Episode 116 - Ruairí O’Flaherty
Live with Matt Rad - Episode 116
Dec 3, 2024
w/ Ruairí O'Flaherty - Week 4
Show notes by: Bradley Will
Show Notes
Ruairí:
When you're young it's normal to want status, and mastery, and recognition. Over time that shifts, for a lot of reasons. Maturity, experience, humility, etc.
Quite often your big break comes out of left field.
I have real empathy for people who are lost. I came up in a small town in a small country with no music business. So I want to help people who are having difficulty navigating things. This is why I help so many people out on the Discord.
Regarding mentorship, if you can get in the room with people who have done this for a while, you should. And if you can't, then you put together what you can.
I didn't move to LA from Ireland until I was 35. Objectively, that's a late time to get started here.
My journey is very, very odd.
There are still ways to learn and gain experience, no matter where you're at.
I played hundreds and thousands of gigs playing guitar along Irish folk music.
I was the stage manager for twelve years on a live music TV show. Being able to be close to world class talent like that changed me.
Go where people are. If you can't, start assembling whatever experiences you are able to deepen your relationship with the work.
Matt:
Of the people I know who are successful doing "a thing", many are people who have already done a lot of different things with full commitment, but it hasn't worked out for them. I wonder how important that is to finding success.
Ruairí:
When I was building my first studio at age 21, I probably didn't even know what the job of mixer was - much less the job of producer - even though I was filling that role while making records.
Many people have a clear idea of what they want to do, and others find their way by bouncing from role to role.
I've never been less attached to the work or the identity of what I do than I am now. I've never loved music more and never been more committed to the quality of the work and the clients, but I've never been less attached. It's not who I am. I'm not somebody because Kendrick went No. 1 this week. I'm somebody because I showed up for the record. And I'm somebody for the record that I'm going to show up for right after.
What motivates me?
I think art really matters and I take every opportunity to communicate that. It matters and it makes a difference in everybody's lives and it's working in ways that we don't even understand.
Do you have methods or routines that keep you in that headspace of feeling that art matters? How do you stay invested in the moment with the belief that art is important?
Ruairí:
I'm lucky in that I'm obsessed. I'm built that way and I can't phone in a master. I'm doing it right or I'm not doing it.
If you show up for the work it tends to work it's magic.
The trick is to be available to it.
Just today I had a client with a great mix opt to use the mix instead of the master, and I have to trust the producer to go with their gut that it was the right thing to release.
On the music side of the equation, pessimism is a problem right now. Very gloomy stuff.
We need to practice avoiding being pulled into that (morass) and art is a way to lift ourselves from that.
Art is magic.
One of the things I (kind of) believe is that music doesn't come from people. It comes through them.
There is truth in it that you can't logically get to. I don't know that I truly believe that art comes through artists from some metaphysical plane, but I act like I do.
This gets you away from egoic battles and bad attitudes that can overshadow or distract from the art.
It gets you out of that mode, and more into a playful, reverent, humble mode.
Matt:
As soon as you measure or quantify something you, by definition, limit it.
Lately I find myself trying to listen without looking at visual feedback as I make creative judgements about whether something is better or not.
How did you get to this place of musical enjoyment?
Ruairí:
I'm very technically minded. I've been down extensive technical rabbit holes trying to understand stuff or find an advantage. I've tried everything that you can imagine and been burned by many of them when they misled me or did not pay dividends.
Again, I have tremendous empathy for people who are currently lost or have been misled.
You need to get to a place where you can listen like a normal person.
Being able to perceive refined audio things is a starting point, but you need to engage with the music.
You need to learn the technical components, all the while you are developing your taste, but ultimately you need to end up back at a place where you can hear a song like a normal person.
If you cannot do that then it's all for nothing.
When you get in the room with great creators they're able to simply perceive the thing like a normal person.
My kids are great teachers about how to listen to music.
I think cohesiveness in an album and how things sound don't matter as much as we think they do. How things FEEL matters enormously.
A lot of mastering engineers seem to think that their job is to make things sound great and optimize loudness, or width, or minimize distortion.
I've been trying to carve out a lane as someone who is feel first when it comes to making records.
I want to be the guy who can do the wild shit and who can also do a tasteful and refined master.
Your relationship working with artists and producers at a high level
There's usually one person on the team who brings me on to a project.
Sometimes it's the A+R, or the producer, or even the artist.
This person is usually my point of contact for the record.
I'm often not interacting with the artist directly. I'm reacting to the team and what the team wants.
Quite often with large artists I'm signing an NDA that restricts me from speaking on it. But even when you don't have to, it's good practice not to tell stories and to let the record speak for itself.
The importance of communication comes up a lot when talking to young record makers, but I'm not sure that necessarily applies to mastering.
I don't have very much communication with people I work with regularly. I have communication with other friends who are record making professionals, but it's rarely with the record makers on my projects, aside from a few notes here and there.
Something that I see a lot from younger people is the idea of mastering people as some kind of "grand wizard".
All day long we make 1,000 decisions using our taste.
Mastering records is not about me.
I always don't have to feel great about it. It's not about me feeling amazing and liking every record that I put out. It would be impossible for me to feel great about every single record that I'm handed.
I love the freedom of "Why do I have to feel good about this?" I get to ask myself "What does it want to be?" and "Where does it want to go?" That kind of light touch allows me to be free from attachment to the record.
This allows the work to become whatever it is that it wants to be.
I really care that the clients feels like I showed up for it and that it was attended to. After that, it's a looser thing.
How do you build the skill set to know what a record wants to be?
Ruairí:
A good place to start is to have a posture of humility and reverence for what music can be.
When you hear music coming out of a player in a room in front of you, it's nothing to do with you. You don't control anything. It's not you.
The dynamic that chokes the record is when you say to yourself "I've got this. I know this. I control this. I make this. I build this. I grid this. I master this. I'm the guy."
Here's a Viktor Frankl quote that I'd like to share:
"Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target the more you miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued. It must ensue. And it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself, or as the byproduct of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.
Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success. You have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your consciousness commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run, I say, success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it."
You still have to show up, and work hard, and build skills, and have tools that work. You need to have some sense of wonder and some sense of "why does it matter that we make a song today?"
Editor's Note: The stream was abruptly cut off by Instagram. Matt and Ruairí re-joined and picked up the conversation.
In a sense, I am the first listener of the record. I need to embody the different listeners: the audiophile, the fifteen year old kid, my wife, the guy blaring it from his truck. Everyone.
I need to be all of those people. And if I'm all in my head with my analyzer, and my dither, and my new plugin I'm nowhere near being that person and being available to the music.
