We’ll be finished with tour and back home at the very end of June, and we’ll be working from home for July and the first half of August. In this time I have one record to mix and another record to master. But I have space for a little more work, and I wanted to open that space up first to the Jamie’s list community!

So: if you have something that you’d like my ears on, hit reply and we can get it on the books. I’d love to hear what you’re working on. And, indeed, I’d love to hear what you’re working on regardless of whether I end up working on it … if anyone here has something you’re in the middle of that you’d be willing to share, I’d love to hear it!

I hope you’re all hanging in there. The world is a whole lot right now. Protect your joy.

Love — jamie 🫶

Anyway, I’ve missed you, and I just wanted to say hi. I’ve been keeping a folder of Jamie’s list topics … at some point I will have time to flesh them out into posts. But that point is not today!

It feels good to be so busy I barely have time to think — it’s crazy times at the moment here in the USA, as I’m sure you’re aware, and so extra thinking time is not ideal. I hope my USA peeps are hanging in there and keeping your spirits up. 🖤

If you’re struggling, might I suggest immersing yourself in a little music? I’m not going to have time to write on here for a little while still, I would imagine, but the Jamie’s list archive is full of ideas and jumping-off points …

Ih the meantime, here’s what I’ve been working on:

Tickets are at shannoncurtis.net/tour. Please come hang out with us this spring! (And if you’d like to come but tickets are a barrier, please let me know and I can find Ticket Angels tickets for you; our shows are always financially accessible experiences.)

I hope you’re all hanging in there. With love from Tacoma — jamie

Thanks for bearing with me in my absence; Shannon and I had a bonkers last month and a half or so. We were prepping for and then traveling to execute at a performing arts centers booking conference last week in New York City. It went great, and now we’re finally back home and settling in for a couple months of intense preparation as we spin up our 80s kids album cycle.

For people who are new to the list: you can expect this sort of cadence from me. There will be months where I write a lot, and there will also be months where my focus needs to be elsewhere. I am after all half of a married pair of working artists — and, in 2025, what that means for us is a lot of DIY touring and a lot of DIY business.

So with that said — onward! 🚀

Most of the people I work with record at home — which presents a common set of recurring issues with vocals.

Specifically: because the recording space in most homes isn’t usually in a room whose sound you would necessarily want to accentuate, and there’s typically some amount of home-related background noise, we tend to record vocals close to the mic, in order to maximize our signal-to-noise ratios as best we can.

And when you record vocals close to the mic … you get a lot of mouth noise!

I don’t know what your experience is, but for me personally, I can’t tolerate mouth noise on a recording. It draws me out of the story. It’s like I’m trying to pay close attention to something and someone keeps punching me in the arm. Impossible!

Before I could afford iZotope RX, I used to remove mouth noises by hand. As in, I would literally go into the waveform with the pencil tool and draw out the clicks. It took me hours, and there were some I just couldn’t get.

Eventually I got myself iZotope RX, and as soon as I did I realized that I should’ve gotten it much sooner — because it just works. Almost like magic! Without affecting the sound at all. I’ve saved myself literally thousands of hours of editing out mouth noise since acquiring it.

Here's my trick for using iZotope RX to get rid of mouth noises:

- I put the Mouth De-click plugin at the beginning of my vocal master bus, on the default setting.

… aaaaand, that's literally the entire trick. 😂 But my experience is that it catches about 98% of what I would want removed from any vocal — all the little lip smacks and spit sounds and general mouth movement-related garbage.

And then if there are individual other little clicks and pops that this general treatment doesn't catch, I use the De-click plugin destructively on the precise part of the waveform that needs it — usually with the sensitivity starting at more like 8 or so. I would say that I need to do this on maybe 20% max of the songs I work on, in a couple of places per song at most — the Mouth De-click plugin really does do almost all of the work.

Click — jamie

The second way is perhaps less obvious: turn something it’s competing with down!

I’m a big proponent of the “everything louder than everything else” theory of mixing, so I tend to instinctively look to option 1 by default. But sometimes that can lead to a situation where sounds are fighting more than is appropriate for the thing I’m working on.

For example: over the last couple of days I’ve been working on the end of the last “80s kids” song for the new album. This particular song has a repeated “oh-oh-oh” background vocal motif that repeats for the last minute of the song, with a lead vocal vamp riding the song out into the fade (because of course it ends in a fade. It was the 80s!).

The relationship between the vamp and the backing vocal bed has proved to be a key and nuanced aspect of this part of the song. When the vamp is too quiet in relation to the backing vocals, it doesn’t carry the section in an adequately triumphant way … but when the vamp is too loud in relation to the backing vocals, it detaches from the mix and feels less gritty and emotional.

For most of the vamp, if the lead vocal felt slightly recessive, i could simply automate it up a skosh and it worked out fine. But for this one particular phrase, it was not working — pushing the vamp upward at all by any amount made it feel too aggressive. Not emotionally correct.

What I finally figured out (because, like I said, turning things down isn’t my first instinct) is that I could duck the backing vocal cluster -0.5 dB for one repeat under that particular vamp phrase. And all of a sudden the vamp popped forward, and the emotional intensity was there, but with none of the aggression that I was trying to avoid. That whole moment just clicked into place. Riveting.

I should note that these are always small changes in this sort of situation. These are +/- 0.5 dB changes max that I’m talking about! Just tiny chiropractic adjustments.

Nudge nudge — jamie

Not only does it add presence without adding extra volume, but the texture of the reverb can impart a wide range of subtle colors to the bass.

I’m partial to algorithmic reverbs for this sort of thing — they seem to add a special luster.

Do it as an aux; it works better than plonking the plugin directly on the bass track, because you can fine-tune the reverb treatment separately with EQ etc. Rolling off the lows below like 150 Hz is generally a good idea, and I often also roll off the highs above like 1500 Hz. Experiment.

Bonus power move: put a stereo-widening plugin on the bass reverb (here’s a good free one), set it to like 180%, and narrow the width of the reverb channel to like 55%. I know it sounds anti-intuitive — widening and then narrowing?? — but it gives you a great sense of width that doesn’t clutter the sides of the mix and is very mono-compatible.

Lushly — jamie

To this end, I find that I’m constantly doing little micro-automations. Half a dB up for this particular synth moment; 1 dB less into the reverb send on that particular low vocal note. My mixes typically end up peppered with dozens if not hundreds of these little subliminal moments.

This technique also has the lovely side-benefit of making a production sound much more dynamic and alive, even if you can’t put your finger on exactly why.

Keep it moving, pal — jamie

But sometimes it can be really helpful to have little bits of more intentionally-sculpted variation from note to note, in order for the part to fit better into its context or express itself more dynamically.

And sometimes it’s hard to know in advance when I’m thinking up a part whether I’m going to want that option later on! So these days I always set up the necessary routing before I start programming the part.

The easiest way to get expression out of a synth is by routing velocity to a target destination — loudness being the first obvious target for that. The higher the velocity, the louder the note. Simple! But here’s a killer hack for that: set the velocity > loudness mapping not to 100% but to 50%. You’ll still have velocity control over loudness as you build the part — but if as you’re subsequently working on the song you find that you need more or less dynamic range in the part, you can simply dial the velocity > loudness knob up or down to scale the loudness correspondingly.

I also find that sometimes it’s helpful to map velocity to filter, so that as a sound gets quieter it also gets a little duller. That can give a part even more of a natural feel — in the same way that a quietly-plucked acoustic guitar string is duller and rounder than when you hit it harder. I tend to make this mapping a good bit more subtle than the loudness mapping — maybe 20-30% strength. Just a little subliminal gesture toward the notes darkening up as they get quieter can go a long way.

If you’re working with a sound that at its highest velocities is bright and loud and forward, sometimes the top end of the velocity range can feel a little fatiguing. In those cases, sometimes I find it useful to map velocity to filter or amplifier attack (or both!) — but with negative correlation, so that the attack is fastest at lower velocities and slightly blunted at highest velocities. This can help a sound feel a bit fuller when it’s being played hard.

Two to the seventh possibilities — jamie

Try something dense with the high end and low end rolled off somewhat, occupying like the center third of your mix (i.e., not fully wide).

There’s intensity in density — jamie

On this twenty-item list, exactly two items are technical in nature — the rest are soft skills. Interpersonal skills. People skills.

Next time you see a producer-bro YouTube video, think of this.

With curiosity and wonder — jamie

When people are moved by music, their instinct sometimes is to crank the volume. You want to make sure that this behavior is rewarded, not disincentivized.

Hell yeah — jamie

When you say I should push the master bus more, should I push it harder into a compressor or limiter?

My response:

Yes; mostly compressor.

Basically I think of it like this: if you have your master bus plugin chain — for example, my basic chain is saturation => compression => eq => limiter — you can literally just put a Gain (aka Trim) plugin at the top of the chain and increase the gain going into the chain. Thereby literally pushing the mix a bit harder into the master bus.

This is a great way to quick see whether there's a "how hard am I pushing it" sound that seems to fit the song even a little bit better. Maybe pushing it less hard makes it sound better! Or maybe it feels even better if you hit it a little harder; maybe everything glues together and interacts in a more exciting way. The interactions on a master bus are nuanced and complex.

Sometimes I'll realize that I want to be hitting the compressor less hard but the limiter more hard — they interact with the kick drum differently.

Or sometimes I’ll realize that I want to hit the compressor a bit less hard, but I want the song to remain the same target loudness So I'll put that gain plugin at the top of the master bus chain, do a couple dB quieter there, and then figure out how best to make up the lost loudness post-compressor. Sometimes I can just get away with hitting the limiter a couple dB harder ... sometimes a little clipping or before the limiter helps, or tape, or something of that nature to help munch some transients so the limiter doesn't have to work quite as hard. Each song is different.

Hot, cool & vicious — jamie

The first thing to try of course is compression, if you're not already compressing it — that can help! I tend to start with an 1176-type compressor with the attack and release set all the way fast (7, if it's a skeuomorphically accurate 1176 knob that goes from 1 to 7). I start with a 4:1 ratio, although other ratios can be good too depending on the song. Then I adjust the input / output / threshold until it levels out some.

If it's more that individual bass notes here and there are too loud or too soft, you can just go into the waveform and separate out the notes and turn their clip gain (waveform size) up or down. I do this a lot.

If it's more that certain notes are too loud or too soft every time that note is played — for example, every low E is too loud, or every C is too quiet — like maybe some unevenness in the frets or whatever — then I tend to deal with that with very precise EQ points, one per note. For example, if the C is too quiet, then I will look in a note-to-frequency chart (google it if you need one), learn that the C in question is 131 Hz, and then I will make a little eq poke something like this: 131 Hz, Q=10, +4 dB. Adjust the Q and gain of the eq until the note sounds smoother in context; sometimes a wider Q will sound more natural. It depends what's happening around it and what else is happening in the part harmonically. You'll be able to hear when a boost sounds like it fills in the hole perfectly (or neutralizes a boomy note); sometimes a more surgical approach is better (Q=8 to 10) and sometimes a less surgical boost works better (Q=4 to 8).

Boom boom — jamie

And that can be true! It’s not necessarily always how I personally do it though. Sometimes I will get a sound that has an emotional vibe that I really like, that might still needs a little help here and there with the dynamics, and then I’ll take it the rest of the way with (sometimes detailed) automation. There’s nothing wrong with doing things by hand.

Here’s the vocal master in the 80s kids song that I’m currently working on:

It’s not about being perfect at using music gear, it’s about being relentless in your pursuit of the narrative that’s in your head. You don’t have to take no for an answer when you’re working on your art.

All roads lead to Rome — jamie

This is great! My one thought is that it feels repetitive. I think there might be a balance to be found where it still feels like snapshots but also you're guiding the listener through a narrative journey. I don't want to find myself spacing out; I want to be gripped. Even if the thing I'm being gripped by is just a little captured vibe.

When you let the listener space out, you are ceding control of the experience to them instead of maintaining control of the journey yourself. That can be okay to do, depending on the genre and how much you want to be the one in charge of the journey. Personally, I like to be in tight control; in a sense, that's what I view production as being.

What does controlling the listener’s journey look like in your recording practice? Hit reply; I’d be curious to know whether you think about this and if so what your thoughts are.

Control / I’m here — jamie

But you know what? It was right. It’s almost always right. And as soon as I addressed it, it made everything a lot better. Like a simple chiropractic adjustment.

What little voices are you trying to ignore that maybe you shouldn’t be?

Dammit — jamie

And I recently put my finger on precisely why, so I thought I would share it!

What I’ve realized is that the time lane grounds me in the song, and the bars lane grounds me in the composition.

When I’m thinking about bars, I’m thinking about the structure of the song. What is the pacing like through each part of the song? How many bars of this, how many bars of that?

And when I can also see at a glance where I am in the song the time-wise, it helps me to remain grounded in the song’s narrative arc. A related but separate concept. I can infer this to some degree from the section and inflection markers that I always drop in my sessions, but it’s very helpful as I’m working on, say, chorus 2, to have it in the back of my mind that i’m two minutes and ten seconds into a four-minute song.

Zoom in, zoom out — jamie

For example, maybe I have two synthesizer tracks that are working together to create the synth bass sound. I would lock that relationship in place, so that if I adjust the volume on one of the two tracks it makes that same volume adjustment on the other track. This way I won’t accidentally change the bass sound by going to adjust the volume, forgetting to adjust both tracks equally, and disrupting the balance between the two sounds.

Or maybe I have a left and right doubled rhythm guitar, and I’ve found the relative balance between them that works for the song. I would lock that in too.

Or maybe it’s a bunch of backing vocal tracks that work together to form a single part — a multitracked gang vocal, or a multipart harmony. I would lock in that relationship also.

If I have tracks grouped together and I do want to adjust just one of the tracks independently of its groupmate(s) — maybe one of the two synth bass layers needs to be a touch more prominent — I can just hit the modifier key on my keyboard before I adjust the fader, to temporarily suspend grouping while I make the move(s) I need to make. In Pro Tools this modifier is the ctrl key; your DAW might be different.

In Pro Tools, you can right-click on any group and choose which behaviors are grouped and which aren’t. For example, I might group all the tracks in the drum kit together, so that I can solo or mute the entire kit by clicking the solo or mute for any of the constituent tracks. But I might uncheck the box for volume, so that I can move each drum’s volume fader independently of the others.

And if I need to do some extended independent work on a group’s constituent tracks, I will bypass group operations, do the work, and then re-enable group operations.

Everyone hold hands — jamie

The first way is to confront the moment head-on; the second way is to avoid it.

I remember back in 2017 it became very quickly apparent who was facing the new reality of that era head-on and who wasn’t. My personal reaction was that I was very much drawn to the artists who were speaking to what was going on, in their music or their public presence or both, and I pretty much abandoned the artists who weren’t.

It wasn’t personal — I wasn’t, like, mad — I simply didn’t find myself compelled by what that second group was doing in that moment. And frankly that was rooted in the fact that I also didn’t have much respect for their acting as if there wasn’t an all-hands-on-deck emergency happening all around them. It felt cowardly, like avoiding something simply because it’s uncomfortable that very much shouldn’t be avoided — and I didn’t find that energy inspiring in the least. Kind of the precise opposite; it was a disappointment, a turn-off.

Which kind of artist are you going to be in this new era?

Forward, with intention — jamie

I got one reply in particular that I wanted to address publicly, because I think it gets to the heart of what it is to be an artist in a time like this one. Our friend Stan wrote:

My focus, passion, and expectation have all changed in a flash. I must assume that similar changes are afoot for many current or potential listeners.

I want people (listeners or otherwise) to know that I care and want to support those who are marginalized or criminalized by the new regime.

I've also been pondering how far I'm willing to go. First, am I willing to alienate 50% of my potential fans in the USA (and possibly worldwide). I think I am.

Regarding alienating your listeners — my point of view on that is that it's absolutely essential.

Music is meant to be a rallying point. But if you're not taking any stands, then you won't be giving anyone anything to rally around. Put another way: try to please everyone and you'll please no one. Especially in a time like this. I remember so clearly how I felt about artists in 2017 who weren’t stepping up and confronting the current moment; I had no respect for them.

Shannon and I happen to have extremely relevant personal experience on which to draw in this discussion, because we did this precise thing in early 2017, after the first Trump election. We very intentionally made an unflinchingly honest, intense, and experimental record about the shocking and painful awakenings and realizations of that time. We named names and didn't pull any punches. And then we took that show on a fifty-show house concert tour into people's living rooms and back yards all across the country. And we enraged and subsequently lost about half our audience!

And you know what? It's the single best thing we ever did for our career. Looking at it in retrospect, it was like pruning a rose bush. At first, sure, the bush was a lot smaller; but with all the unhealthy parts removed, it could properly flourish. And that's exactly what happened with us.

All the growth that you've been seeing recently in our career started in earnest there. Not only did we get much more focused and real about who we want to be in the world — we also curated our core audience down to a group of people who want us to be the most authentic versions of ourselves, and who have demonstrated that in a passionate and ongoing way. That diehard core support has been the foundation on which we’ve built everything that has come since.

And I would encourage you wholeheartedly to do the same. The job of an artist is not to placate; it's to enlighten. If you use this time correctly, you can do a lot of good for a lot of people, simply by showing up as the most authentic version of yourself in their time of need.

Damn the torpedoes — jamie

I’m writing you today from a country with a fresh wound. The United States did the unthinkable in our election on Tuesday, and now the future looks very different than I had imagined.

Something I’m spending a lot of time thinking about today, both on my own and in conversation with Shannon, is what this is going to mean for our artistic practice moving forward. Because: the context for our practice has all of a sudden dramatically changed.

Specifically: the people who will be engaging with our work are not the same people they were prior to Tuesday. They’re different now. And that’s going to affect both what work we choose to pursue and how we approach it.

How is your artistic practice going to change in this new era? It’s worth contemplating. Our job as artists is to help people make sense of the world around them; this means that it’s incumbent upon us to lean in extra hard in times like this. To engage passionately, in hopes that the energy we invest may light someone through their darkness.

Please hit reply if you need to talk; I’m here. Love — jamie 🖤