Mixerman and the Ultimate Guide to Producing Records, Music, and Songs

August 8, 2025·2 hr 10 min·5 clips

Mixerman argues generative AI will replace traditional music production tools sooner than you think.

Brian Funk keeps the setup plain. He introduces Mixerman through the work: gold and platinum albums, artists he has worked with, and books about mixing, studio life, and producing records, music, and songs. Then the conversation gets practical quickly. Mixerman pushes back on the neat version of technology history, where the smart move is always to jump on the newest tool first. He had already recorded digitally. His first gold album, Bizarre Ride to the Far Side, was made in a Spectral Sonics DAW, so this was not a simple fear of digital recording. The issue was sound, timing, and leverage. After years in analog rooms, tape still gave him something early studio computer systems did not. He also talks plainly about money. On big-budget albums, the newer computer operator might make $300 a day while an experienced recordist could make up to $1200 a day. So the resistance had a professional logic. He was not refusing sessions that used the technology. He just was not eager to make himself less valuable before the tools were ready. That distinction gives the episode its bite. This is not misty nostalgia for tape. It is about craft, economics, and tools all pushing on the same choice. Brian gives him space to lay it out without turning the episode into a lecture. His role is mostly to keep the bigger question in view: how production changes when new methods arrive before everyone agrees they are better. Mixerman answers from the room itself, talking through hybrid sessions, analog recording, sonic tradeoffs, and that awkward period when the future is visible but still clumsy. The closing story shifts the mood. A drummer's intense belief in one of Mixerman's stories turns into a dry little lesson about studio myths and why they can feel cleaner than the facts. Even when the talk moves into books and satire, it keeps coming back to the same craft problem: knowing when a tool helps, when it costs you, and when people are too attached to the story to hear the explanation.

As heard by us

Mixerman turns Pro Tools, tape, day rates, and studio myth into a grounded argument about when producers should embrace change.

Mixerman and Brian Funk use the new producing book as a way into a sharper conversation about tools, taste, and professional timing. The best stretch is Mixerman explaining why he resisted early Pro Tools without turning digital recording into the villain.

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Why you'd press play

A veteran producer's conversation about when new tools help, when they don't, and how technology keeps changing the studio.

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