00:02.072)
Today I'm sitting down with a composer and producer whose works have been on the likes of popular games like Atomic Heart, and one of those songs has pulled nearly eight million streams on Spotify alone. He's turned dozens of video game tracks into Doomstyle anthems. He's delivered full soundtracks for games like Viscerafest, and his catalog has almost a quarter million monthly listeners on Spotify alone. He founded the noise department.
A sound breaking research lab for making serum presets for the heaviest and darkest music out there. And his sounds are trusted by artists like Casey Edwards, who wrote Bury the Light for Devil May Cry five, and Chase Bronner of Three Teeth. and he's literally rebuilt real guitar pedals inside of Serum too, just because he could. Jeffrey Day, thank you for being here, man.
Geoffrey Day (00:42.938)
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Andrew (00:44.958)
been great, man. I'm the first thing I really want to dive into is your sound design. for I will make sure that I put this in the description of the YouTube video and also in the show notes if you guys are listening on podcasts. But one of the things you have is lab notes on your website and you dove into lots of different things about synthesis. I'm curious to know about when it comes to sound design and making stuff that you have in your head, what actually gets you from imagination, like what you hear and hear, all the way into your DOW? Like what separates that skill from just
Geoffrey Day (01:14.406)
Yeah. I really do think like, and I've spent a lot of time like watching people do sound design, and it's part of like where our noise department philosophies have evolved. but I think it's one of those things where I'll start with a story. Like I was working on the the noise department's serum skin, and I one day, like we did it all in Figma and was working with a designer, and one day I sat back and I just looked at
Andrew (01:14.84)
Clicking around and hoping.
Geoffrey Day (01:43.355)
The skin and I looked at serum and I went, wow, there's a lot of knobs in this synthesizer. And you know, and I think sometimes I forget that. Like synthesizers traditionally, like almost all of the classic ones you've ever seen are just basically like a slab of knobs. And like it's just a lot to wrap your head around. And so I'm not surprised that people they struggle with, they see it as being kind of confusing. And there's a lot of moving parts. as an analog to that, I was trying to learn my way around like blender and touch designer.
Andrew (01:47.618)
Ha ha.
Geoffrey Day (02:13.834)
And while I was doing that, and I don't, you know, have a many years of experience in that kind of thing. So I sat down as a real beginner and I went, wow, there's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of possible things that I can do, so many buttons on the screen. I don't even know what the labels mean. Like everything's perfectly labeled, and yet I still don't know what they're talking about. And I think that that is one of the biggest like gaps in people's like synthesizer sound design exploration, where
You start off not really even knowing the terminology. You see a lot of knobs that all are they look exactly the same. And like no matter how good the synth design is, it's just there's so many possible things that you can do that it always feels like there's not a clear path between like looking at the initial patch and then like getting to what you have in mind. but the skill part of that I think is just the memorization, really, is like being able to like understand the
small parts like an envelope, a frequency modulator, a filter, right? And know what those do to a sound just out of context. And then starting to build that intuition of like, okay, well, I know that like here's an example. Like you hear a sound and you go, that sound is playing too long. Like I hit up the key and I let go and it just plays too long. And you're like, I want it to play less long. I want it to be a shorter sound. And so you have to look at the synthesizer and go,
What makes a sound play less? What makes it go shorter? And of none of the labels say play shorter, you know, like and you're kind of like, where what is the connection here? And so you have to actually literally build that intuition of like, the volume knob controls when a sound is on or off, obviously. an envelope controls the amount of time that something happens, right? Could be anything, but it's an amount of time. And then you have to make that connection of like when I
Andrew (03:43.917)
Ha ha.
Geoffrey Day (04:09.466)
Have an envelope and I control the volume with the envelope, which the fact that they can be controlled is something you have to learn. then you you understand, you're like, well, time and outcome can be combined, and then something does time and something creates an outcome. And then I want to make something play shorter. So what am I controlling? And all those things, like if that sounds confusing to me, to you, as I just explained it, like, yeah, that's what every person who's learning a synthesizer has to go through. So
Andrew (04:37.13)
Ha ha ha.
Geoffrey Day (04:38.372)
You'll notice that we live in this world right now where a lot of products, a lot of audio design products, they actually try to minimize the amount of connections that you need to make mentally. And so you get these I this is like a little bit derogatory because I really don't think it's truly like this, but I sometimes I think of it like it's almost like baby toys. Like there's just way less, way fewer knobs that you have to play with. And it's a much limited, a smaller set of things that you can do.
in terms of sound design, like it kind of is like, you know, pre-baked a lot of it. But you don't have to think as hard about, you know, wiring things up. It's the the visual opposite of like V C V rack or modular, which is the, you know, everything is a wire, everything you touch, there's no rules. And like that's that's terrifying to some people. So I think that that's kind of where it is. And I've spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, well probably thousands of hours at this point.
learning the details of the the little functions and the minor pieces and how they connect. And that's why I think I'm pretty fluent at sound design nowadays. but I can't, you know, that's that's not a thing that you should I that's not a thing that I expect of the vast majority of people that do this. You know, it's a lot of mental math.
Andrew (05:53.881)
Yeah, for sure, for sure. one thing that you mentioned where like some of the new toys kind of feel like baby toys, you know, like I I I I do agree with it with that in a lot of ways. Sometimes it's nice to be able to just pick something up and it just sounds great. but there is part of this where if we are shortcutting the learning process, sometimes we don't get everything that we want out of it, right? It's just like, you know, I have two kids and, you know, as I'm teaching them words and I'm like trying to explain things to them, there's a point in time where we have to kind of go out of
you know, baby talk phase into like actually having full on conversations. and that's something that they teach, but also something that we just have to have experience with. where do you think the the line is drawn? Again, this is gonna be differently for a lot of people, right? But where do you think the line would be drawn for somebody who was like, I want to get into sound design? when should I stop just clicking around inside of some of these more simple synths and decide that I'm gonna grab a lot of really nice preset packs and
dys dissect how they actually work instead of serum or vital or something like that.
Geoffrey Day (06:53.188)
Yeah, there's no time to do that. You kind of just do that whenever you want, you know? Like, I think one thing that has that has helped me a bit is I've had projects where I was sort of forced to do that. Like this is a big thing about what the outcomes are with the sounds where in games and media scoring in general, there's like there's a brief and there's like a target, there's a a thing you're trying to do. It's usually matching a visual or matching like
you know, bringing in specific types of instruments that fit the world, things like that. And that's that forces you to need to learn certain things because of the requirements. But I think for a lot of music making, it's kind of just vibes. And like a lot of folks are not really there's no real strong reason to have to do that because you can do like hunter-gatherer mode, you can go on splice and just look for things that fit the vibe. And that's that's it. And there's nothing wrong with that. Cause that's like the whole goal is like put a vibe together, you know.
So I think really it's just kinda like, are you the kind of person that first of all, if you're forced to do it, that's one thing, but you know, if you're just interested in the pieces and you like tinkering and you're the kind of person that likes to take things apart and put back together, like there's no downside in just going in and learning, you know, the the intricate parts of a synthesizer. Like I just encourage you to do it for fun. I don't know. Yeah.
Andrew (08:13.166)
I love that. one thing that I always bring up when anybody asks questions about that is I always use the example of the guitars. You know, I have guitars hanging behind me. if I don't go and cut down my own tree and mill my own guitar, you wouldn't call me like you wouldn't say, you're not a real guitarist because you didn't build your own guitar from scratch, right? and so I think it's okay to say it in the same way. but I think a good balance too is are you interested? Are you interested in something like this? you'd written early on that your synth patches
like would always come out early on as Cynthia and flat and it would take you forty five minutes to even get an amateur sound, even though the guitars and drums sounded good to you instantly. and then now just incredible sounding stuff. what was what was kind of like that missing mental model that you had and what really made you want to start thinking about sound design differently?
Geoffrey Day (09:00.933)
Yeah. I think it's the context matters a lot. So there's a really big difference in the way that people sound design when you're making straight up electronic music. that's I my background, like I made like EDM almost exclusively. You said you did too, actually. I was like I was making like drum and bass and dubstep and stuff when I was in college and all the way up till until doing like the YouTube channel where I switched gears. but that style of sound design is
Pretty forgiving in the sense that like it's electronic by default. So you there's no need to understand physical realism in any way. Like you kind of just make things honestly, truly, vibes. Like just make things that sound cool. And you can play around with like I seen a lot of tutorials of folks that they're just saying, like, check out this cool laser sound I made. And that like, you know, it's mostly just about slapping a bunch of things together and then it makes a sound and it's cool. but when you're combining genres like
When you're trying to get synthesizers to fit in something that's mixed with recorded media, like you're trying to make like hybrid, you know, in this case like doom-oriented, like electronic and metal mixed together, orchestral hybrid stuff you hear a lot in trailers, things like that. There's a a reason why people choose certain synth sounds over others, and a lot of it comes down to the fact that you need a source of truth. are you doing things that sound mostly electronic or are you doing things that sound mostly recorded?
For hybrid trailer music, it's like mostly recorded. The synths are like adding to something, but the horns still sound like horns, the strings still sound like strings, and they don't clash with each other because everything is like, well, if it's if it sounds too electronic, then it's gonna sound weird in contrast with like the strings and the recorded stuff. Guitar music, metal, same deal. But we're starting to get to a point where like
I I know I'm sort of wandering here, but guys like Buster O'Dahome and you Zach Cervini and those guys, like they they know how to mix in a way where they actually take the recorded music and they bring it up towards an electronic style mix. And so it's a lot more forgiving and it's also way louder, like s hyper compressed metal, right? you could say Mick Gordon has done the same thing and like you've got these guys that now, they're not making metal so much as they're making like cleverly designed
Andrew (11:09.87)
Way louder.
Geoffrey Day (11:21.765)
It's it's electronic music cleverly designed as metal. and yeah, I think that that's to answer your original question, the the tipping point for me was like starting to realize like what is it about the context that makes a synths sound either fit or at least be forgiven, right? I can make really flat digital, I don't know, s like like bit crushed.
computery sounds and I can fit that into a metal mix, but I kind of have to make everything else spit crushed and computery as well. Master boot record would be a great example of that. so thinking about it like that makes sound design feel like you're almost forced to be like, what am I doing with the whole song? And then the rest sort of like falls into place after. I guess that's the the answer to that question.
Andrew (12:15.234)
Yeah, I love that. that actually kinda leads me right into one of the frameworks that you have inside of the lab notes. Again, this article I'll I'll make sure that I have it linked in the the show notes and in the description. But you have this thing that you call the SMS framework, the source motion and then sauce idea. why do you argue that sauce, like the processing part, ends up being the most impactful part of the sound for a lot of the stuff that you do?
Geoffrey Day (12:36.73)
Yeah, it's it's kinda like I mean you can s kind of use three D visuals as a an analog there too, where you can mess something up enough that it's the original source stops being recognizable. And so if you're familiar with like guitar tone chains, you know, you've got the guitar, you've got your guitar pedals, your amp, your speaker, microphone, I guess you could even go as far as saying like the recording process that you know, is it on tape, is it digitally recorded, whatever.
you gotta like work backwards to actually know what a guitar tone sounds like. So the most impactful piece of it counterintuitively is actually the speaker cone. So the microphone placement in the speaker cone dramatically changes the sound of a guitar. Like so much so that like if you take the microphone and you just move it like this, all of a sudden it sounds totally different and it might not even fit in the mix. And so I think people forget that part. Like, you just gotta work towards like where
Andrew (13:26.039)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Day (13:33.667)
In the chain of it coming out of your speakers and hitting your ears, working backwards is how impactful things are. I think like a person could argue performance like all the way at the end of the chain, like how somebody plays the guitar is the most impactful. But I would say let's stick with like tone. Talking about performance is a little bit of a I don't know, it's a little bit of an apples to oranges thing. But like tone wise, that's the philosophy behind that SMS structure that I was saying. Like
Because in the guitar chain you go backwards and that's how you get you know, dramatically different shifts in sound. it makes sense that if you have in your synth chain three reverbs in a row, two distortions and a chorus, it kind of doesn't matter what your original source material was because it's like it's so messed up. So, you know, doing that, you know, you get your vibe right away. If you're making a drone, it's probably gonna be some sort of reverb thing, or it's gonna be
Andrew (14:23.436)
Ha ha.
Geoffrey Day (14:31.322)
you know, something that sort of gets washy. So just start with that stuff and then the nuances about like, well, is it a bright drone or is it a dark drone? Or does it have like crunchy stuff? Like you figure that out like later on. But you've already established the drone part, you know, and that's that comes with like the stuff later on down the chain. So that's why I like doing that. It just saves me a lot of time. it forces me again to decide what I'm trying to do, you know, at the beginning. And then you're you sort of forgive yourself on the small details later. There's no cascading like
mistakes because you've already sort of done the thing you needed to do in the first thirty seconds and then it's just about like, you know, tweaking things one percent, two percent to taste, if that makes sense.
Andrew (15:11.746)
Total sense. so you design backwards where essentially starting at the effect chain, you can then run a sine wave through it or you can run a saw wave through it. And it it can be even just super basic and then running through this. And then you kind of keep a pre-made, I believe you you mentioned sauce cabinet of effect racks. yeah, kind of walk through s why someone should at least experiment with that if they're really diving into sound design.
Geoffrey Day (15:37.029)
Yeah. I think you have to separate concerns a little bit. Like sound design is so big, like there's so many possible ways that you can do things. It's kinda like cooking. Like you get like you go to a grocery store and there's ten billion trillion ingredients and you can make anything. But what makes your grocery store trip a little different from sound design is like you go out into that grocery store probably already knowing you're gonna make spaghetti. You know, like with a lot of sound design, you don't really
Andrew (16:03.822)
Mm.
Geoffrey Day (16:05.966)
Sometimes you don't know what you're trying to do, you know, you don't know what you're trying to make. And so having that like sauce cabinet, building these little things that they're like functions, like building these things that like create like a washy drone effect that create like a nice all-rounded distortion effect. Like doing those just kind of like takes those out of your mind. And you already built them, so you can feel good about it. It's not like you need to build them from scratch over and over again. but it takes like one part of the thinking of sound design and just like
compartmentalizes it and puts it somewhere so you don't have to like keep doing it over and over again. And it's always going to create the same outcome anyway. You're probably recreating that same thing over and over again from scratch anyway. So you might as well just separate it out. And then you can focus on like you know like specifically where is that source material coming from. That that part is the part that often is the most exploration. You know, are you, you know
recording your friend playing a saxophone and then running it through like a granular synthesis thing. Like is that your new thing this time? Or are you like trying to design a bunch of new wave tables, you know, trying to make like a a big super sauce stack? Have you ever done that before? But then once you do that, you spent, you know, 20 minutes on that or an hour on that. And then you go, all right, well it's got to fit in the song. So you grab your sauce cabinet, you just spice it up. It still sounds like the thing you made, you know, like it's still a recognizable super saw, even though it's got some of your pre-made sauces on it. And then
You ship it and you're done and you didn't spend all day making one sound. Like, you know, that's the that's the dream right there. So it's a little bit of fun, a little bit of efficiency. Slap it together. You now yeah, it's on Spotify. You're done.
Andrew (17:43.599)
I love it. you you use a what you call the bartender versus recipe metaphor where most people kind of follow a cocktail recipe. but you have have shifted your mindset into thinking that you will kinda want to improve any drink that you can come up with. Again, similar to that, in in sound design, where if someone's stuck in recipe mode and sound design mode, what's one of the first habits you think that they should break in order to kind of get past that instead of just copying what other people are doing and start experimenting for themselves?
Geoffrey Day (17:54.448)
Mm-hmm.
Geoffrey Day (17:57.893)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Day (18:09.78)
good question. Yeah, where where is the tipping point from like Yeah, this one's tricky because I think it's like I think people can get stuck in a following the instructions rut. Like a lot of tutorials out there are kind of like, here's how I made this sound. Move this, click this, turn this thing. And like never do they really talk about why and in what other context. Like there's a lot of like
fundamental understanding that the original person has that they just don't actually convey. They're just giving you step-by-step instructions, like it's building a Lego set, right? but where I think the easiest way to break off and to start building your own like first principles understanding of sound design is to pick a small area. This is where the sauce cabinet stuff helps because it kind of forces you into this already. Pick a small area and take
you know, ninety percent of the instructions and then focus on this one area and start messing around with that and being like, How does this deviate from the structure? Right. And then take another preset, build it, try to change the same thing on that other preset and be like, Did it do what I think it did? Did it change something different? Is it a predictable outcome? Because you start by doing that, you start building this intuition of like being able to predict what the the parts of a synthesizer or whatever, what they do to a sound. And
when you start having a lot of those, then you feel way more comfortable like starting from scratch 'cause you're like you're not surprised by the synth. You're not r that's like the randomly clicking thing. Like, you know, you don't feel like when you ha when you have a thing that you want to do, you know where to look. And folks don't have that at the beginning. But you have to like you have to go through the motions to do it, if that makes sense. You have to practice literally.
Andrew (20:01.048)
Just like practicing an instrument. so take me back to the start of all this. you mentioned that you're a guitar player first. how did that become you know, Jeff plays guitar and then the then going into scoring games and designing synths and having all this stuff now. Wha w w how take me back to to when you started this and how did you get into this originally?
Geoffrey Day (20:02.96)
Exactly.
Geoffrey Day (20:21.21)
Yeah. So so I was born in nineteen ninety.
And then you skip forward a bunch. And then I I was not a musician for most of my career. So I w I think I looked back on my YouTube channel right before I did this and that first video that really took off was like that Hades Doom crossover video, and that was in 2021. And so it's 2026 now, so I've really only been doing this full-time since 2021. the
Andrew (20:30.112)
Ha ha.
Geoffrey Day (20:58.316)
Journey was like I was doing software stuff. I was working in tech companies for up until then, up until COVID, and then I was unemployed during COVID and I had a lot of time to just mess around and you know, do you know a bunch of I was doing like Final Fantasy covers for some of my friends, just like it was just fun, you know. I was putting stuff up and then and then I I got lucky with that video and started I saw a lot of YouTube channel growth. and I decided like
I would love to try to do this full time instead of like having to just like say it was a nice c you know, couple of months of messing around and then back to the, you know, the office. So really dug in and tried to and I got lucky because it did continue to grow as we you know, as the as the videos kept coming and as we leaned into the the Doom sound, which was very popular at the time. and yeah, like I mentioned before too, like you know, I was doing electronic music for a long time. I when I was, you know.
Always, as you can see, like this is my brother's house. This is not my studio. I I have a you know, a musical family. We always grew up playing instruments and I was playing in like metal bands in high school and you know, making a lot of dubstep and stuff in college and and then it's always been something that I wanted to like I really like wanted to live that dream that I had of doing music full time, just through kind of I didn't know what the path was, but it eventually ended up being, you know, YouTube first and then
that was like a nice stepping stone to get into some more like real like gig oriented things, you know, more composing work and things like that. so yeah, but I didn't go to like music school or anything, you know, like I it was it felt like I kind of I it's like I weasel my way in just by like, you know, being loud and having like, you know when you get a when you have like a channel like like a bigger YouTube channel that's focused on something like that,
You find that a lot of folks who are in the industry are also watching a lot of the same media and you meet people and you make friends and you know, when things come up, they might think of you and you know, you take gigs and stuff like that. It's kind of like a natural progression of, you know, but it's not it didn't it wasn't controlled. Like it was, you know, you kind of just hope that things happen and you head in a direction and make sure you can still eat and pay rent in the meantime, you know. And when the and then when the big stuff comes up, yeah. So like, I don't know. I wish there was like s some people really like.
Andrew (23:06.766)
Yeah.
Andrew (23:15.129)
Ha ha ha.
Geoffrey Day (23:21.828)
want it to be more of a linear process. But I just don't think anyone, no matter what the career is, I don't think it's that linear. You kind of just you do you do like get surprised and get lucky and things come to you that you didn't expect. Like that happens all the that's for everything. So that's kind of what my journey was like too.
Andrew (23:39.407)
There's this there's this fantastic meme that I I always laugh at every time I see it, but it's this pilot in a plane and he's reading a book that says how to land a plane. it's I feel like it's terrifying. I feel like that's exactly how the music industry is sometimes. and you sometimes you just gotta go all in. so when you mentioned luck, and I do believe that luck is a factor. but a a great mentor of mine years ago told me that you can make your own luck. there's this old quote from
Geoffrey Day (23:47.706)
Yeah. Terrifying. Yeah.
Yeah.
Geoffrey Day (24:05.926)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew (24:08.784)
I believe it was Abraham Lincoln, who said, I will I I'll prepare and when my time is ready, I'll be ready. I'm I know I'm per paraphrasing that. But how much of how much do you think it's luck versus just a whole lot of work? 'Cause sometimes it feels like luck and then you have the late nights and the tight deadlines and then it just starts to feel like work. Where do you think the balance is there and how much of luck versus how much work does it actually take to to make something?
Geoffrey Day (24:34.094)
Yeah, I think, well, first of all, you know, through this journey of the last couple of years, I very much have had like a not an existential is the wrong word. I've had like a career crisis where I've kind of thought, like, this is not what I thought it was gonna be now that I'm here, you know? And we talk a lot about like what does it mean to like make it in the industry, and I think like that is a very mythologized concept and it's not it's never as cool as what people
expect like you kind of just you go wow I'm still just working you know like it's you know and like it you know it can feel fun and it's different and like I'll say like major things have changed in my life and sorry I'm I I know I'm taking a bit of a turn here from your original question but like the you know like working for yourself is a is a big thing and I think that that like that is a big driving factor for a lot of folks who they have a boss or like they work at a some company and they're like
Andrew (25:05.984)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew (25:17.432)
Keep going, I love
Geoffrey Day (25:31.139)
I just want to do anything else. I would love to like be a musician and like make my own hours and do that stuff. And like you can do that and you get there and you realize like it is a whole different type of stress and a whole different type of management. and you get really closer to like the realities of the world that were like sort of sort of kept at bay when you were working for a company. you know, the like how it what it means to like truly i you know, exist in a in a world with people and have to like
You know, I I don't know. It's i folks who have worked for themselves probably understand this. But like the I I think in terms of the luck thing, that quote is a good one. And there's a a book that I like mentioning that was maybe my favorite career growth book ever, called So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport. I think that that book is like the perfect career mindset
book for anything, not just for music. and one of the big things that it talks about is this idea that you can build your skills in a thing, but there's certain parts that are kind of out of your control. You can sort of increase the chances of opportunities coming along by being in the right places, like being around people that might have their own opportunities to share with you. but ultimately like you can't force any of that stuff. And by being like
predictable and reliable and by sort of almost building a brand about yourself just by repeatedly doing the things and doing them well and focusing on what you have control over. Other people take notice of that stuff and they do think of you when opportunities arise, but you don't get to choose when that happens. And so that's like that part has always been true. This is like it it's like a a long book version of right place, right time, ready for the opportunities when they come along. and everybody should play that way. Like
Trying to, I don't know, force your way into making other people decide on things is almost always not the way to go. But making friends with people and not having putting any pressure on anybody and just really liking certain things and being good at them, people will reach out to you, you know? Like I I don't know. It's it's I I don't know how to describe it, but it's it does you just gotta hope. Hope the universe connects when
Geoffrey Day (27:58.565)
And you gotta, you know, trust the process, I guess.
Andrew (28:00.93)
Yeah. Th there's a there's an old quote that I that I love which is, you know, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. but somebody had come up with with a little addition to that and and they said, Yeah, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink, but I can put salt in its oats and I can bleed it out to the point where it wants nothing but water. and so I think like you can to a point, there is always luck. You can't force it, but you can put yourself in a situation where I've salted the oats and when they need somebody
Geoffrey Day (28:19.546)
Yeah.
Andrew (28:30.648)
They're thinking of me.
Geoffrey Day (28:31.898)
Yeah, don't don't manipulate people. I think you know, like don't don't do that. That's I know people that do that. Don't do that. You know? Like, yeah, it's it's not nice. you know. But it is I mean, you're right. If the outcome is to get something from somebody, there are more than there's more than one way to do it, but I've always tried to be like d you know
Andrew (28:34.851)
Yeah, absolutely. Don't do that. No one likes that.
Andrew (28:47.104)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Day (28:59.834)
the positive version of that, if that makes sense. As opposed to boxing them in and being like, you need me because there's no other option. You know, like that's kind of, you know. But yeah, I mean, like the thing about the music industry too is like just like I think everybody knows this. It's not very big. Like people, you know, like I've only I I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of people that I never thought I would speak to, you know, folks that I just see through an album, you know, booklet. Like, you know, folks that and they're
Andrew (29:01.623)
Yes.
Geoffrey Day (29:28.25)
You know, now that like I've chatted with a lot of those folks on the other side, I realize like just how small and easily connected and how fast information can go from place to place. And you know, because of that, like you do kind of like need to I don't know, just be a nice person is basically what I'm trying to say.
Andrew (29:46.851)
Yeah. Reputation, you don't realize how small the music industry is, until you do one thing that burns your reputation, or one thing that lifts your reputation up and it goes across everything. when it comes to making in the music industry, an old quote my mentor told me years ago, he said, If if you fail, no one's gonna have a funeral for your dead career. and if you make it, a mariachi band is not gonna come out and start celebrating either. You just you're just next thing you know, you're just working.
and you're still in it. And then you have this again, like you mentioned earlier, existential crisis of like, I guess this is I guess this is it. but then again too, like I wouldn't I take a bad day doing this a hundred times over a great day at my old job.
Geoffrey Day (30:32.868)
Yeah. Yeah. You know what really like, one thing that I had to like tell myself was like now that I am working for myself and I get to make choices, I have to really decide like w where am I going? What do I want? And I think that a lot of times and I know this was me and I but I'm sure a lot of other people can relate to this, like a lot of the desire to move into a career like this
actually was not so much that I wanted to achieve anything in particular. It's that I didn't want to feel a certain way prior to that. And you get there and you realize like, yeah, maybe I, you know, some of the highs are good. Like suddenly you get like, you know, numbers are nice, you know, people saying nice things to you is nice. But after a while you just kind of go, but that's not it. Like now that I've done that, I've got my whole life ahead of me. Like I still need to figure out what I want, you know? And so like that is where I think the
the people who turn this into a career for life, like they find a thing that they really believe in and they stay focused on that thing. And it doesn't need to have an end date. Like like it doesn't have to be a series of one offs, like moving a number up. Like it it can be something a little more, I don't know, amorphous. Like, you know, like trying to move trying to trying to popularize a certain type of music or trying to always
constantly push the boundary, push the envelope of something. That's kind of like what we're doing with Noise Department, like trying to like really find things that people haven't done and really find areas that could be cool. Sometimes they're like one-off, sometimes they're like new, totally new innovative ways of thinking. but the fact that we're doing it at all and continuously doing it, you know, is enough to keep me interested day in and day out. but I didn't have that at first. I I had to sit down with myself and be like,
What am I here for? And you know, you'll notice like I'm doing a lot of different things. Like, I was doing the YouTube stuff, I'm not doing it as much anymore. I was doing composing stuff, but I'm not doing as much of that as I was. I'm mostly focused on noise department. And that's part of my journey of like trying to decide like where am I, where's that balance of like waking up every day and wanting to be there and doing it and constantly challenging myself and feeling satisfaction with like my day to day. and this is this is where I'm at right now. So
Geoffrey Day (32:54.148)
Yeah, I think a lot I think a lot of folks are gonna go through that process.
Andrew (32:57.27)
I I think almost everybody does to a certain extent. I know I have and I know that I know the next six years I'm I'm probably gonna feel the same way too. so w one thing you know, we're like you're trying to push the boundaries a little bit. This really kinda leads me to my next question, which is w you when making like again, like music for games or sound design for somebody that somebody has an I you know, an idea on or w w when it when it comes to that kind of stuff, like does somebody present you cover art, game concept
Geoffrey Day (33:22.79)
Mm.
Andrew (33:23.342)
and then they they kinda push you that direction or they're like, Make something cool, let me see if it works for something 'cause again, a lot of times they they're under NDA and they don't really they're not gonna tell you a whole bunch of stuff. So what does that look like?
Geoffrey Day (33:33.861)
Yeah, it's true. well, I'll say like if I haven't signed if they're under NDA and I haven't signed an NDA, then we can't really do anything. Like, you know, we do like there's a certain amount of information that needs to be exchanged. but I'll say I've had like different types of folks, some who give me a lot of info and give me a lot of imagery, and some who don't and are and and then whether or not they want a lot of adjustments after or not
Andrew (33:44.436)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Day (34:03.662)
I mean it's kind of, you know, depends on who that person is. but I think in the best case scenario, I think like if I was working with somebody and they wanted me to make some music for some sort of media, the best case scenario is that they send me imagery, they send me any sort of motion graphics or video that they have that they're allowed to, and they send me context about where it's gonna be used.
so that when I make stuff it can be matched up to what's being shown to me so that w I don't make something that's surprising them and then I'm not just pulling something out of my butt. Yeah, like, you know, so that I think that's the best thing. And then if they don't know what they want, which is a thing that can happen. Like sometimes like if you're a creative director, you want to work with a composer or producer because you like what they do, but you're like, I don't know exactly what I want this to sound like in context.
They need to be upfront about that, but they also need to let that composer cook. They need to be like, here's the stuff. I don't know what the answer is, but I'm gonna give this to you and I'm gonna eat the cost of the fact that you're you've got to experiment. You know, I'm not gonna ask you to do that for free. and that just needs to be like part of the process. but because there's not that much money sometimes involved, and people don't have the budgets for that, you end up with a lot of situations where maybe it's like n there's a little friction or
Folks send stuff and then they don't know what they want and they ask you for corrections, but you haven't negotiated, you know, up you know, now you start to be like, Hey, are you gonna pay me for the extra four days of redoing all this stuff? Like that's where the friction happens. So I think, yeah, it's funny because there's like almost everything I'm talking about has nothing to do with making music. It's just interpersonal. It's like planning and like good management and like thinking ahead about how you know, how the sausage gets made. But yeah, best case scenario, like give as much information as possible to someone.
Let cook. And then yeah, b decide what you want or plan ahead to to brainstorm if you don't.
Andrew (36:05.654)
Yeah. I have this document that I built. and this is actually only within probably the last year I've done I've started doing this, where anytime I work with a band, I'm I I basically say, Hey guys, you have to fill this out. The document is what are some references and what do you want it to sound like? It's a very simple document, but then the the funny thing is all the bands, because I typically work with bands, all the bands have to then agree on a sound and they actually haven't agreed. They're all playing music together, but they actually haven't agreed.
Geoffrey Day (36:27.012)
Yeah. Yeah, right.
Andrew (36:29.846)
You know, and so I was getting like these late night texts from the bass player and then the next morning I'd be like sending out a mix and it was not like c cleared by the rest of the band. so that interpersonal stuff again, like you just mentioned, that has nothing to do with making music. That is all dealing with other people. And anytime you make music with other people, you're gonna run into that. How do you how do you i if so, are you able to sniff that out even sooner now? and get clear about that? And if so, how do you work around stuff like that before
Geoffrey Day (36:39.365)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Day (36:45.819)
Yeah.
Andrew (36:59.213)
ends up blowing up.
Geoffrey Day (37:00.388)
Yeah, it's I mean, it's tough. I I think like you can only predict so much. And like you go through your process, like what you said about sending out documentation and having them like sort of go through the motions ahead of time. I like to do that too. I like to, you know, ask some questions up front and you know, I try to pry and be like, you know, best case scenario, we'd love to see some stuff, right? Like what can you show me, what can you send me? These are the you know, I want to make sure that I'm making what you want. and it's hard to do that without a you know, sharing context, right?
and there's some trust. You talk about the NDA, like if they're hesitant to share stuff, you're like, What do I need to do? What do I need to sign to make sure that like you can share things with me without feeling uncomfortable? just so that everybody's on the same page, right? but yeah, it's there's only so much of that you can do. And then you get into the weeds and then you hand off the first mix, and then that's really, you know, did that upfront actually help or did they change their mind halfway through? You know, I don't know. It's like
That can happen, you know, that's just part of it. You gotta plan for it.
Andrew (37:59.535)
Total sense. creative d you know, the the creative design in the game can change too. Where they get halfway through and realize actually this isn't what we wanted. and now we're changing things. Yeah.
Geoffrey Day (38:05.604)
Yeah, it's I've seen that. Like sometimes the music doesn't end up where you thought it was going to and you're like, all right, well, that was a choice, you know, like that's cool. At least it's in there, you know. But that happens.
Andrew (38:15.682)
Yeah.
Yeah, it happens. so is there a a real difference between writing a great track for a game and a great track for Spotify? because you have stuff that was on Atomic Heart that also then blew blew up on Spotify. Was that something that you expected or thought about, or is that something that was kind of like secondary? And do you think there is a difference at all?
Geoffrey Day (38:30.192)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Day (38:35.876)
Yeah, I think well first of all, if you've listened to soundtracks where they have like a soundtrack arrangement of the music, like that's kind of answers the question, right? Like there's ways in which when the context of the media itself, like when it's out when it's not being listened to in the game with the supporting thing that you're seeing and doing, it's
the types of stuff that you're hearing in the music have to change to kind of like support the new context of listening to it on the treadmill. Like it's you know, there's like two very different ways of consuming music. two different like devices too. I'm just thinking like, when was the last time that you played PlayStation and you plugged it in in your AirPods to the PlayStation to play it? Like you're probably not, right? Like most people are using like television speakers, putting on the cans, you know, if they're on a PC, like you're
The way that you consume like listening music and the way that you consume media audio and music is often different. So you kind of have to plan ahead for that. Spotify mixers are way louder, usually. That's another thing. like when you're and the regarding the songs that I made for like Atomic Heart, this this is a an interesting case where like we're seeing this sometimes with game companies. Riot Games does this a lot.
ID Software did it by accident, I think, but you know, I think they've started to see the value. Munfish for Atomic Heart, they already knew about this, so this was all sort of planned ahead. But you can use music as its own marketing for the game. And so you choose types of songs that tend to do well on their own. So you'll notice that a lot of the songs that I did, they're all cover songs. And that's a big reason why, right? It's because those songs were already listening music and they were already popular.
And then they sort of had me help revitalize a lot of them into like a modern take. And that became its own marketing music where like those songs just can take a life take on a life of their own elsewhere. Arlequino's a perfect example where like it's a game for a song for Atomic Heart, but there was a character in Genshin Impact called Arlaquino, and all of a sudden I saw when that character came out, I saw the stats go boop, and I'm like, different game. Like, you know, like and so
Andrew (40:59.736)
Ha ha.
Geoffrey Day (41:00.642)
It's and that has a lot to do with like the way that that was already just listening music and it was sort of, you know, just a song with those lyrics. where you can't really do that for a lot of other soundtrack music. I guess the only other example I can think of is like the interstellar theme where you can see people s throwing that into their Instagram reels and stuff. Like that, you know, that can that can happen. The I the reason I said Doom, and its software learned it is because like you hear a lot of like the
Andrew (41:20.459)
Ha ha ha.
Geoffrey Day (41:29.614)
you know, the songs from Doom Eternal and Doom 2016 showing up in like memes and media content, social media content because they they can exist out of context and they work, right? They represent a thing, they create an idea. and that stuff tends to allow music to like really work in other places. but like, you know, 45 minutes of like
intense drones from tubas, you know, that's that works great in a movie on IMAX is not going to work that well on like a TikTok reel. So like, you know, that's that's kind of the thing is like you s when you start to see like folks trying to take advantage of like different ways of consuming music, you'll you'll notice it influences like the format and and the length of the songs oftentimes too. So that's a fun, that's a fun research project if anybody wants to go down like a two day rabbit hole.
Andrew (42:26.894)
It may take a little bit more than two days. It's so good. great music I believe works in in a lot of a lot more context than just one, right? Like, you know, in great movies and great games, but also by itself. I'm a big fan of of of making music that can be consumed by itself, but then also can create a feeling inside of outside of something else. There was this funny this funny YouTube video where somebody took Gilmore Girls, which is a hilarious show.
That has nothing to do with horror at all. And all they did was they added horror music and edited it in a way to make it look like it was a horror movie instead. And because of the music alone, it totally changed the feeling of it. Again, like contacts where where you add music, you can create f feelings and create con create different feelings in different contexts just because of the music alone. a lot of the remixes that you did were like reimagined vintage Soviet area or Soviet era pop into like heavy industrial tracks. So how do you like honor
Geoffrey Day (43:01.958)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andrew (43:24.098)
these decade old original songs while turning into something that hits in a modern game and in a modern world.
Geoffrey Day (43:29.358)
Yeah, there's this was this was tricky. And this was one of those things where like it actually the first step for me was always to go and f listen to the original track, read the lyrics, read the YouTube comments from the original track. Like try to understand like what that song actually meant. Like I have to remind people, like I have no Russian background at all. Like I don't I all these songs were brand new to me. They were not things that I grew up with. And so
I needed to understand that stuff or else I n I would basically just create like a cheap, like, you know, take a song and slap it together with some metal and call it a day. Cause like, you know, otherwise, like I need I needed to find a way. I needed to really internalize it. So I did spend a lot of time doing that. and then I there are some tricks you can do to make sure like I kind of took a lot of the same lessons I took from my YouTube channel covers, where
You need to like thread this needle where the original song has to still sound like the original song. It basically just has to be like original song plus. You know, you're not you're not remixing it so that the the core idea is lost. You're just basically just adding a new coat of paint. Like, you know, you take take your favorite David Bowie song, and then you still got David Bowie, but you just strip him down and put him in leather and paint his face like kiss. You know, it's still David Bowie, right? Like
Andrew (44:53.59)
Mm-hmm.
Geoffrey Day (44:55.162)
so you that's kind of the idea. And so you'll notice like a lot of the songs are very, you know, structurally the same, same tempo. I don't change the key. I basically build around the vocals and like that's that strategy has worked really well. Like you don't wanna you don't wanna rearrange it so much that people are just like, all their favorite parts are in different places because then you j you just you know, it's lost on them. So yeah, I just took that and and then I just kind of
went for it and it turned out well. Like I wasn't really sure if it was gonna succeed. but it seems like people like them. And the play count certainly supports it, which is pretty pretty nice to see, you know, after taking my best guess.
Andrew (45:36.524)
Now, if we compare that to like Viscerfest for example, where you delivered a full original soundtrack for a chapter rather than, you know, remixes, which muscle which muscle is harder to to build? Reinterpreting something that's loved by so many people? or writing from a blank page?
Geoffrey Day (45:39.365)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Day (45:52.04)
I I think the stakes are different. I would argue that writing completely blank, if the goal is to like make it to get a lot of people listening to it repetitively and often, I think writing it from a blank point of view is very hard because you get a lot of r risk reduction and a lot of like assurances from a cover song because that it's already been popularized. Right. the
The hardest part I think about making any music in general, if you wanted to get it, listen to people. Like if your goal is to like get it in front of other people as opposed to just tinkering around with music for fun, you know, like it's a different that's a different thing altogether. But if your goal is to get it to yeah in front of people, like how folks connect with music and how folks connect with art and stuff in general, just really understanding that is kind of a first step. You know, where is the moment in
being presented with anything that a person co goes, I want to continue engaging with this. I find this interesting. I recognize this thing. This thing reminds me of something right away. that's where cover songs tend to like shine and why folks, so many folks can start their careers by doing cover songs is because they kind of like skip that first step of needing to be introduced. Like if they cover a Taylor Swift song, you know it's the Taylor Swift song like immediately. And you're not even listening for the band. You're listening because it's a Taylor Swift song with a new coat of paint.
And then the more they that same band does that, the more you start to associate that type of sound with that group. And then they do a couple of originals and you listen to them, you give them a chance, and it hits the same scratches the same itch and then you like them. You know, like I prevail was a great a band that did that when they when they popped off. So yeah, I think like there it is yeah, it's way harder to try to break in and, you know, get a lot of like folks listening to your stuff.
writing originals, without understanding like the greater context of like how people approach music and how they're sucked into it and, you know, what types of imagery and what types of lyrics and things like that. It's it's way more complicated than just banging something out in a daw, you know.
Andrew (48:09.417)
get that. so w one of the one of the big things is a lot of listeners don't really understand how sometimes music actually fits in game. and so they've never really heard of things like WYs, you know, so and and things like that. So g give give some of these people like a a quick context of what that is. And then when a track has to loop, duck, and react in engine, what what does that actually look like and how do you think of making music to make it fit that way?
Geoffrey Day (48:36.485)
Yeah, yeah. So W wise is kind of it it kind of is a DAW at this point. It's like a DAW with hooks into a game engine. And the whole idea is that the game engine passes some information to Wise, like, hey, player did this, or this health bar looks like this. And then like Wise will move and jump to a new part of the music in response to that. So that's how you get that sort of like
you know, when the time's running out, all of a sudden the music changes, it gets more intense. It's like it's being the game engine is telling W wise the program to move that to like the more intense part of the song. So in order to like think about how to write music for that kind of thing, it really depends on how much complexity the developers want. Cause I've worked with folks who like they're like send me a full track and we're just gonna like loop it and it's that's it.
Like I didn't have to think that hard about what I was doing. I just sent them a track. but then for Atomic Heart specifically, they they did it in more of in a piecewise way. So what we would what I would do is I would write what I would call like chunks, like songs that are like I don't know, eight measures or sixteen measures, or parts of a song that were like that. And I would write the song with that in mind. And then what I would have to do is actually test. Now I'm not in W I's while I'm doing this, I'm still in Ableton Live.
I would have to test like the ends, the transitions to be like, if this part ends and goes to this part back here or this part over here, do they both sound like cohesive? Does it sound natural or does it like just jump and it sound like I skipped the song? And so you obviously want to create that more natural like blend and you have to write things in a way where, you know, the keys sound like they work together and stuff so that the blend is natural. and that's a little bit of music trickery. Like you kind of do have to know your way around.
things. There's like small stuff, like if a symbol is like there's a little little like shh symbol riser, but then the next chunk doesn't have it, all of a sudden it feels like it hard cuts because of that. And you're like, dude, okay. So what do I have to get to overlap in order to make that sound like it belongs together? And so you have to solve those problems. and that that part can come during the process of writing if you sort of know what to expect, or
Geoffrey Day (50:55.226)
which is what happened to me a couple of times, it comes after where you test and you go, that doesn't sound right. And then you have to you have to literally change the music to to get it to fit. but then once you have those pieces, you know, you you either stick them into WYs and do the hand the programming yourself. or more likely if you're working with a a larger client, they probably have people doing that. And then you just send it to them and they'll set it up and do it the way that they like to do it. So it kind of depends on the size of the project, you know.
Andrew (51:23.198)
I noticed as I was playing some of some of the Doom games, I noticed that there are and this is from my perspective. Again, I've never worked in WYs made game music before, but when it I I I from my perspective it sounds like there's transition effects. Like all of a sudden something happens and it's like p-chah and then it just kinda like there's this like real big hit then it goes into like the next song. Do you program like transition hits or is that something that ends up just kinda like happening happening naturally, like the boss is now beat.
Geoffrey Day (51:52.519)
those, well, yeah, you can write it into the end of the song, but those I call those stingers. That's I think what a lot of people call those. and those are like specific, they're basically sound effect hits in the key of the song, made specifically for like intros and outros. So yeah, I would make those. I would just make a handful of them sometimes. and the advantage to doing it, to making it is like you can use the same instrumentation that you used.
Andrew (51:52.63)
And they just triggered the end of the song.
Geoffrey Day (52:21.52)
For the rest of the song, so it sounds like the song like dramatically ends, as opposed to it being like a random sound effect they f they had lying around, you know. So, yeah, stingers, you know, those are fun. Those are pretty easy to make. Honestly, you you finish the song and you've already got most of the components, like you got the the risers, you the drums, you got whatever, and you just like take a couple of the parts and you just put in a new part of the track and you make it go sh poo, you know? That's it. It takes like ten minutes, yeah.
Andrew (52:47.733)
That's awesome. That's really cool. So then that for the most part usually ends up coming afterwards. Like you said, you already have all the elements of the song and you just like bring them all together and that's your stinger. That's cool. one thing that I have to talk about is this project, this massive project that you took on, which was recreating distortion pedals in serum two. yeah, this project of rebuilding like
Geoffrey Day (52:55.332)
Right. Yeah.
Geoffrey Day (53:05.743)
yeah.
Andrew (53:08.915)
actually like real guitar distortion pedals inside of serum too. Not only did you like rebuild these, you also decided to go on for my understanding, a year or longer journey of understanding what distortion actually is. Why do this? Like why this sounds like a nightmare.
Geoffrey Day (53:20.356)
Yeah. Yeah. I yeah, I'm a I'm a crazy person, man. I like th so there's this this Jim Lil video, if you know Jim Lil, the famous Jim Lil, he put out that video about preamps and preamp saturation and you know, and his conclusion basically was like there's a lot of EQs and other stuff happening and most of what's going on can be explained by breaking those components apart and most of those preamps kinda
Andrew (53:31.154)
yes.
Geoffrey Day (53:49.627)
Have a lot of the same things going on. And then he you know, talked about some other mythological things like what was the one with the Neave preamp, slew rate, stuff like that? You know, he went through and did all that stuff too. and so before that video came out, I was kind of having the same thought process because I was doing a lot of, you know, I was buying a lot of guitar pedals and just experimenting and trying to like understand my way around distortion a little bit better to create certain sounds. And I started to guess like,
I feel like these guitar pedals are all the same, like three or four different distortion-making components, and then just have different EQs and filters on the inside. I'm pretty sure. I you know, I started to get that vibe. And I was like, I'm gonna figure that one out. Like, I feel like there's not that many things going on with distortion. It's just clipping, right? It's clipping and wavefolding and whatever. but they sound different than the digital stuff still. So something's going on there. So
I wanted to really dig down and be like, why do the guitar pedals sound different than the digital stuff? But how different are they? So I had to learn how to read like circuit diagrams, not like well, but like enough to understand what was going on. and so that was confirmed. I was like, there's just a bunch of circuit connections that are built in filters in a lot of these, and it's driving the way that things are clipping and, you know, keeping the bass safe or like pushing the mid range through.
And that's where you get these different types of guitar pedal sounds. And a lot of them are just mixing and matching that stuff. So once I did that, I went, okay, this is way more approachable than I thought. And I wanted to like really put it to the test to, in the same vein as the SMS stuff we talked about, you know, what can I add to that spice rack that keeps everything in serum, but is a sound that serum does not do very well. I was like distortion pedals like guitar. It doesn't have those built in.
it's got very simple distortion stuff. We can do better. So I decided to do that. I'll say it's accurate, but not that accurate. Like it's like early. The problem, of course, is like it's still built with serums components. So it sounds like the early, like line six pod type distortion, like wave shapers and filters, but no like no like modern stuff that like, you know, like the NAM profiles and stuff have where like
Geoffrey Day (56:08.958)
It it still sounds like digital wave shaping at the end of the day. But it sounds like digital wave shaping that's close enough and has the vibe of and like I was like, that's good enough. And it we made the s the serum pack, maximum overdrive, to sort of prove that. And truly it's one of my favorites. Like all the sounds, they don't really sound synthy. You know, they sound like they're just like something otherworldly because it's like they have these devices in the chain later on. and boy, they use a lot of CPU. That serum's not made for that. But
Andrew (56:36.621)
Yeah, th those things are awesome. they really are our killer. It's it's it's fun to see that. one big thing that I've seen you do time and time again is take again, like that, you know, your framework that you had earlier where you take a source. one video I saw from you is like playing low tune guitars that had nothing to do with guitars. You essentially ran dr the drum one, yeah, just ran it through other other other chains, which is really cool.
Geoffrey Day (56:37.978)
But it was cool, you know, it was cool to try.
Yeah.
Geoffrey Day (57:00.273)
the drum one? Yeah.
Andrew (57:05.883)
yeah, y you ended up with essentially like a twelve rack distortion presets, seven of seven of them modeled after, you know, physical units sitting on your desk. So like w walk me through the grind of this. like how how did you even like how do you A B something inside of serum against a pedal? Like what what how how does this even work?
Geoffrey Day (57:23.416)
It was a grind was exactly what it was. It was I mean, a lot of just sitting down. So I've got the oscilloscope up in front of me. and I have the I have I made a switcher in Ableton. So it would like route out to my pedal and then I would volume match with serum and I would basically just go back and forth on A B and then be like try to match the shape in through the serum one with the original pedal. But then I would have to
pr play a different note and be like, it's not the same now. And I have to figure out why. Right. And then I would do that like all across the keys. And then I would have to do something with like LFOs where I'd make the volume go up and down so that I can be like, well, does it actually like respond like the pedal? Like like it's only, you know, if you're playing a static sine wave through a distortion, it's gonna sound you can match it, but then the minute it does stuff, it doesn't maybe sound or feel like that. So I started to like
have to this is like some of the things we did where we faked some almost reactive compression things that were happening in the in the pedals. and you just get it close. You use like a compressor and some other stuff and and like it's not the right way to do it but it's it gets it makes it feel a lot more like that pedal. And yeah, it was just hours of just sitting there and doing it and, you know, my ears starting to ring from just like mr mr mr like for you know for hours and hours and hours.
Andrew (58:50.411)
Ha ha ha.
Geoffrey Day (58:53.814)
And yeah, and then you stress test it with actual patches and then you like try to build stuff and see how it sounds and you know, doing it with recorded material, like we have the drum racks in that pack. So we can prove that it like it doesn't just sound like something that works with synths, like we can run drum samples through it and you go, That does kinda sound like tube distortion. That does kind of sound like a you know, a a rat pedal or something like that. yeah, I it's
I don't wish that on anybody. Like it was a grind. It was it was something that like this is this is a me problem that I do this all the time. I love the grind, but I also like my friends are like, dude, we haven't heard from you in like two and a half weeks. I'm like, shut up. You know, like I'm still you know. So that's yeah. I'm yeah, I don't know. But it made it it was a cool experiment at the end of the day.
Andrew (59:22.349)
Ha ha ha.
Andrew (59:42.808)
And it sounds awesome as well. one of the hardest things you said to model was the an how like ha how analog gear handles transients, and like shipping those off. and again the s sudden volume spikes. When I essentially sold all my analog gear and I was like, I'm going all in in the box just because I hated like mix recall and stuff, that was one thing that I was kind of fighting with a little bit. luckily, we have a lot of emulations now that do a pretty good job of being able to do that. Again, it's it's close enough that no one's gonna notice and it will saves me like stuff like that. But how do you claw towards like a
Geoffrey Day (59:57.147)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Day (01:00:04.826)
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew (01:00:13.567)
a passable emulation on something like that. Like r it is it really just like you're you're grabbing a compressor and you're like, th this is what I have to use, you know, or like a wave shaper and this is essentially what I have to use to kind of try to emulate this.
Geoffrey Day (01:00:25.486)
You mean specifically for the serum pedals or just in general? Yeah. Well, for the serum pedals, I mean, I was not expecting it to be good. It was more just like make it as good as I can. And then I was pleasantly surprised when it did sound pretty good. but I was using there was like it's it was like the equivalent of people making gorgeous music in like Mario Maker or whatever it's called. Like, you know, like you don't have the tools really to do it the right way, so it's gonna be limited.
Andrew (01:00:29.439)
both. We'll go both.
Geoffrey Day (01:00:53.966)
and that was fine though, and it was passable. But in terms of like, you know, how do you get some of the things that people like about analog gear back into your your digital workflow? you're right, we have a lot of technology now that is really close. I mean like Neuralamp model or A2. I haven't played with it yet, but I've seen like some previews and stuff, and I'm like, we're basically there. Like saturation is like we've got it now, you know, like the
The details are so small that like anyone who's like, it's not as warm, like you're actually wrong. Like it's exactly the same. Like, like waveform to waveform, exactly the same. So, like, you know, we're we're getting to that point now. but then there's like, you know, I think the things that we're still missing in the digital space is that most plugins are not attempting to emulate the things that happen when you push a piece of hardware past its breaking point.
Andrew (01:01:29.245)
Hahaha.
Geoffrey Day (01:01:49.681)
when you, you know, try to really abuse stuff. That's where actually a lot of some cool sounds come from. And I just very rarely see anybody try to like capture that stuff. So I think if you're, you know, if your signature sound is like taking a c a compressor and and just diming it, you're probably gonna get a different sound out of a piece of hardware than you are from a a software version of it. so that's still like an area that I kind of hope people explore more, but I don't know if they will.
Andrew (01:02:16.297)
so. I hope so. I recently made a a YouTube video going over A Two and the differences of it. and one of the big things I like were were there. They did a thing called the Musra test, which was way better than an A B test where like they have multiple different audio files at over a thousand people and a hundred thousand different ratings on this and it it went crazy. It's a it it was a it's a great thing. Steve, the the designer between behind A Two and the Neuralant modeler did a f fantastic job figuring that out. but there's
Those things we're just we're we got to the point now where we're there. I hope that people use this technology though to model what it's like to actually break stuff. there is just w because we're in the digital age, I believe that sometimes we become a little too safe. and we're like, Well, this is how it's supposed to be. And we never actually think of there really isn't a supposed to. There is a there is this tool. Now go use it and break it. And I think we need more emulations of of breaking things. And I think you did that in a phenomenal way and in inside of the Maximum Overdrive Pack, which
Geoffrey Day (01:02:59.385)
Yeah.
Geoffrey Day (01:03:05.317)
Yeah.
Andrew (01:03:12.151)
Again, is the biggest, in my opinion, most detailed serum two pack yet. You had ninety presets on this, twelve plus pedal inspired, effects racks. where can people find this?
Geoffrey Day (01:03:23.526)
the noise department website it is specifically thenoisedept.com d-e-p-t. And I'm imagining you'll have some links so go go go look for links and yeah that's where people can find it. That's the store. there's also links to like social media stuff from that website as well if you're curious about things where I'm I'm not
Andrew (01:03:34.036)
Links will links will be everywhere.
Geoffrey Day (01:03:48.902)
super, super big on social media nowadays. I'm mostly just I mean, we're entirely Instagram basically. So if you're on Instagram, that's where you'll find me for the time being. and yeah, I post occasionally and we make products and we've got a bunch of cool stuff lined up that we're working on right now. So, you know, I hope that folks listening tune in and check it out.
Andrew (01:04:09.901)
I love it. I love it. Jeffrey, if you had just one thing to say, to somebody who is aspiring in in into doing this and starting to like kind of create their own sound around stuff, what would you say to that specific person, maybe the person that you were back in, you know, twenty twenty?
Geoffrey Day (01:04:25.092)
Yeah, don't listen to anyone on social media, just do what you think is cool.
Andrew (01:04:29.565)
Love it. It's so good.
Geoffrey Day (01:04:30.372)
Yep. Everybody everybody has no idea what they're doing. Just just just have fun.
Andrew (01:04:33.261)
Have fun. Make music. Jeffrey, it's been great to have you here, man. Thank you for your time.
Geoffrey Day (01:04:38.809)
Hey, thank you so much. This was a great time.
