What is up everyone before we get into today’s episode just like last week this episode is sponsored by Envious Audio. If you struggle with getting a solid mix or master done yourself, I can help you out with that. Not only that, but I go through a needs discovery process where we go through a quick phone call where we discuss your goals and your dreams and how we can get you in a faster timeframe. I do this with just about every single one of my clients regardless of if you get a mix or master done for me so you know if you ever need help, feel free to just shoot me an email over at Christian at Envious Audio calm. But if you’re interested in getting mixing and mastering done, head over to Envious Audio, you can check out my portfolio. Check out the testimonials fill out my contact form reach out to me and let’s get you set up on a solid mix and master possibly get you released and get you on your way to enhancing your career enhancing and enhancing In your tracks as well. Thank you guys so much and enjoy this episode with wired sound Academy. Hey guys, welcome to electronic dance money, your number one business resource for making money as electronic musicians and producers.
All right, what is up everyone? Welcome back to another episode of electronic dance money. My name is Cristian conceito. I’m your host, as always, and today we’ve got Ryan Landis and Daniel Crespo in from wired sound Academy. What’s up guys?
What up when
they host Well, I guess They run an entire Academy. That’s based off of teaching people how to produce bass. If you’ve never produced before, they’ll take you from a nobody to. I’m guessing finishing tracks by the end of the entire course. The goal? Yeah, they’re 30 days, right? It’s like a whole whole 30 day course that you go through class, I
guess all of our courses. We try and keep it a month long because of the producer attention span, right?
Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then you guys also do DJing. So you also teach people how to DJ now that’s just strictly in person. You’ve got to be and you guys are based in Fort Lauderdale. Is that correct?
Yeah. Downtown.
Nice. Yeah. I think I saw a picture of your guys’s little your the building that you’re at? I was like, Ooh, that’s a nice little corner there. It’s a perfect little spot. Do you get people just walking down the street kind of coming in? Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. Is it we’re looking at instead of food Hall, it’s a giant warehouse with different food venues, like ramen to burgers. So it’s a very short social space. And what’s cool is it’s a very welcoming classroom that we have. We have our mascots, a space astronaut. Yeah. deejaying. So we try and keep it fun and cool and appealing to all ages, which is our main motto.
Yeah, that’s um, it is interesting getting a place down there. Like if you can manage to get a place like that downtown. I remember I grew up in Boise, Idaho. It was a small town and now it’s turning. I mean, everyone from California. Everyone from California is kind of moving everywhere. But they’re specifically going to Boise now as well. Uh, but they had there was a place downtown. I remember that was similar to that one. I can’t remember what it was called. But then there’s all there’s another Academy here in Austin as well. I think it’s called it’s dubbed something I can’t remember the dubspot maybe notes. I don’t think it’s dubspot. No, I know. I know. dubspot is but I don’t think it’s dubspot It’s a different place that I wish I could remember the name. But same thing, they’re downtown. And if you’re a producer or know the place or, you know, you’re into making any sort of music, if you see that that’s a very attractive because you don’t see those places around. So you guys are in an interesting position where you can, since you have a physical location, people can walk in and start talking to you. And you can basically make a sale right there on the spot, for sure. Yeah,
I mean, aside from that, like we actually have a venue in the food all that our DJs are going to be playing out. And you know, that’s a really cool thing to actually take a class and then get playing.
That’s even more valuable. That’s crazy. Because I don’t see a lot of places doing that. And I think that’s where you guys that’s your that’s a unique selling point that you guys have. I think it’s really interesting that not only are you going to teach someone to I’m guessing spin on cdjs do you guys also teach vinyl classes?
Yeah, that’s what yeah. So I have to make sure
given Yeah, give him the classic teaching. But uh, yeah, I mean, you could take someone from not ever DJing before to now they’re playing a show at your guys’s little venue there, which again, I mean, if I had found a place like that when I was younger, I would be jumping all over that my dad specifically would be like, yeah, let’s get you in there because that sounds fucking badass. So and I do I’ve never learned I played on cdjs once. Really? Yes. I’ve only ever played on CD g CD J’s one. So even that even now like that’s attractive to me,
dude, we got a space waiting for you. I know. I gotta make it down there. One of the main reasons we started wired was because we traditionally took school also, we went to class for lenise and I both went to dubspot. And yeah, we love what we learned. I took online classes. Second Person in New York. And I think what was missing for us with almost any kind of electronic music education was everyone gave us the info, but no one gave us a community to be a part of place to actually take what we’ve learned and apply it, you know. So with wired, it was like, why not create a hub for music down here in South Florida, and also create a place that not just lets students grab, we don’t let our students graduating. Alright. See you later. Our goal is to really provide them with opportunity and a network and a place to understand how the music industry works and how to turn it into a business. Awesome.
Yeah, so that’s it. We’re gonna get into your guys’s stories in just a minute. But I talked about this constantly in my podcast, I mean, it is drilled into anyone who listens to this podcast. It’s fucking drilled in their goddamn head. It’s all about adding value. And actually, I want to I’ve been working with my buddy who’s friends with these really big. I think they’re Australian producers who too were in shit but they have a badass live show. So I want to do an episode on providing value to your audience literally an audience in front of you for a show a live show because there’s ways to add additional value to people coming to see you at a concert or who happened to see you at show. But this is something that I talk about pretty consistently about adding value How can you help people out How can you add value in addition to whatever you’re doing this is a philosophy I run my business on. This is the go giver philosophy. This is the I’ve given I’ve recommended this book shit, this is probably the 10th time I bought gas to read the go giver. It will change the way you look at running businesses. But it’s really all about that. What are you also going to do because that is going to outshine anyone else that’s what makes you unique. That’s what makes wired sound unique is how How are you going to not just show someone how to DJ? But how can they turn that into a career? How are you? How can you give them the experience of a live show when they’re done so that they don’t freak out the first time they’re playing somewhere else. And their their mentors and their teachers aren’t there. Because that, I mean, I, the times that I played live shows the first 10 to 15 minutes is the worst. It’s it’s like the hour leading up and then the first 10 to 15 minutes into playing. I’m scared shitless and I make the most fuck ups at that point. But then as soon as you calm down and you kind of get a feel for the momentum, you just get in a spot and then you’re super comfortable. And then by minute 50 you’re like shit, I don’t want to get off stage but I got to get off stage in 10 minutes. And so it’s the
like no school will show you like how to transition from the DJ before, you know on stage while people are there. And that’s what we’re trying to do. Like we’re trying to be like, Alright, you’re an actual like a live setting. The DJ before is about to end you got to figure out how to mix in Yeah, that’s Yeah, I’ve had some some train wrecks myself with, with bad transitions. So
yeah, yeah, exactly. So it’s like, that’s it. Again, that’s massive for you guys to be like, you know, we don’t want to I do the same thing with my clients in my anyone who I come in that does mixing and mastering lessons with me I’m, I’m the same way I’m like, I don’t want to just bring you in to do a mix and master. Do you want to get your tracks signed? Well, let me talk to these record labels I know that I can send to the owner and see what they think and if they want to sign it. So that’s like, nine times out of 10. Producers going in to get a mixer master aren’t getting that from an audio engineer. They don’t have an audio engineer being like, well, how can I take you from step a to step B? when, after your mixing master is done in that will I mean that’s how you breed referrals. That’s how you breed people who will non stop talk about you and your business and keep coming back as early Returning client. Now granted you guys aren’t necessarily in that returning client space but you’re in the space of referrals you’re in the space of, you know, you never know if you have a student who I mean like many people who have come up dubspot and Crespo You and I were looking at I can’t remember you sent me a link to another site but icon yes icon you never know when you get one of these students who’s going to be a massive producer and then when people are asking where you came from, they’ll shout out wired sound Academy and then next thing you know you get 20 signups the next day because they shout you out and a live stream on Twitch somewhere some shit so it’s like it however you can provide more value to get people talking about you more is going to be wildly beneficial to you. Anyways, let’s get into your guys’s backgrounds a little bit. Ryan, I’d love to hear about how you. I mean, how did you go from really not listening to I mean, I don’t know if you’ve listened to electronic music your whole life but what’s your whole story from beginning to end to where you are now.
Yeah, I was I was pretty young with it. Like I’d say age 13 I was nice lasting. testo Adagio for Strings. Like, all the classics I love
hilarious. Yeah,
my friends were like, like, it’s just noise. Like, at that time people were like, it was like little Wayne. Stuff like that was massive and it was just techno music. There wasn’t like sub genres. They’re like, Oh, he likes techno music. Yep. But, uh, so I was like that kid growing up. And you know, I’d say, so I started DJing actually pretty young as well. When I was like, 13 I started you know, just doing like local birthday parties, stuff like that. My brother’s one of his good friends is a DJ and I was like, Oh, it looks like a fun way to like party and enjoy life. So, so I started taking lessons with him and from there, just kind of learn my own thing you know, did like I said, like birthday party, stuff like that. kind of took a break for a year or two when I was dealing with all the whole Being in high school fun. Yeah, I picked it up at age 17. Again, when I went to my first ultra, this is like, both are 2009
I’d say the good old days.
Yeah. And I was like, wow, this is like I didn’t, you know, I don’t really understand, like, you know how DJs turned it into a career by making their own music. Now they Okay, so if I really want to take this to the next level, I got a I mean, at the time, I was like, I could be a huge mashup DJ is like, like, Girl Talk or like,
that was a thing. It was in like the late 2000 10s. It was early days. It was Yeah, you could be a DJ. And then it was I mean, it really was around the turn of the decade where it’s like, No, you have to produce Now you also have to produce. So yeah,
and I got really fortunate I went to college at UCF. Only for like in my freshman year, but when I was there, I was trying to figure out how to like learn music production, and it just happened That one of like the only certified Ableton instructors for the Ableton software in all of Florida was in like 20 minutes away from me in Orlando. Jesus. I just started taking privates with with him. And from there I got an internship in South Florida studio with life in color. I don’t know if you knew it. Yeah, they were dayglow at the time was like a paint company. I was working for the the head DJ David Delano. That’s dough and that’s where I met Crespo. That’s where Crespo comes in to take Hell yeah, we got that studio. And from there just started releasing my own music working with different record labels and building my reputation. nowa
Hell yeah, I love it, dude. Um, yeah. Going back on what you said when you first were getting into electronic music. Yeah, I do remember in like 2008 two, that would been shit probably 2005 to 2010 or right around. When Skrillex was getting big. It was just taking Now that’s all was everyone just called it tech now. And I, I can attest to the being one of those people do my dad super into electronic music. Way before I was I was making fun of my dad for listening to electronic music calling it techno and shitting on him for it. And then probably five years later, I was like, No, I want to be a DJ and a producer now it might so my dad was really my introduction into electronic music, which is so fucking cool. And so I mean, through my entire career My dad has been probably my biggest supporter by far above everyone else. So it’s
as amazing as
it is. It really is incredible, but I love your story. It’s a it really is all about the consistency which you’ve got it you know, as long as you’re staying nice and consistent and keep moving forward moving your goalposts forward as well. You’ll you know you’ll keep working up that chain. How long have you been making music for
I’d say when I was 18 so freshman year of college so 10 years now
yeah 10 years ran it’s always like once you start hitting that year seven year a year that’s when the big transformation start happening so long as you’re consistent with it you know you
got it last year it was probably my biggest year for music wise on Spotify stuff like that. A couple tracks you know, hit like 2 million 3 million
that’s huge. I mean, that is a massive success dude. So congrats on that I can you I mean that’s hard fucking work. It takes a while to get there. I think that’s a big reason why you see so many producers drop out by year five because they just don’t feel like they’re seeing any progress. But they’re also not waiting till that year seven year eight Mark when that’s when things really start to happen
again, I was in like a genre that died. I was like making Melbourne bounce and I
fucking love Melbourne. My First good track was made with a Melbourne bounce track that I made. That was my first release to
Yeah, I’d say a year five, like I started hitting it a little bit with that with that style. And then it just like immediately dropped off the face of the earth and in balance, I was like, Okay, I got to rethink everything now and kind of reformulate what I’m doing.
Yeah. Well, I mean, those are the growing pains that take you from being an amateur to actually moving into, you know, a semi pro life to a professional space is that being forced to change and adapt and move on to something new because that’s when you really learn about what you can do. Anyways, uh, Crespo, let’s get into your background. How did Where did you start and how did you get to where you’re at? You’ve got some crazy fucking accolades to Well,
this guy’s very humble. He’s got a record coming on. spinnin Records.
Dude, wait, wait, hang on. Whoa. You’ve got a spinning tread coming out.
Yeah, man. This is Friday.
This Motherfucker. Oh my God,
Jesus. Put that in there.
Yeah plug
Yeah. Holy Humble Pie Jesus Christ. Well at the end we’ll get in plugs and you can plug that track coming up well, I’ll say now if anyone wants to learn from a spin in artists go to Wired sound Academy comm that’ll be you know all I’ll post all the show notes as always at Envious Audio comm slash Episode 33. But let’s get into your background Crespo and we’ll get into that in a little bit. What’s really cool is our stories intertwine at some point like he mentioned, but I was born in Chicago. I moved to Miami, Florida when I was six. So I have a little bit of background from both of those cities. I started DJing in high school for fun, nothing serious accident even on equipment. I just had a buddy who would let me use his and my sister was part of a hip hop club at UCF in Orlando. And I noticed this DJ using vinyl and I was like, Wow, this is awesome. I want to learn exactly what he’s doing. Fast forward a few years later, I went to FSU for school. And I decided to ask my parents for an 1800 dollar loan to buy some technique put hundreds in a mixer, I had no idea what the hell to do with them. Serato had just came out. So everybody was trying to be a DJ, which. And yeah, I really just at that time, wanted to learn and no one I could find was really into vinyl or teaching DJing so I had to learn the hard way I’d go to any party, I could find whether a friend was having a birthday, or a frat party and be like, Hey, you guys want some music? And I set up shop and just rock and I was terrible. I did not know how to transition anything. Um, a few years later, a DJ name RBK heard me and was like, Hey, man, I’d love to show you the ropes. And so um, he took me under His wing and showed me how to transition be mad to pitch and scratch. And he’s actually one of the instructors now at wired sound Academy. So DJing started to take off for me at FSU, because it’s such a big network of students and started making mixtapes. And at that time no one was really doing that. So I would actually just hand out CDs to people because SoundCloud didn’t exist. It kind of caught on like wildfire throughout the state of Florida. So that was a big help. And then I started to meet people in Tallahassee at FSU. One was David Solano, the life and color DJ like, hey, do you want to be an intern for me? And I said, Yeah, sure, you know, I’d love to learn the ropes and get more into production because that’s what he was doing at the time. And so, I went down to Boca and I had a studio and I met this young man named Brian Landis. And from there we we connected as friends and people who are avidly into electronic music and our stories started to grow from there we became really cool. And I would say DJing really started taking off my senior year of college where I decided to leave school and had four credits left probably one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made, but I had someone who represented other DJs from Miami, up in Tallahassee for a big weekend as un vers FSU it’s a big football game there at the club and they heard me DJ and someone came running up to me was like, You’re fucking amazing. How are you mixing hip hop and electronic music and, and house in a Latin music and all kinds of records. Like oh, this is just the way I was taught. She’s like, I would love to bring you down to Miami. I met my first agent. And so she brought me to Miami. I dropped out. I was like that I’m sorry. I’m taking this 1800 bucks I borrowed I’m showing you that I could do it. And my parents were not very accepting of this. We’ve done lammi Long story short Is I really struggled down here. It’s a tough place to DJ. I got my butt handed to me. You know,
there’s a lot of competition,
a lot of competition and it’s such a different crowd than a college crowd. You know, we were listening to Steve Aoki work. And Benny benassi people down here, we listened to everything, not just that I didn’t really take the time to learn, do my research, but I got my ass handed to me a couple times. And my agent Olivia, at the time was like, hey, look, you know, you really have to spend time becoming a professional at this, to go out every night, learn what you’re doing, learn what the details are playing. So from there, it took about two years to really open for other DJs and play for free. And I started breaking through I started playing some really good sets and just progressed into becoming a bigger nightclub DJ, to nowadays know rockin in Vegas and Chicago or was before COVID. Holding residency is across us And the world which is a lot of fun. Fun and then just got picked up a couple years ago to tour with young Jaden Smith. Will Smith son so it crazy yeah from big nightclubs to went on tour follow boy. It’s been awesome and I guess I could maybe be the exception of one of those DJs who didn’t really make much music but still found a career in it. But side note, I forgot to mention this we both did. We started making music together. He handed Oh, okay. And that actually led to us playing some gigs at EDC Orlando and he Las Vegas.
Yeah, as our time interning, we’re like Hey, why don’t we make music together?
Yeah, some some hardware on here support which is Leo chic. It was 2012
Yes. Do you like meeting Dude, I probably listened to you guys then cuz that was like 2012 2011 to 2012. I was a religious hardwell listener. I’ve listened to everybody in the dance community. Yeah, I mean, that’s why he was number one in 2013. He was fucking he was an icon talked about someone who was just revolutionary. Um,
I mean he, our group was Landis and Crespo. We peaked at hardwell on here. Oh, yeah, right, guys. It was fun doing it. And so we’ve just become literally best friends and we work together as music musicians and business partners. It’s been like, such a cool relationship that Yeah, from music. I think Dan yet,
Crespo definitely shows me a lot on like the DJing side that I don’t fully understand. And I try and return show them the production side, you know, kind of beginning
anyone who listened to the episode of the Los padres. This is exactly what we talked about. In the first episode part one, we talked about how important it is when you’re looking for a duo, not to just find two people who are both really good at the same thing. Sure, that could work but then you’re usually both also pretty bad at the thing that you need fixed like that. You need to be good at So, it’s always best to find someone who’s good at one thing that you’re bad at, and you’re good at one thing that they’re bad at. And then you come together and you make such a strong unit. It’s all about focusing on your strengths more than your weaknesses. And if you can find someone or build a team that can focus on your weaknesses, so you don’t have to, you can double down on what you’re really good at and become even better at that. And that’s what it’s really all about, especially with a duo you. The worst thing you’d want to do is get it rushed into a duo with someone you don’t have a lot of chemistry with, that you think is going to be bad, even a collaboration. I mean, you can chick can get really rough and turn to a headache and then you’re wasting your time on a track that you’re never going to finish and that’s never going to be anything.
Sure man. So I mean, we’ve found a perfect balance in this relationship of business friendship and producing,
you know, it’s unique it’s it’s just like Gino and Carlos. I mean, they are in sync with each it’s fucking crazy how if you I mean You could you could lie to me and tell me that they’re brothers and I’d fucking believe you because of their chemistry and just the way they work together is it really is it is something super unique but yeah, how did you guys start wired sound Academy? What What got you guys to open up? I know Crespo. You’re kind of getting into this but what was ultimately your inspiration? When did you guys start it and how did that journey look
it kind of came from a place of Well for one like I heard about this food Hall project and I’ve always wanted to try you know to build the school because I really felt like it was something that was lacking in the South Florida area that Yeah, they had like SAE that’s like a you know, like a $25,000 program that right seen and there was nothing in between. And I feel like South Florida is such a thriving music community that had that potential. So it was it was coming from a place of like wanting to still a school but also build up the music community here and make them more like more of a collective and more of like finding other musicians in the area unity media and building up building up that community. And so when I heard about the food Hall opening up, I thought that would be like the coolest place to open something like this. And then I approached Danny about doing the DJ side because I was like, Yeah, I could do the production stuff and start up on the production classes and then you could run kind of the DJ side of thing.
I like that. I think that again, working on your guys’s what you guys are good at in comparison to, you know, it’s it just yeah, Ying Yang. It works in sync with each other really is perfect. I think the affordability is interesting to you know, I think that is because you do look at some of these. Some of the, you know, tech schools, I guess you could call them for music production or fucky. I mean, look at full sail. You go to music production at full sail you’re going to be paying $150,000 minimum And it’s I mean, how much are you actually going to get out of it for four years of going there? You might make good networking stuff. But I mean, you could also work the same amount of time actually building a portfolio like really putting putting the work in and grinding in get just as good of a network if not better, because you’re actually building relationships and bonding with people. And not to say that you’re not doing that in that educational environment. But I’m more of the believer of really building something yourself, working at it really hard and building a natural network. You know, through building of relationships, rather than someone kind of hoisting you in these networks. Because you’ve paid into it. That’s not as natural. You never know if you’re going to really mesh well with people.
And I think our goal really was we took what we learned and because we’re students of actual schools, so we took what we learned We would definitely wanted to speed up the process, because a lot of the stuff we did learn was beneficial. But in today’s day and age, it’s like we have to move so much quicker. So why not provide what you need everything you need. And on top of that, learn from people who’ve actually made a huge career through this. Yeah, that’s one of the things we really pushes. We want to show you how we create a business out of Yeah,
I think that in and of itself is very valuable. If you can teach someone, not just the technical skills, I would say, it’s arguably, it’s pretty easy to teach someone how to produce because you can give them the tools you can teach them. This is how a compressor works. And you can teach it relatively easy. This is how melodies work. This is how you draw on the piano roll. Like you can teach all this stuff that is real and from there, it’s really just about practice outside of the actual class. What’s more difficult to teach is how to build a career out of something. Because you know, building the career part has a lot to do with the motivation of the individual, and what they want and what their goals are and their dreams, and you know what they want in 10 years, that’s a little bit different. If you’re going to a university for four years and spending $150,000, and they’re not at least helping you build your career from the day you stepped in that building to when you leave, there’s an issue there. There’s a major issue. And I think you find more of these academies like you guys, or some of these tech schools, where you might spend $20,000 in a year, but you also look at the people who come out of that. And most of the time, the day you step in there, they’re teaching you to build a career. They’re not just bringing you in to teach you about musical theory, and how contracts work. You know, like, they’re bringing you in to show you the technicals making sure that you’re being accountable and working on the stuff. And then they’re also teaching you what What it takes to build a career, how to network, how to you know, how to actually strive towards building a business, what it looks like to build an actual business in that I mean, this is what that’s what this entire show is about is taking your fucking career seriously. Because if you’re not looking at your music career as a business, you’re already failing. So your that in and of itself needs to be laid down immediately as a foundation. This is a business, you have to treat it as a business if you don’t, you’re kind of just aimlessly walking through this thing of music, you know, which is fine. I mean, there’s a lot of people who don’t want to do that. But you’re listening to this podcast and you’re 33 episodes in, I think you will on a career. I hope you do. Otherwise, have fun just listening to this. But um, yeah, I think those those goals are super important, especially when you’re working with a Academy. The only way to see success, I think, or one of the best ways to see success is how successful your students are.
Oh, I think I think You know, making sure they’re successful is going to show show how successful you guys are.
So we want to breed the next generation of DJs. And producers to be not lazy ones are ones, you know, like expected all to be given to them. So like, that’s our goal here is really show you everything you need even, you know, from not only, let’s say mixing and mastering beat matching, it’s how do you flow creatively? How do you get creative when you’re in that space knowing things like that to on top of everything else, you know, so we’re very hands on and we like to create our goal is to really create a family like you graduate here and you’re always welcome to our our office hours. You’re welcome to use the studio space like
yeah, so I actually collabed with one of my recent graduates from one of my production classes, and we did a remix of the following track by Trevor Daniel, you know, just like a free remix, but it was his first release. So you know, trying to give him a platform to start to launch off from super talented guy named pouria. And it actually got I know, it was listened to by the head of Interscope. And he liked it. I don’t I think they might be doing like a, you know, like a DJ release, like where they send it out to their DJs. Yeah. But from promo, and just the fact that now pourriez name as well. Yeah, is in front of the president of Interscope leads to an opportunity that now Yes,
yes. That I mean, that is so important. It’s, you know, this is actually something I was talking to a client of mine, who we sent, we sent a track over to, we sent over to a big record label and one of the owners listened to it, who’s a big producer. And they, they liked it. They thought it was good. They didn’t want to sign it necessarily. They want to hear more from him, but and I told him, I was like this. He’s never signed a track before. And so I was telling him like, this is huge. I mean, sure, you didn’t get a track sign. Of course, we want get signed, but your name is in front of that guy’s face. And he likes it and he wants to hear more from you. That in and of itself is a massive victory. And yeah, if you can, you know, this is this also brings up another point is the, your teachers are very important in these circumstances, especially when you, you know, you’re when you go to these sorts of classes or academies, it’s not like you’re just paying pennies, you’re paying a decent amount of money for some good knowledge. Um, especially when you go to university, it’s very important to recognize who the fuck your teacher is. Because if your teachers not involved in the scene, if they’re not producing and releasing, and they’re not talking to labels and they’re not networking, that that doesn’t look good. That’s I mean, because how what are they going to do for you and how are they going to add additional value not saying that you deserve it, but the point is, is if you are going to To a good place like wired sound Academy, you’ve got teachers that are interacting with you. They’re willing to collaborate with you, they’re willing to send your tracks to people that you don’t have connections to you know. I love that I really I love that a lot. What was it like building the curriculum for you guys? That that’s where I get strung up on if I were to build a course is the curriculum has to be how’d you? How’d you come up with it?
So for production, I actually collaborated with a Ableton certified instructor this guy, Mike lupino, another super talented dude, who also you know, he works a lot with like ad agencies and stuff like that music on the back end. So I had him kind of do like the, the actual, like, technical side, you know, because I’m great at like explaining creative concepts, but the actual technical side I don’t have I didn’t have the bandwidth at the time to kind of explain the way that a certified Ableton instructor would. So he kind of headed that up and then I took that curriculum. And just kind of added the you know that the music business side, the creative portion, the stuff that isn’t usually talked about in, in most schools, traditional schools, you know, just my, you know, personal experience and how I think that will help students
in so it’s 30 days are you bringing in students every single day to learn to teach them new concepts? Or how does that schedule look like because 30 days is a short time.
Yeah, so for for the pro production one the which we have like online or in person. But for production, there’s only one person which is the pro production before was a little different before Cova. But we’re still trying to be cautious and you know, we want to cap our classes at like six, seven people Max, right. So we have one in person pre production, that one is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, from three to six for four weeks straight. So you know, it’s a decent amount of time and we find that By the end of that students are very knowledgeable in production. Yeah.
I mean that right, that’s three to three hours of three days out of the week. It’s solid studio time, every 30 days of that, especially will build a really good habit. And then the DJing side, is that because I think CRISPR I think we were talking about this the other day, isn’t that one way shorter? Oh,
yeah, it’s definitely shorter. It’s two days a week to three hour courses still.
What we did is with the curriculum is both are very similar in the sense that we realize like a three hour class is a long time, but it’s also just enough to keep attention and still get these concepts through because when you’re teaching and constantly be matching, it’s a lot of practice and trial and error. Just like you know, with when you’re messing with sidechain EQ and things like that. So we realized, you know, the three hour class seems like what we break in between, but it’s a great time because it goes by really quick
and for us The DJing side of the curriculum was a lot of trial and error before we launched, wired. We did a couple, we had a couple friends who decided, hey, we’ll spend a month learning how to DJ with you guys. Luckily, DJ RBK, our head instructor here, he’s responsible for teaching almost 400 students on the Carnival Cruise Line fleet. He was very well versed in teaching. He taught me you know, it’s not a bunch of other DJs. And he had a very big background in teaching the concept in general. So we took his knowledge and develop a curriculum for, you know, someone who didn’t know anything about DJing how to press play, but Serato is and we found that, you know, with his expertise in the technical side, and then mine in the marketing, branding side, combine those curriculums together, to came together with a really good four week curriculum. The DJing is man. I’ve tried to teach people how to DJ it I have so much respect for you guys teaching DJing because the amount of patience it takes, I can prove I can handle the teaching of production stuff. Like I said, I don’t necessarily think it’s, it’s not if you know what you’re doing. And you know, if you know what you’re doing as far as production goes, you can kind of show them the way you can give them things to work on. And then as long as they work on those things, and they come back, you know, you can kind of keep pushing it and see and moving, you know, move the goalposts but with DJing that is, it really is something that you either get or you don’t I feel like there’s a there’s a mixture of unless you don’t get it right away. There’s a lot of practice involved in it and a lot of tedious time.
Yes. And I was actually one of those students that didn’t get it right away and it took a couple months to like these lightbulbs started clicking or all that I have learned was really just repetitive like having to take it and repetitively practice it and syllables like, Oh, I get the sound structure now the house intro. And now I know how to mix two records perfectly because the intros are the same.
It’s the consistency, man. It really is the consistency. I think that is really important with you guys doing like 30 day courses, because you’re right, you spend just enough time to hit everything that you need to hit. But it’s also not a commitment for six months or an entire year that you know, by month, three or four people might be burnt out and exhausted. And fuck this is a lot. And then at when they hit that point to, you know, going to a university or school, like we’re discussing earlier, one you’re spending a lot of money to, you might be spending a lot of time on things that you might not ever use or you might not ever be great at. And so I think that is really you guys do have something special where you’re hitting that sweet spot that 30 days, that nine hours a week where you’re just getting in enough to teach them what they need. And then if they just keep with the consistency I mean boom. You’ll fucking skyrocket from there.
Yep. And that’s the goal, especially with our DJs. after you graduate our pro DJ, four week course, we have different venues here at the food hall that we instantly plug into and it’s like, Look, now it’s time to take what you learned and not go home and forget about it. It’s a you’re gonna have to start learning how to play in front of others. And, you know, really getting that experience that took me so much time to really understand and get, you know,
it’s Well, I mean, let’s go right into the next topic, which is valuing knowledge because this is what we’re talking about here is this is why you go to a course this is why you go to school. This is why you go to an academy and this is why you pay so much money to do these things, because you’re paying the knowledge of someone else. How do you guys go about valuing your knowledge because this is a topic that is very, it’s kind of up the air it’s it’s hard to value knowledge, it’s hard to put a price tag on your experiences and What you know, and how to how to charge for that sort of thing. So we don’t have to give out how much your courses cost. But I am curious about how you guys come to the conclusion of Okay, this is what we’re going to charge for these 30 days, because, you know, this is the value of what we know and what we’re teaching.
Yeah, I mean, I think it just, it comes from, like I said, a point of trying to be away more affordable option than what’s out there. But still give that in person Academy experiences. So obviously cover our bills. And but you know, I think we are way lower than the other schools out there. Because I mean, part of it is yes, our courses are condensed, but I feel like the other courses or the other schools might kind of drag it out on purpose to try and make it more expensive. And so we were just like, Alright, well, why don’t we just make it more condensed so more people can actually do it? And so yeah, so I think we’re just trying to price it right. And we’re still feeling out. I think Little bit, right? Yeah,
yeah, I think when it came to pricing it was how can we get straight to the point and deliver the knowledge that’s needed and trim the fat and also not have to break anyone’s bank and show them like, hey, our main goal is not just to make money here, it’s really to also provide the knowledge necessary and value you know, so that hey, this place was awesome. Let’s go refer my friend back to what you’re talking about the giver area, sorry, let’s say the go giver, go giver. I’m a firm believer in providing knowledge and value at an affordable price to drive more revenue and more more value
the thing in the thing is for us like I’m still an artist, I’m still always going to be releasing music. This isn’t my you know, this is my end all be all but I really think that like I said, South Florida has such potential for a music community that if we could be a part of a building that up and that would be something super special that I want to be a part of. Yeah,
yeah. I think this I think This is something that gets lost with a lot of younger people to younger producers or people who want to be producers. And they see they get scared by price tags sometimes. I’m not talking about gear. Let’s not talk about because I think gear is a bad thing to invest your money in at a young and young in your career like I’m finally at a point in my career where I’m hitting this knowledge gap where I’m thinking, Now’s my time that I want to start investing in some outboard gear, I want to start buying some actual hardware compressors and limiters because I can actually utilize that stuff in the proper way. I would not want to buy a one year one into producing that would be a waste of $2,000. Like it would not it would it would not be good. What’s better to spend that $2,000 on is knowledge that’s investment in an actual thing that’s going to return on the investment. And this is something that I think a lot of producers should be paying attention to the way they’re spending their dollars is what’s going to return that investment. What What could you spend that money on the texture gonna get you return and a surplus? How are you going to make more out of that, and knowledge is the number one thing that you should be investing in. Like we said before, I don’t necessarily agree about going to a school that for four years to get a music production degree, I don’t think that has a lot of value, I do think has a lot of values, things like your guys’s Academy, where you can actually go for 30 days network like a fucking beast. I mean, you can learn from people who are big players in the industry. And if you grow with those people and build relationships with them, that’s a huge investment on your career. Because that, you know, however much that costs could probably double itself in just a few years if you stick with it, and you keep growing with those kinds of people. What was the future look for you guys look like for you guys? I personally I think I was talking to you guys about this. I think you guys should bit package an entire online course that people can buy And you know, not necessarily classes, but what are what are what’s the future for you guys? And where do you want wired sound to go? And I mean, how does that look like for the scene in general? Because I have some I, I’ll let you guys start and then I’ll go from there. But
yeah, I mean, I it’s
obviously a very weird time for music. So I think we really just pivoted to online in the past like month or two. Because before we were all in person, because I do think a lot of people enjoy the in person experience getting to talk to classmates. So it’s gonna be a combination of in person and online classes. And at the same time, you know, just trying to build up the wire name, and build, build our brand.
I personally think like, our goals for the next couple years is to really develop online. I think what I’m learning what I’ve been loving learning is online, mainly because you know, I’m at home during quarantine working for my kids. nonstop, you know, sometimes I have three screens up where I’ll have Udemy up learning, you know about AD marketing and then making a record at the same time. So I think what I would love is what you’re saying is to really have a package course especially for DJing DJing. Teaching DJing online is very hard, especially live. I’ve done private lessons, but more than two or three students it’s really tough. So what I would love is to develop a course that people could buy for maybe 250 bucks 300 bucks scale it so that you know we can have hundreds of people into this and learning how to DJ you know, the only thing I will say is I personally am a firm believer in in person classes because you feel like you know you’re paying to be there and learn where with these courses that we would love to launch it’s going to be your your your boss, so you got to make sure you’re learning
Yeah, there’s a different there’s a different aspect to in person you’re more accountable. You and you when you especially when you spend more money You’re definitely more accountable to pay attention to that sort of stuff in that there is there is a completely different feel to it when you’re learning in person and you’ve got your teacher in front of you physically showing you something and you can you can fire off questions immediately and get a response immediately there is something that is invaluable to that like you can’t there’s not a lot of price tags you can put on it where it’s like unreasonable you know, but the pack you know, I i’m i think i sent this over to Crespo was domination by Wyatt. I can’t remember his last name, but why it has a podcast as well. And he’s got a course. That one’s more geared to the average musician who’s a singer songwriter, producer. It’s kind of it’s a more plethora instead of niche down into like an EDM producer. But then you’ve got you’ve also got Bill Gates’s a production course which I don’t know if you’ve guys looked into that one at all, but that one’s a whole. I mean, he’s got a beast of a community built up over there. And I think that is the important aspect when you do package these courses is the community aspect that you build to it. I think courses involved, you know, masterclasses, like dead mouse’s and Arman’s. I think these are just the beginning. The industry for courses online is a $300 billion industry. And it’s only growing. So I mean, if you look at that it’s probably in the next 20 years is going to be looking at toward close to a trillion dollar industry. And that’s on education. I think this is I think courses online like this is going to significantly change the app the way you learn, especially with going to colleges and schools, especially when you start looking at places like Udemy where you can get a $10 course and get a certain certification in 30 hours. Education and a lot of the times you get hired at places, that’s all they give a shit about seeing. And they’ll hire you on and bring you in on low level, but your will be immediately getting experience. And so the four years you would have spent in school, you could be working in the actual field and be at the same level, if not higher. And I think you’re gonna see the same thing with music, I think you’re gonna see where you, you can spend $3,000 on a course or something or even less than that you can spend five $600 on a packaged course that you’ll have for life, and learn to be a really good fucking producer in as little as 30 hours. And as long as you spend three or four months and you’re involved in this community, you can, you can build an audience, you can build a fan base with those people and get your music shared to a lot, a lot of players, I think, I think that’s where the future is gonna start moving. I think YouTube Academy is gonna start Slow. I mean, YouTube Academy is always gonna be there. But I don’t think that’s going to be the main course of like, getting education, I think and, you know, the, a lot of times people buy into the courses because of people teaching, not necessarily what’s being taught. It’s the personalities and the learning from people like you guys. Yeah,
that goes back to like the perfect point. I think one of the biggest things in anything you’re trying to sell or promote, it’s like, what value are you adding, you know, select our goal at wired is if you know for the features, if we do do courses, that’s one of our main goals, a big player in the online space. Let’s provide some value other than just hey, here’s some classes so new buyer, we’re gonna find ways to provide added value outside of just there’s technical Yeah,
yeah, that’s that is massive. If you look at L Gates’s producer dojo I mean, he sets you on a craft on a on a path to be full time in music, where you’re teaching at the dojo your first releases are through his record. label and he really builds you up. He’s got a really cool marketing system to with how that looks. And you get belts like in jujitsu or like karate, you get belts as you progress throughout your career. And he takes it he wants to take you from a white belt to black belt in production in music business. So it’s super unique. The guys over at no face, they’re kind of doing the same thing with their academy. I mean, you’re seeing a lot of these places evolve into this structuring of building community and building a really unique system and how they’re going to take you from being nobody or not producing at all to being a professional producer and possibly full time his career. Um, well, do you guys have anything else you’d like to add to the subject? I think we’re pretty much it. You guys can plug some stuff too. If you don’t have anything else you want to add?
Yeah, I mean,
you know, I think it’s gonna be really interesting in the next year to see how we adapt as a music community to the whole COVID situation. You know, like myself. Like I didn’t really talk about this at all, but I’ve been licensing some of my music out for like ads for for advertising. There’s got like a Polish beer commercial and somebody that said that. Yeah, a lot of you know, and that’s part of the stuff we want to talk about, like music production. And like, if you’re not a massive artist, how else can you make a career of it, you can hit up advertising agencies and sell your music to them.
Exactly. That is exactly what this podcast is about. It is all about how you can make money in different areas of the industry,
like yeah, musicians are going to really have to adapt the next year. So until everything, you know, starts to normalize a little bit more. And that’s one of the things that we’re going to try and try and teach the students here is how you can adapt and still make a living off of it without being an artist or touring DJ necessarily. And then I’ll just I’ll plug my my on spin records. It’s called it’s about super high on it’s
windy getting released this Friday. So it would that be August. 77 perfect the episode is coming out August 7 so all of you listening right now go look up you go just by your your full name Ryan Landis now no it’s under Landis under Landis alright go on Spotify look up Landis and check out it’s a bop that’s fucking sir dude good for you spinning that is huge congrats
for releases for like Hexagon Hexagon like 2 billion plays the end slot daddy man, she’s been crushing what’s so cool to watch? With Landis and this is like a testament to other DJs and producers out there is like, he was consistent about it and never gave up on it. It was like, Hey, I don’t care for record lead, it’s 50,000 plays, I’m gonna keep working and getting better at it and pushing and networking to where, hey, now I can say hey, I have a record on exadata and it has 2 billion blades you know, and that’s that’s something that’s invaluable. I think it’s consistency. Yeah,
the consistency is the most important part. There’s you get no success without the consistency. You have to put in the fucking hours you got to put in the work if you don’t, you’re just you’re not gonna go on. Nothing’s gonna happen. Yeah,
it’s so true. So, yeah, I mean, that’s why we’re here wired to is really just teach what we’ve learned and teach the experience and, you know, it took us 15 to 1010 to 15 years to get to where we’re at, we’d love to be able to speed that process up. There’s knowledge and value. Give that to our students. So we’re here and we really appreciate being on here, man. Thank you. Yeah, of
course. Of course. I think the COVID thing to Ryan you bring up a really important part is that there is a lot of growing and evolving you have to do as a musician you got to figure this is this is uncharted territory for everyone. This is also an opportunity for you to fucking grow as an artist if you’re not working your hardest right now. You’re going to be way behind when things come back to normal because I i’ve been fuck shit. Dude I’ve been cooped up in my all of us have been cooped up in our houses since March and really since the the since the closed down and shit that’s when I got introduced to Chris that’s when I got introduced to no face and then los padres and now you know Crespo, you and I are working together on chromatic and so it was since the lockdown that shit really changed. I was like Boston, I was trying to get in with these people and work as hard as I can because we’re all kind of in the same position. Now I’m lockdowns done I’ll have the opportunity to go meet everyone in person hang out and then further that and continue to network. So I mean, if you’re not working like that, you got to you got to figure something out. If you don’t figure it out and kind of wade through the water. You’re gonna start drowning.
Yeah, and I think the I think the biggest lesson I learned from all this was it had all my attention on one thing that was genuine and making sure I played the best show moved on to the next city and had the next gig. And, you know, I started develop this entrepreneurial mind that hey, like, let’s develop other pivots and other places to make money in music still my main passion, but you know, let’s not put every eggs in one basket because look at now, you know, first eating like, majority of my income now comes from the school and other sciples music. So it’s important, I think, to teach young generations and anyone who’s wanting to learn that, like, there’s so many ways to make money off of the industry that we work.
Yeah, I mean, again, I say time and time again. But the reason why I started this podcast this podcast has been out for a year now and I was spouting I’ve been spouting for a year expand. I mean don’t just want to produce in tour because and I wasn’t being like cuz something like this will happen. But when stuff like this happens, you sit, you have to sit back and you have to swallow the bitter the bitter medicine and go shit. Like I do need to outsource that. Like, I need to be working in different facets within the industry to make an income. Otherwise, yeah, like you say if you’re just a DJ, now’s the worst time to be just a DJ, if you
are having trouble, right?
Yeah, I know a couple of people who are just DJs and it’s not fun it is it’s a scary time to be just a DJ. But you know, if you’re doing stuff like what you guys are doing, I’m not to say that it’s entirely comfortable, but I mean, at least you’re you know, you’re making an income. That’s what’s important and you’re growing. We love Crespo, do you have anything to plug obviously the record label. Um, so we just launched a record label me and mostly guys from Los padres called chromatic records. I’m super excited for that. And then the first release is actually a record that I’ll be putting out. called us yet
below. I’m super excited. Just because I put out music in a couple years. Very excited. It was one of those things where like, Oh, I’m afraid to share my work, but record label. It’s like, Hey, I take the power in my own hands. I don’t have to listen to the a&r like oh, this isn’t good enough. I just want to put my own stuff out. Yeah, August 13 love for everybody. Check that out. Good. Thanks for having us, man. spin off.
Yeah, of course. Thanks for coming on guys. This is a ton of fun. A lot of good knowledge on just education, what it means to get an education in music and I appreciate you guys coming on and yeah, this is a ton of fun. course for sure. All right, take care guys. See you
later man.
Hey, guys, thanks for tuning into this episode of electronic dance money as always head to Envious audio.com slash Episode 33 to check out the show notes. A link to everything we talked about in today’s episode will be included there including wired sound Academy, so you can go check out some of their online courses and learn anuses new track on spinnin Records. again congratulations to him. We should all support him for that because as a massive accomplishment, I think we can all recognize that head on over to facebook.com and look up electronic dance money, community, join that community and start talking and getting involved there. Thank you guys so much. Can’t wait for the next episode. We’ve got a return guest. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. I think you guys will all appreciate and respect it. Take care and have a wonderful day.