Michael Walker: Alright, excited to be here studying with my new friend, Fab Dupont. So Fab is a renowned mixing engineer and producer. He's known for blending analog digital techniques, uh, working on a top artists like Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, and David Crosby. He is also an industry consultants and innovator. He's collaborated with leading audio brands like Avid, Universal Audio, and Dangerous Music.

And he's really helped to promote and contribute to some cutting-edge audio technology. And he's the owner of Flux Studios and co-founder of PureMix.net so he operates a premier, New York City studio and runs an educational platform that specializes in helping, enhance, uh, music production and recording techniques.

And so today, I think it's fitting that we're going to be discussing, uh, the art of mixing and production and adding in some of the special sauce. The special sauce that's required to, you know, in today's day and age, when there's, you know, that's never been easier to create music. How do you actually make it unique enough to cut through the noise and share your, your voice?

So Fab, thank you for taking the time to be here today.

Fab Dupont: Well, thanks for inviting me.

Michael: Absolutely. Also, I mean, I just got to say. But the name like Fab, Fab Dupont, like, it's kind of hard not to be successful.

Fab: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's the name. The name did it all. it's a short for Fabrice when I moved to the States from France. I was raised in Paris. when I moved to the States, nobody could spell my name and, uh, or say it. And so, after months or years of fighting, I just shortened it and it worked out that way.

Michael: It's a cool name.

We interviewed, uh, Sabreece Surgeon a couple of times on the podcast. He's the founder of, Bands in Town. And yeah, maybe I'll put it in a word with him. Have you ever considered? Yeah. Fab. Fab is a pretty solid name.

Fab: It's good. It works.

Michael: Alright. So, you know, to kick things off, I, I'd love to hear just a little bit more about your story and how you got started and, you know, found your way to working with, you know, some of those renowned artists and, uh, yeah.

Could you share just a little bit about your, your journey?

Fab: I've always been making music. And at one point I realized that that's all I was going to do and so I worked really hard and saved a bunch of money in Paris, playing, you know, wedding gigs and making little jingles and, radio stuff, and producing records. And then, um, I saved the money up and I came to Berklee College of Music in Boston.

And then I, uh, flew through that, Cursus, I came in as a saxophone player because I used to be a decent saxophone player. They gave me a scholarship, which was great so I came for them because of that part. Otherwise, I couldn't have, have afforded it. and then I went, I switched from being a saxophone player to majoring in songwriting because I realized that, I don't know how to change heart, but to me what really mattered was the song, not the execution of it as much as the song.

It was the song. The song is everything and also I realized that I didn't have, in me to be, uh, very frank, I didn't have in me the, the process of staying in a practice room for 12 hours a day for 12 years to get to the level of the people I was already with at the time. So, in France, I was doing very well.

But the level of musicianship I encountered at Berklee was so insane. And it was cool. I mean, it was nice. I was happy. I was invited to go to sessions, and I was very active at a school, but I knew in my heart that that wasn't my way. I was not going to be just purely, um, instrumentalist. It's just not instrumentalist.

I couldn't, I couldn't do it. And so that's when I switched to songwriting and then graduated very, very quickly. And then I got a job. Us foreigners, we offer the one-year grace period. Um, they call it practical training. And so are you practically training what you just learned on? So I got, um, I got a job as a composer and then I guess my boss liked me.

So, he sponsored me for a visa. And then, you know, one thing led to another, and now I'm here. And so this was in Boston. Then I, I left Boston. I came to New York. I arrived in New York. I knew zero. A number of humans I knew in New York was zero. Absolutely nobody. And I, I just looked at ads and I found a little room here in this building, actually, if you can believe that, and, said hello to everybody in the building and one thing led to another and I met one dude who said hey you know I heard stuff coming out of your room that sounds cool will you help me with my stuff like sure and then one thing led to another and and then I started making bigger records took forever takes a very long time because the, the music making as in like in the pop and adjacent pop adjacent. Business, if you want to look at it from a pure business point of view, it really is a relationship game.

And so if you're, if you're in a, in a room by yourself in a basement in Lower East Side. You don't meet many people because it's not exactly a thoroughfare. You know what I mean? So, a lot of my friends at the time. Well, and my friends now who were at the time like assistant at the Sony Studios or they were, you know, gophers at quad got further, faster.

Um, at least at the beginning, because they had the relationships. What my isolation afforded me is endless amounts of refining my craft. So, I was mixing seven days a week. I was like mixing songs for free or 50 bucks or a hundred bucks. And I was like, yeah, bring it on. Like, I will make this sound good.

And then over time people noticed. well, every, any human endeavor except maybe solo mountain climbing, but everything else is a relationship game. And so something that I didn't, I didn't know, I thought that if you were like working your butt off and you were the best and your stuff was consistently awesome, then everything would come together, but that's not how it works. Also, you know, I've always been on the outside. I'm first generation immigrant. It took me a while to get my English to the level. I don't know the customs here. I don't, I didn't watch the same TV shows. I don't do drugs. Didn't really fit in the scene of New York in the early 2000s.

So, I was always the odd dude out, but I can make things sound good. So, yeah. Over time, I brought in my network and I decided that what really mattered to me was the output. And then all the rest was not as important. And I'm, you know, in retrospect, I looked at the journey. I'm like, yeah, this is, this is working out pretty good.

So, because people have relationships with their forever. There's not this fleeing. I mean, everybody who's making music knows that. If you're in a room with somebody for a month making their record, right? You gotta choose very carefully who you make records with, because you may be stuck in a room for a month with an asshole.

And that, that's hell on earth, like 12 hours a day trying to be, to really bring, put art together with somebody you can't stand is not a good look. And I've been in a situation a couple of times and I was like, Hmm, no amount of money is worth that.

So to me, to me, it's worth it for a lot of people.

And that's cool. You know, you gotta, I just want to have a good day. Possibly every day. Uh, that's my goal. And the way to get there is to stay in control of your environment. Stay in control of your environment, you got to control who you work with. So, you have to be careful who you say yes to.

So, at the beginning you say yes to everything because sometimes they need to eat. It's difficult to repress, but after a while, if you, if you really apply yourself and you're curious, and you're, you're mindful about the process, you get good. You know, Prince said, you're bound to get good at anything you do all day long forever, right?

Or something like that. So, for you, you bound to unless, you know, you chose the wrong line of work, but I imagine anybody listening to you or anybody in this environment, they had to, you fight pretty hard. If you have this kind of mind that you're going to seek information about something like deeply seek information, I have the patience to spend the time, the cycles and the brain shares to really learn something.

Then you already are part of a very small club, you know? And so one can imagine that if you persevere, you'll do fine. And this is what happened to me. I had a natural ability to, to blend tones. Let's just put it that way. Whatever that is, you know, mixing records is a very weird, elusive skill set. But I've always had this weird thing that I knew what I wanted anything to sound like the minute I heard the demo.

Okay. I was able to project that. And that's built from, after reflection, um, that's built from the culture of listening to records in a very critical way, as opposed to just, flowing with the record. I was able to look at the record from a vantage point that allowed me to analyze it and to extract its essence.

And that was part of my vocabulary. So, somebody, So I've listened to a lot of everything, like a lot of everything, in a very, attentive manner. I can't put music on if I'm doing something else. Like if I cook, I cook a lot. I gotta be very careful what music I put on. Because if I put the wrong music on, I will screw up the dish.

Because I will no longer pay attention to the dish, I will pay attention to the music. And it's not something I can really control. So, I choose very carefully what music I put on when I cook. And then when I'm listening to music, I'm listening to music. And that's the feed, that's the fuel that, builds your taste and allows, allows one to, um, replicate that or extrapolate on that which that's the fun part.

So, I mean, long way to answer, but that's the journey, you know, showed up here and knew nobody, um, offered my services for free to train myself, also the level of people who I was working with are so insane that I really had to, I had to like hustle. And I guess, they saw the value in what I was bringing and they, um, took me in and more and more people came to me and then, you know, There's no big switch.

Everybody's like, what, what, what, what made it? Yeah. Willingness to suffer. That's, that's the switch. Like willingness to just keep going. And so the building I came in is this building and I started as a roommate, a studio mate of somebody else in a basement. And, um, an amazing drummer named Graham Hawthorne.

Unbelievable drummer. Like, like legendary New York royalty. And he took me under his wing. And that's the first person I met making music in New York. And now I have the whole building and we have eight studios and it's, uh, it's a thing. It's beautiful stuff. We have, I have to look at the schedule, but I know like we had Lord last week.

We just had a, no chain smokers are coming here tomorrow. We had pop smoke in the basement. I didn't, I mean, it is crazy. The people who go through here. It's crazy. And it started from this little room in the basement, just making records for a hundred bucks.

Michael: That's awesome, man. Thank you for sharing. And it sounds like a couple of things that really, stick out to me are, you know, you, you kind of came back to this, uh, main point around relationships and how like ultimately relationships are, are everything. And it sounds like a big part of your journey was.

Through just like showing up and continuing to build relationships and saying yes to every opportunity at the beginning to really to build those relationships and provide value. And the other thing that kind of struck me about your story is just the, intentional environment design. And as it relates to what you're describing with like relationships about being careful about your environment and who the, who you surround yourself with.

You know, the, the analogy that came to mind was sort of like planting a tree in that, you know, the roots, it's really important, the fertilizer, the ground, the environment in which the roots are in, because if it's a bunch of weeds and, and bad stuff, then it's gonna be hard for it to kind of blossom.

Fab: Know, people are very consistent, which is a beautiful thing because that allows you to see into people, right? So, somebody who's going to misbehave with you will misbehave with other people. Maybe it was true. I don't, in, in the past that you could be a genuine, you know, nefarious person and still have a career in the music business these days, it's a lot harder.

It's a lot harder because the barrier of entry is lowered, a drastically lowered, and the barrier of distribution is gone. Meaning that anyone with a computer, a microphone and whatever instrument they choose to play can make music and release it. And so that creates a plethora of content. There's so much music everywhere.

And there is no, nobody's preventing anyone, there's no filter, right? So, to rise above that ocean of noise, that's just a constant, constant noise, you have to have absolutely exceptional music. Exceptional meaning something that doesn't sound, that's, that's its own thing that can be discerned from the noise.

Um, and then some sort of a knack for marketing or some sort of a, a way or an instinct to find your audience. But 30 years ago, it would be that there was a filter. There was a, there was a bunch of tastemakers come in called the ANRS at labels who were in the way of anyone. They were, on the way, meaning that on your way through to the audience, you had to go through DNR. So, that's a negative, impact, meaning that some really, really great music never saw the light of its public.

However, it has a good, the benefit of it is there's a filter there. So, there was not a hundred thousand songs uploaded to spotify every day. Because there was a bunch of people there saying, no, I’m not putting money on this. Right. So, if you look at it as a, as a general, let's forget that it's music.

Let's look at it as just as a, as a marketplace, which is really crass when you feel, when you think about it, it's our artists, our babies, our songs, it's I poured my soul into this. Um, I had this discussion with artists all the time where I was like, no, but how could you talk about this? I'm like, well, hey, I have a simple question that once the artist answers it, then we can have the conversation.

I said, are you making the music just for yourself are you making it to share? And then there's a tree there. This is just for yourself. Anything goes. Rock. Like, break the mold. Then you have to share. Bananas. Wonderful. Great. Do you want to share? Do you mind if people listen to it or not? Or are you trying to derive income from it?

And then so it's another diagram and then they don't care. Rock! Break the mold. You want to derive income from it. Okay. Thus, there's a transactional element to the art. The collision of art and commerce has been a complicated thing for hundreds of years. And it's even more complicated now that, uh, big gigantic silicon valley based corporations with zero skin in the art game.

Actually running the art business. And so it's very difficult. And that discussion is, is tough. But let's imagine that, music is a product like soap. If anybody on the planet could make soap, and could sell it to anybody else on the planet, which with Amazon you kind of could. Then you will have to make pretty special.

So, for you to be able to be Unilever or to be whomever, you know, or you would find a small soap fans in your realm. But if you mistreat your clients or you don't deliver consistent soap, or you tell somebody that the soap is going to be great, but it's crap. Or if you insult everybody on your support line, because their shipment was late, they call to ask you where the shipment was late.

You tell them that there is their fault. You know, you're not going to make soap for very long. And so, this kind of like broadening of the marketplace has for music has elevated the level of civility or at least consciousness that is needed to be able to function in the environment. So recently, over the last, say, 10 years, I don't deal with that many difficult people because you can't really afford to be difficult if you want things to fall to, if you want people around you to be looking in the same direction, then you had the very least have to be personable.

And so that's to me in my, in my experience has been one of the effects of the broadening the marketplace, which means that I don't have to be as careful now as it used to be about who I say yes to. Sometimes people appear one way and they turn out another. Sometimes, you know, your radar is a little bit off and then whatever.

But overall, the environment is key. And these days, most of the time I deal with great people. Or maybe it's a factor of, of, you know, where I am on my journey. I'm, you know, maybe I have, I have, I'm a little bit ahead of the people who were problematic now. I'm like, I can, I can no longer deal with them.

But I think overall from what I see, because there's eight studios here, so I see a lot of people every day. Everybody's a sweetheart. Like, even like the tough, like hardcore, you know, like punk rappers, like all the thrash metal dudes who show up, like, sweetheart, everybody is like, they're here for a reason.

They want to make music. They want to do it in a great environment. Everybody's looking in the same direction. No issues. But yes, the environment's key.

Michael: Good stuff. Yeah. So, it sounds like what you're saying is that one of the benefits of where the music industry is headed is more transparency, because if you're an asshole or if like you, you don't, if you do something that is not cool, then now it's easier for that to come to light. You know, it's a lot easier for that to be shared and

Fab: The transparency works always, most of the time there's not a phenomenal amount of transparency from the DSPS, the streamers. There is no transparency from those people because if there were transparency, they'd probably be riots. But, it's, it is a more even playing field between.

Whatever artist and, and another artist who maybe has the support of a big label. So everything is more balanced. It's a money game that that is a money game. But the thing that's fascinating these days, and I see it happen all the time, is that money is only one of the elements of being able to get through to the audience.

It used to be the only one. It used to be the main one. A label could pay, a radio station to spin your track at the right time. Happened all the time. It happened every day. They were people whose job it was. They were called radio promoters, the euphemism of the century. And that is to that stuff still happens, but,

But if you have a really great song at the right time and your visuals are awesome, you know how to communicate to your fan base, or at least you know where your fan base is, and you're able to communicate to them, which is the most difficult thing is to find your crowd. Then you can function and you can function pretty well.

And, that's pretty amazing. And there's no filter, no filter. Then if you want to scale that to like, you know, Taylor Swift levels, then it takes. A whole village of people and with different skill sets and different relationships. And it's also a game. That's pretty scripted, but that part there, the part where you can really reach your audience directly without the help of capital and the help of somebody else's address book, that's, that's pretty awesome.

There's a lot of people who managed to get through. It's not easy. It's still a small percentage, but it's doable. And I see it happen all the time. We had a, an artist here a few years ago named Sammy Ray. Amazing. She had just walked into town. She knew nobody. She landed here, and she, she had no, no money, nothing, and we helped her out because she was a sweetheart, and, I remember long sessions, well it was a couch at the time, sitting on a couch, where she was like, I don't know what to do, and talking about music, and talking, I was like, really suffering, and I said, look, you gotta, you gotta build your team, and you gotta build your, your crowd of people who look in the same direction, who believe in you.

They don't have to be super advanced. But they have to be dedicated and they have to really love, what you're doing and what you present. And you have to be able to have a trust system. And it took months and we, like, we hooked her up with like crazy low rates because she was, you know, really eager and she was helping out around the studio.

And we were like, okay, this, you know, one of the guys here just like, okay, I'll make your record. She just sold out. I mean, last year she sold out a 5, 000 seat venue in Central Park.

Michael: Wow.

Fab: Indie. No album.

Michael: Wow. 

Fab: Uh in this building we have um there's a band called Adore like I adore you adore. They just reached 1.3 monthly million monthly listeners on Spotify.

Michael: Wow.

Fab: Um, they have six songs out seven, I mixed seven, seven songs now, all grassroots, all done by being really sharp about who their music is for, where are those people, how do we reach them, and no compromise on the music making. They're just like, but they found their own place.

So it's possible. I see it happen. And that's just two examples. We have a jazz artist named Lauren Henderson, and we're talking the Ranch, Sammy Ray. Is kind of like a glossy americana. I don't exactly know how to do. She's got her own thing, right? Adore is distorted future pop no humans were hurt in making of that music is like all glitch and Lauren is like straight all straight ahead all school New York jazz cats and she she sounds like so her voice is like butter.

It's so beautiful and she's like she's a jazz artist and she has hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners because you she's great. And same thing. We, she came here, we hooked her up, and now she has a career, and she's starting a label, and she's producing other people, and it's happening. It's possible to function in this new system.

It's a different set of skills that are required if you're going to work at it on your own. Or in your macrocosm that if you're going to delegate the business side to a corporation, if you delegate the business side to a corporation, you get all the benefits of a corporation. You get capital, you get ancillary skill sets.

So, the marketing dude knows how to market, doesn't know how to write a song though, but he knows how to market because his job is to market. If you do it indie, you have to write a song and you have to know how to market. So, there's a fork in the road there. If you delegate to the corporation, you're going to have some people who are specialized in some of the.

Seats that are needed at the table to be able to get you to the next level. If you don't delegate to the corporation, you have the choice to find some money and hire those people. It's quite difficult to do, but it's doable. Or you can do it all yourself, which is exhausting. And some people don't really want to do that.

They want to write songs.

They don't want to, um, whatever, shoot tiktok videos. This is, that's frankly a vacuous thing to do. But, um, at this very moment in time, 2024, that's one of the ways you can reach an audience is by, you know, being present on that platform or other similar platforms.

Michael: Yeah, so, so it sounds like what you're saying is that, you know, never before has it been easier for an independent artist. 

Fab: More? It's not easy.

More available. Yeah. More accessible. Yeah. Nothing's easy.

Michael: Absolutely. Yeah. Good point. So, you know, never before has it been as possible or accessible, you know, for an independent artist to actually be able to connect directly with their fans and be able to, really own, um, their, their community and what they're doing.

I'm curious to hear your perspective on, as you've described already, just how in this, in this new world, uh, it's never before been easier to, to, or not easier, but more, uh, possible to, you know, to connect with your fans, but also there's more music than ever. And it's, it's so saturated.

There's so much noise. Obviously this is, potentially like long answer that is like it's gonna be different for every single person listening to this. But, you know, I'm curious to hear your perspective as someone that's worked with so many talented artists who have been able to, you know, discover their own voice and express themselves and build a community around it.

You talked about helping find people who are looking in the same direction. Yeah, I’m curious if you had to give one piece of advice for an artist who's maybe a little bit earlier on, and they're still discovering themselves. They're still discovering, you know, who am I and who is my community?

You know, where did they get started with figuring out how to cut through the noise in such a saturated market?

Fab: Well, that is the number one question for everybody, but I don't think you can, I think, I don't think it's healthy for mental health to think of it that way. Because it becomes very overwhelming. I've made a bunch of records over the years that are just that I love dearly, that I think are unbelievable record, genuinely like, amazing, that died on the vine three months in.

You know, because the artist was not able to manage most of the time, either the artist was shackled into a bad relationship with a corporation or every time a record that I felt was going to blow up and so beautiful, fail is either, yeah, the relationship with the label or the whomever was not, they were not looking the same direction or the artist just got overwhelmed with the process of, spending half their day doing.

Or three quarters of their day doing anything but music. There's a thing that says it's like, nobody asks a plumber to go do TikTok videos every day. Maybe some plumbers have to, but in New York city, I can tell you, if you're a plumber, you don't have to do TikTok videos. You're busy. Yeah.

Michael: And now I’m imagining like a plumber doing like a dance, you know, TikTok video with like the plunger also, choreography.

Fab: Nobody asks a plumber to do the first two visits for free just to see if he's good, you know what I mean? So, um, so some people cannot handle it and I respect that. Some people are just not meant to, the only way they can channel art is through that art form that they practice for 15 years of their life, you know what I mean?

Uh, they cannot channel their art through their iPhone talking about what kind of coffee they just got at a coffee shop or, you know, stuff like that. It is a very weird and, we live in a world of unavowed exhibitionists who don't want to be. It's very interesting. I find it fascinating to look at, but in the end, what I see is that some people are just not made for that.

And so, the artists who I work with, whom I know. I'm gonna have a real problem with that, Tommy. You should really find your tribe, like, find somebody in your environment who's compatible with social media and who's compatible with, with creating content, as a, you know, catchphrase. Because otherwise, very little is gonna happen with your music unless you find someone who can do that for you, if you're not gonna do it for yourself. But to answer your question more precisely, my advice for somebody who's starting now I have two pieces of advice. I have one that's a very practical, stupid thing that I’m probably going to get shit for, but I don't care. Keep your overhead low. Keep your overhead low because you need freedom. You need freedom to experiment, you need freedom to fail. The first record's gonna fail. The second one's gonna fail. It just fails. Even if you write yesterday and let it be and those are your first two songs. If you release them independently right now in 2024, it'll fail. It's just gonna fail. And that's okay.

And from that failure, you will learn, oh, okay, well, I won't do that again. And then do something else for the next one over and over again. So, keep your other head low for me is the way to make absolutely sure that you can do this 20 times. So that's that, that's the number one thing. That's my number one advice, silly, but very efficient.

Number two advice is, and I’ve, I think it's, I forget who said it. It's not, it's not me. Somebody. Said it, and I keep forgetting who said it, but nobody ever made a difference by being the same. So, if you're a big Taylor Swift fan, there's already a Taylor Swift. And if you pay attention, so going after that audience, doing that thing seems like a little bit of a silly thing to do to me.

Uh, learning to just dissociate your reverence and your love for Taylor Swift. The people who inspired you to do the art and transcending that to find yourself, uh, a very new age word, but find yourself in your art and making sure that what you do actually has enough appeal and unique appeal and, and, uh, novelty to, so that other humans provided, you decided that you want to share the music and you want to derive income from it, that other people find value in it.

Otherwise, you just go listen to Taylor Swift or Kanye or Jay Z or, or Charlie Parker. And it doesn't matter, right? What your bag is, it has to become your bag. So that seems overwhelming. There was a Canadian band, probably still is, called Barenaked ladies. Incredible songwriters.

They wrote a song called insult. It's all been done before, which is, describes the sentiment that, how can I do something like new. And the thing that's amazing about music, and in this case, pop, pop adjacent, you know, like modern every day there's something new that comes out.

Isn't that awesome? I just, I find that to, to me, as a scholar of the, of the art form, I listen to everything. Right? And, um, I know a lot of music. Like, I know a lot of music. I've listened to everything from the early 20th century and to now. And yet, if I told you a year and a half ago that chapel rowan would be doing what she's doing right now in that particular style, with those songs, and that you would just feel fresh.

You wouldn't believe me. But there's always something. And before Chaplin alone, there was, there was Taylor Swift, and before Taylor swift there was, I don't know, Jay Z or Kanye or, and then there was Bowie and then there was Prince. And so in theory, because everybody borrows from everybody, in theory we're supposed to be in a funnel where things are supposed to like narrow down into a tiny little funnel.

Sliver of possibilities because everything's been done before. But the reality is that's not what's going on. Like grimes comes out with insane stuff. Fake twigs. In every style, there's people who just follow the thread fine. And then there's people who come up with something new and it's awesome.

And that's the part that's amazing to me. So, my advice would be, and that's an empty advice because I don't have a solution for you on how to get to it. But my advice would be just find the specificity. The thing that makes, that moves you, that uses your, experience in your baggage, your influences, stuff that makes you happy and then make a stew that has a very special taste.

And that's when things start moving. This is what happened with Sammy Ray. This is what's happening right now with the door. I've never heard anything like what we do with the door. I mix their records. It doesn't sound like anything else. And these guys worked on it for three years. I mixed a whole album of 12 songs which got scratched.

They didn't even release it. It's an awesome record. I love that record. Nobody would ever hear it. Full 12 songs finished, mixed, mastered, ready to go.

And they were like, it's not quite right. Next. That takes some serious cojones.

A year and a half of work, gone. But they were right. They were right. No. And they spent another year playing with different styles.

They probably went through 50, 60 songs. And at one point it clicked and it put a song out and it clicked right away. So, it looks like it was right away, but it was two and a half years in and probably the 72nd song they did.

Although the stuff we did before was awesome. And I love it to this day. It was not as unique as what it is now. I know it's unique, but it's not gratuitously unique. It's not unique for the sake of being unique. It just comes from a true emotion and a rational way of going there and it's justified and it works.

So that's, that would be my advice. My advice would be, whomever, motivated you to make music from, Stravinsky to, Justin Bieber, they're already there. They've done their stuff. What is your stuff going to be? And yes, it's possible to come up with something new, happens every day, even though there's only 12 notes. So in our system, in the system that we're currently discussing, only 12 notes.

So, it's possible. It's amazing. That's the part that's amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing. Like I, every day I get a song, I launch it and I’m lucky I choose, as I said earlier. So, most of the time I’m dealing with stuff that is genuinely special.

And I can't wait to open the next song and say, okay, what, what am I up against today, you know, and what did they do? It's great. And then sometimes you get a song like, I heard this one before, 

Michael: That's beautiful. Well, thank you for sharing that man. I mean, one of the things I appreciate most about being able to host a podcast like this and connect with people like yourself is just hearing your journey and your stories, but I’ll just say your mindset and how you think about the environment that you're creating and how, you you've created success in this environment.

And, it makes a lot of sense to me just based on what you shared that you were able to grow from scratch to having eight studios and working with, you know, world renowned artists from, you know, from around the world. And so hopefully people who are listening to this right now are also feeling really inspired just to sort of level up how they're showing up.

And some of those 2 pieces of advice that you share at the end as well, it reminds me of Steve Jobs. I think he put it, “What the, it's it's the square pegs and the round holes are the ones that really kind of move, move the needle”. So it's the ones, the change makers, it's, you know, think, think different.

So, I always get goosebumps. I just sort of, when I hear truth, you know, expressed in the way that you just shared it. So, thank you so much for taking the space and the time. Uh, I know, you know, time spending time like this is really valuable. So, you know, you being here to be able to share this message with, with the community means a lot.

And, uh, for anyone that's listening to this right now, um, as we, wrap this up, if anyone here is, you know, resonating with the ideas that you shared and, thinks that they might actually have a song, that's, that's a good fit for what you're looking for. Could you share a little bit about who would be like the ideal, perfect candidate for you and who you work with and what's the best place for them to go to be able to connect more?

Fab: I get a lot of songs. And I can't get to, everything. I'm super easily reachable on the usual, evil social media networks. I'm Fab Dupont on Instagram. And, uh, I don't spend a lot of time on Instagram, but I do check from time to time, my assistant checks, or I have a, my website Fab at Fabulous Fab.com. And you can, you can click and then my manager passes things on to me. I just got to make a short note on mixing. Mixing is the, uh, is the presentation of your dish. When you cook, you know, you have your mise en place, you cook everything, you put this in this pan, put this in this pan, and then at the very end, you have all this stuff. And that's the dish. But you don't just plop it into a plate I mean, maybe on a Tuesday night, if it's just you, maybe you do that.

But say you have guests and you're sharing with somebody, even if you don't want to derive income from the meal, you are going to present it nicely. You're putting a nice dish. You're going to make sure that the flavors don't, if something is saucy, you're going to put in, not going to put in the same place, something that's dry.

Otherwise, it will take the flavor of this and that. Mixing is a little bit like that. When you do, you write the songs. Cool. That's your mise en place. Then you do the production. That's the cooking part of it. And then you have all these elements and then there's the presentation part. And without the presentation part, the production is not going to come through the same.

And so the, the mixing is. Cool. The art of, of presenting your ideas in the best possible shiniest way. And, um, it's an art form and it's, it's not given to everybody, but everybody should be able to at least mix their song to a level, their product, whatever it is, instrumental music qualifies to a level that's palatable and that you can share with other humans, without having to have somebody like me, who's expensive and busy, you should be able to do it yourself.

And if only because the presentation of it is also you. So, to that extent, I have created with my partner, Guillaume, we created a, uh, a website called Pure Mix.com where you can subscribe, and you can go learn how to mix from people who do it every day. I'm just one of the people on there. There's lots of amazing people on that platform.

People who make the records that you listen to on your Spotify playlist every day. Those people are on PureMix showing you how they did what they did so you can learn from them. So that's, I really recommend anyone who's making music and planning to share it with another human to learn basic mixing skills.

So, that you can present your project in a better light without having to resort to somebody else. And then, when you get to the level where you realize, okay, I’m not going to spend 12 years learning how to mix to be at the level of, you know, many or whomever, then, now I have the budget.

My skill set got me to this point. Now I want to, I want another cook in my kitchen and I’ll hire somebody to mix my record. But at the very least, and also to be able to have discussions with that person when you work with them, you need to understand the process. If you're a music maker and you're sharing your music with others, it's very important to know the basics of mixing records.

Very important to know.

Michael: Fantastic. I've never heard that analogy before. The cooking and arranging the actual meal. That's fantastic. 

Fab: Cooking and making music are the same. 

And it comes from the same brain to me.

Michael: Yeah. I mean, you mentioned earlier that, that you've got a taste for, for cooking as well. So that's interesting. Kind of blend those the pearls together. Well, hey, Fab, uh, you've lived up to your, to your name.

This is very fabulous conversation. So, thank you again for taking the time to be here. And like always, we'll put all the links on the show notes for easy access and I’ll look forward to connecting again soon.

Fab: Thank you so much. Cheers.

Michael: Yeah!