Jan 'Yarn' Muths Welcome back to the production talk podcast. It's great to have you on board today. And thank you for joining me again. Today it's a special day it's the first interview this time with my dear friend Mr. Markey power who have known for many years and who I really value as a phenomena reggae bass player and data artist. So without further ado, let's jump straight into our interview with Marquis power. Thanks, john. It's great to be here and great to be involved in the project. Yeah, I was born in Europe and emigrated to Australia and I really thank my parents for having a very varied music collection. Dad said he used to play me Bob Marley when I was in the womb so I think that's sort of not a that's some good upbringing. I hear really good vinyl collection was you know, as a child spent many hours looking through those covers just reading all the information about where they were recorded and different you know, album covers have got so much Yeah, folder in there for for reading. Oh yeah, used to study album covers and vinyl covers for four hours. It's a great thing to do. Marky Power So reggae was really early in your life, your parents helped you to your mom used to go to the blue beat clubs in London, which is what ska was called, I guess in the early days of London at sort of Calypso music is what they called it Calypso bluebeat and now I've had that sort of English sort of ska reggae tip to most of my things. I sort of love madness and you know, all those sort of ska bands of the 80s that's up tempo stuff with a you know, be a Cockney injury thrown in there for for rhyme and that sort of thing. Nice Nice. And how old were you when you when you picked up an instrument for the first time did you start with with the bass or what was the first instrument? Oh, I started on piano actually. Piano Yes, and I hated it. I was forced to play piano and then I moved on to violin for a few years. And then I was really into heavy metal as a teenager and hip hop and that sort of stuff. And everybody was we're all playing in bands when everybody played guitar. So there were like, six guitarists, and I just thought, you know, I should play bass at least I'll get a gig be able to play. I've got an instrument so that's sort of born my love of bass in that sense. Okay, and how old were you when you picked up the bass 13 when I first start playing bass 13 it was a hard slog, you know, you just hear all this amazing music and you're a young musician, and you'd want to emulate those sounds but what you're doing sounds nothing like that. And so you've got a lot of a long road of practice and lots of hours sitting in the bedroom with a metronome or practicing get up to speed and get race fit and make your body work the way you want it to work. Yeah, right. And who are your your most influential artists nowadays? Who Who are your heroes on the radio will always love singing bass players? I think it's sort of marvelous if we can do both of those things. And I Sting's always been a B hero, Paul McCartney, a sort of classics of those things. But I saw the wailers when I was about 17, in Canberra that a new refectory was majestic warriors tour I think it was Junior Marvin was singing up the front row sitting there watching family man playing bass, it was life changing experience to hear that music and then wonder, how can he play that? You know? Yeah, I've seen him life. It's just jaw dropping bass guitar mastery. Marky Power Can't do it any better. Yeah. What an influence. Yeah, well, you know, I think the band broke some strings or something. And then the rest of the band has dropped down to drum and bass, which is the highlight of my evening just watching watching those guys play, either right? And then you started your your own musical career and you played in quite a few bands. I think the first time we met was over 10 years ago when you were playing for firewalk. Is that right? Or remember that correct? I think I think so. Yeah, that's when we first went in the studio there. Yeah, it was one of the many milestones in your musical career. Yeah, I've been been a reggae bass player for the last 25 years of playing reggae when it wasn't cool, I guess. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Love that. And yeah, just to fill our listeners in there. We there's a little bit of a story there, when Fyah Aalk was playing at my wedding and you injured yourself Marky Power I think I'm the most injured bass player in reggae. I've got that sort of from a few few bands that little mishaps that have happened to me. But uh yeah, at your wedding I think we'd performed and then I'm going out to the car to unload some gear and then the door slammed and shut my hand in the door and sort of collapsed on my thumb and I end up bringing another band member and he came and rescued me and and then you guys took me to a hospital that night on on your wedding it was sort of a near loss my thumb. I said I would crushed all the nerves didn't actually cut them, but it looked like Roadrunner cartoon, you know, when their snow gets run over flat Oh my god. It took me a few months of recovery and rehab to get get playing again because I lost the use of my thumb there for quite a few months. That night was a bit of a blur for me, but I remember that you were on stage and playing that night, weren't you? Yeah, yeah, most definitely play my heart out after soundcheck, you went to hospital and then straight back and you play the gig. Yeah, with half of them. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Well, that's dedication. Man. That's dedication. Amazing. Okay. What other bands have you been involved with? Marky Power I really got my reggae education with this Australian group called Earth rego. There was sort of a prolific touring reggae band in the 90s. And they were sort of like a 10 piece roots reggae band that was pretty authentic in the sense they were based on the Northern Rivers. And they toured all over the place. And I was got to be their bass player for about a seven year period. And it was truly an experience of just learning rudiments. The guy that ran the band would just sort of train you and just serve and make sure you would never play and teach you all the rhythms or the rudiments, or learn all about basic sort of reggae stuff from that being in that band. And that gave me the foundation for for more reggae. I guess I love that Jan 'Yarn' Muths you were taught not to overplay. Can you expound a bit on that? What do you mean by that? Marky Power Well, you know, it's like, it was pretty strict. In that sense. The guy's name is radical. And he just teach you in sign up. This is a ragamuffin. He learned and he learned when the beat was and he do a song and it might go through three or four different rhythm rudiments, but it's the same song structure, but just playing it through different types of reggae fields. And so he just teach us and sort of drumming that into us about how to play the rhythms and present properly, not overplay them. And then I guess reggae is all about syncopation and then not overplaying. So yeah, there's some parts of the whole in that music. So if you're overplaying then you're not leaving room for the other people. And like good conversation, there has to be rises and falls and good dynamics and places where people are quiet and louder than others. Jan 'Yarn' Muths That sums it up so well. So in many ways, it's also it's mainly about the notes that you don't play. Marky Power Yeah, I mean, I find that with drummers when I hit this snare, and then they'll leave it out, and then just hanging on that snare for it to be happening again. And it's almost like, you know, it's coming. But then if they pull it back and hold it, then you just hang in there for that snare to happen again, Jan 'Yarn' Muths I can really relate to that. It's building suspense. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, fantastic. I love that. Can you tell us about your your bass rig, what are you playing at the moment, um, Marky Power I moved over to five string bass about 20 years ago, I play flat wound strings generally give me a sort of a more rounded tone and less sort of top end, and they're easier on the fingers. apply an MPEG rig, which is an old valve SVT I've had that for 25 years, my bass rig, I'm sure it's a beautiful part of my hernia sort of problem because it weighs so much, is you have to help me lift it. I've noticed quite a few of my other friend bass players have lighter bass rigs now and that seems to be the way of the future. Not carrying around these big heavy things. But um, yeah, saying that, that's my, my touring rig and my recording rig, I sort of balanced line out from the MPEG and sort of set and forget really, it's a really great amp. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Do you use any pedals? No, Marky Power I'm pretty sort of old school in that regard. Do good. I have well have in the past, but sort of traditionally, for the music that I record and play with, it's generally just straight bass. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Yeah, that makes just purity and just clean. I just Marky Power fell in love with the vowel sound, and that sort of love that sound. Jan 'Yarn' Muths And can you tell us about the projects that you're currently involved with? Marky Power I'm currently in talks with Jamaican Australian based artist and Doug port Mike wasn't George. It's called the song poet project, but I'm collaborating on dub artistry and soundscaping. Within this suit of his works. The album's been recorded across three countries being Canada, Jamaica and Australia, and includes artists from Canada Empire, Ollie McGill, and Julian Bell butcher from oka. So an interesting album. Jan 'Yarn' Muths It's fantastic. It's sort of some phenomenon musicians. Yeah, that's, I Marky Power guess, sort of the true COVID thing that's happened with in the last few months where technology's allowed us to reach other people around the world. I mean, Not just now, but sort of the emphasis on that has come to the forefront, I think, Jan 'Yarn' Muths yeah. Can you tell us more about how this practically works? You know, we've got musicians in different places all around the globe. And, you know, how do you practically work together? Marky Power Well, I mean, that's the beauty of technology. Now, I think, as a child and a teenage Irani dream of those things being able to happen. But yeah, it's Pro Tools sort of expanded massively when it went to 10. And then the fact he could have a sound card, which wasn't dedicated to Pro Tools and didn't cost $50,000. So now that we're just able to send files around the world to people get them to record in their place, and send them back lined up and collaborate like that. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Okay, so you upload WAV files to somebody else, and they download it and import it into their session and then play something on top, or how do you Marky Power create pretty much it? Yeah, you're cool. One of the latest albums I've been working on is for another guy. That's how that was recorded. The drums recorded in Melbourne, the base in Brisbane, their horns were in Darwin, and the keys were came from Perth. Why? I said, Yeah, my bands all over the place at the moment. But that's just the reality of what it is to record now. Yeah, yeah, Jan 'Yarn' Muths that's right. That's right. And that's exactly why I wanted to launch this podcast to just talk about this some more, where any of these signals recorded in a professional studio, or all in home setups, a mixture Marky Power of both? market majority of the drums are recorded in studios. Yeah. And then some of the horns were definitely. But yeah, the other things are just, you know, you can hear where they're recorded from the recording itself. But yeah, truly, it's come along in leaps and bounds and ups, I would make great music happen, which is, in this time of COVID, we're feeling less connected. And that's one way that we can work together to actually make music fantastic. Jan 'Yarn' Muths What does your home studio look like? Marky Power My home studio. I'm mainly doing post production stuff, not so much recording too much over dubbing. I get stuff that's sent to me. And then basically, other small soundcard basic rig, Mac, and then a whole lot of outboard gear. I've tried to think how to phrase it because it's sort of my stuff at the dub work that I do on stage. I didn't want to be limited to the studio. And as we know, I started off mixing in the box, like most of us do. And then the limitations from that tend to be that look like you're checking your emails on stage. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Yeah, maybe should just follow listeners in these over the last couple of years, you've branched out and you've become a quite a sought after lifetime artists as well. So you don't always play the bass anymore on stage. No, sometimes you just do the dubs. Marky Power Yeah, well, that's something I've wanted to explore over the last few years just sort of carving a neat little niche for myself doing that. Jan 'Yarn' Muths I think I remember that, you know, we've always been into it at least as long as I know you. But just over the last few years, I've really seen you expand a lot and play live a lot. And yet, Marky Power after I bring you to the stage after I did my uni degree that sort of gave me the confidence to do things that I would pay other people to do. I think that's the beauty of that investing in yourself like that. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Okay? And how does your dub rig look like you said, you have got a lot of outboard gear analog gear Marky Power in this time, there's never been a better time to work with small producers of audio. You're not like in the past when stuff was made the beep 1000 units or circuit board made or something and so now you can speak to someone that's producing something in that they can make you up a custom board or can build you something tailored to your needs. Yeah, so many amazing things out there. I tried to emulate a lot of stuff which I used in the box, but then I wanted to play it on stage but and make it more tactile. So to have more fun ins, you know, jump around and to manipulate things and sort of be a part of the mix while it's happening. And sample the band while they're playing. Get bits of them then feed it back into the front of house so that it creates texted soundscapes sampling the band while they're playing Jan 'Yarn' Muths beautiful so you basically add the sound of the band or the effects in real time so you don't rely on a mix engineer to do you know the guesswork basically a lot of them have no idea how to do it yeah, Marky Power I'm trying to sort of carve a niche there because I feel each song needs a certain texture or a certain effect on it. And then especially wet vocals reggae drums, lots of delays, phases and stuff on the snare hi hat sets for thing so just adding textures and Jan 'Yarn' Muths and can you just talk us through your setup. So let's say you know we've got the band on stage and do you then set up additional microphones? Or do you know tap into the existing ones? Do you use a split for that instead of Marky Power it was a steep learning curve. I went on tour with some bands over summer. We did. I think it was nine weekends in a row of festivals all around Australia. And I had some of the most helpful engineers to some of the most unhelpful engineers from unplugging all my stuff just say no you can't do that. And as soon as I pull out a little mixing desks on stage that was sort of like comparing penis sizes or something some engineers get really upset Yeah, yeah, well, I've sought Jan 'Yarn' Muths engineers are known to be the crankiest and grumpiest profession of all Marky Power Yes, I sort of learned to deal with that. And became equipped with every bit of equipment that I'd need from having every sort of answer. So basically, my setup is depending on the engineer, so if it's digital, I can ask for sends of certain things to be sent to me. But if that's too much, then I just physically take my own sends on stage. And I'll either take splits of the snare splits of the main vocal, or I physically put my own microphones on there, depending on I'm sort of equipped for most, most situations live. And then I run that through a series of outboard gear. So I've got a space echo or a 201 eautiful, I've got the pedal version of that which I find most useful for a lot of things, I use that for drums, and or delays. And then I've got a matron by phaser, that was a piece of gear, which is used by the scratch Perry and then Stevie Wonder Smashing Pumpkins, they've quite big, quite studio bound, they're not the best for moving around. So this Australian company made a copy of that. And I use that for phases and on the drums. And then the other bit of gear that I've been using is this company out of out of Spain called Benny dub, great company there, I've got a couple of their units, their signal generators as sirens and their main delay unit I use for for vocals that's got pole filters, sweeps and that sort of thing. So you can really sort of tailor the delays and put them right where you want them in the mix. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Oh, that's perfect. That's perfect. So you've got your own little mixer, you've got effect units attached. And then you just, you know, play the faders and box sins, as you feel Yeah, I have it all hardwired. And then you basically feed only the effects back into the front of house or Marky Power Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. So basically, basically just take splits are the things that I want to affect, and then I send that back to front of house. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Okay. And and what do you do for your personal monitoring on stage? Generally, I usually work at the food bank or headphones or Marky Power definitely fall back or find headphones a bit too isolating, you need to be able to feel the music you're creating in amongst what you're doing. Yeah, find if you have to fall back, you get a better general feel of how much levels there and how loud you want to push it, that sort of thing that Jan 'Yarn' Muths makes perfect sense. So you're working basically completely analog without any computer on stage. Yeah, Marky Power that's correct. I did go down that road. I mean, I had logic running on stage triggering samples and stuff from from the computer, which was hidden underneath my dub disk. But yeah, just computers crash, I just yeah. inopportune times, you're going to press something, and you know, it won't work. So I thought, you know, there's limitations to all those things. But down the path of all the analog gear, actually, it's really tactile, I've got my hands on all the time on manipulating small sounds. And through that experience, I basically hardwired all my gear into a rifle case. So it's a come to stage, everything's hardwired, I only have two or three leads to plug in. And then my setup times down to about four or five minutes, perfect. Instead of plugging things in and out all the time, that's when leads break your power connectors go all that sort of stuff. Isolated power supply runs all the gear, so it's all good like that. And, Jan 'Yarn' Muths okay, and then you can probably just take it to your home studio and plug it in, into your computer and just to some remix, you know, remixes and duck mixes with your gear. Marky Power Yeah, that's it's set up to me. I'm just checking to see on the camera. But yeah, my studio is here and well, my job is to the right there. That was sort of one of the ease about having it packed up. And being able to have it mobile, is that I can just have it set up at home quite easily. And then I've got couple of gigs this weekend on the dub rig. So it'd be quite easy to just pack everything up and move it out again, won't have to unplug anything fantastic. Over COVID I invested in all new leads. And that's what stuff so that makes perfect Jan 'Yarn' Muths sense. And can you tell us a little bit about your project, Dubcek? What's happening with Deke check at the moment? Marky Power dub check, did some recording with those guys a couple of years ago with a couple of new session players and released a single off that a couple of months ago that that's on Spotify, and a couple of things like that. And mainly I've been doing remix work this year, getting stuck into an album for an Australian artist called Jessie Morris, which I'm pretty sure you're familiar with. Oh, yes, I am. So during COVID, I spent eight weeks on his album doing all the post production dubs and stuffs. That was a major undertaking. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Jesse Morris is a dear friend of ours, and we hope to get him on to the podcast at some stage, hopefully sooner than later. So hopefully we can talk about that project then. But how is all of this coming together? With this album add? Marky Power Um, I think you'll have to ask Jesse about that Jan 'Yarn' Muths one. Yeah, good. Okay, that makes perfect sense. And you basically did all the dubs for that album at home and you know, was that also an online collaboration just like the the current work you're Marky Power doing? Yeah. Yeah, I got sent all the stems from that and then in through my home studio, and then I'm limited to what I can do as far as I've tried lots of different ways of dubbing, like in the box that was sort of has its own benefits, and then the true truth. Which is running everything across the board and then having to track out and recording it and that is very hit and miss for me you know sort of something's work something's dying some times or levels are not good so what works for me is I I paint so I go through and I pick an instrument out of the song that I want to affect and are grabs and bits of it and then I'll do a pass on another instrument not isn't on that and I go through all the instruments that I feel in a mix that all we will need and then I delete all the dry tracks and I just use a lot of wet tracks and manipulate those in conjunction with the dry tracks but it's sort of tend to find that you can get a lot more interesting things when you put songs through effects and delays and other sounds that you wouldn't think were there okay, Jan 'Yarn' Muths and do you just follow your intuition when to open up you know, the room shots and the reverb throws? Or do you follow? Do you follow you know, musical patterns? Do you actually do it the same way every single time when you when you perform with the Jesse Morris band or is each show completely different? Marky Power If I'm reinterpreting something I sort of agenda for analysis, I have an open slather of what I can do. So they just say go for it. And I find that creative freedom is is a magic because I sort of can get in the zone and really try to find a new take that song to a new place or something that wouldn't actually we've never heard before. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Nice. Nice. That sounds really good. Say, since you're now in contact with a lot of musicians that all collaborate online. What do you find? What are the most common hiccups and issues people face? What are the difficulties? Marky Power sample rates would probably be the biggest one here, right? Who would have thought I noticed gonna pick the finer details on those ones that sort of got a I mean, I made that mistake myself that was part of my learning curve is recording things at the wrong sample rates, sending it to someone and it was a good thing to learn that just a small oversight like that, and what are the problems that it can cause? Yep. Jan 'Yarn' Muths And how do you tackle that? Do you just you know brief everybody at the beginning to use whatever separate you agree on or Marky Power I think clear communications the key to that one, just having having a good brief and making sure everyone understands what their requirements are of them and what the finished product that you need from them is Jan 'Yarn' Muths here. And I noticed that depending on the door, people use the digital audio workstations, they all raise different degrees of awareness over the user Some are really in your face and won't let you pass in a dialog window saying make a decision here. Yeah, and others are a bit more casual and you may not even realize what separator on this is that also your experience. Marky Power I'm mainly working in Pro Tools I do do a bit of sketching in logic but I find Pro Tools my that's my program that my go to as far as creatively use it a bit unorthodox Lee to most people, because I use it a bit like logic where I just grab samples and throw them in various spots just by not by not by grade or anything else that sort of by fear was that that should be a symbol about there or a special effect about here. I can physically drag and drop them around. Yeah, right. So Jan 'Yarn' Muths you work off the grid. Yeah, Marky Power I think you know, sounds should be where they should be not be just because the lines they're Jan 'Yarn' Muths fantastic. That makes perfect sense. So what's your take? What are the advantages and pros and cons of recording with a click or without? Marky Power Yes, well, some people can't play to a click. That's, that's what humaneness is of it, I guess, the function of it. I mean, it depends how much time you've had in the experience some the daunting aspect of playing to a click can really throw some musicians can really can really just mess with the hands. Yeah, just so I guess got to explain, really listen to the song and see what it does get the musicians to play through it a few times and see whether it pushes or pulls because generally there's an actual breath to to a song where chorus might speed up just that tiny bit, and then slow back down for the groove. And you've got to really identify whether or not that's a good function of the song or whether it's something that sort of wavers too much or it really really depends on if it suits the song. Really Jan 'Yarn' Muths Yeah, sometimes come across people who are you know, just very strongly pro or con. And I guess you know, you've got a really good take on this, you know, just to see what's what's useful for the song and if it was, Marky Power there is that the end point where, you know, as a producer or an engineer, you're thinking enough I've got to cut this up and move it around or stretch it or that sort of thing that doing stuff too agreed in a clique is sort of essential, but I mean, that's defeats a whole lot of electronic dance music you find that it is so square, you know there is no humaneness to it. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Yeah, that's right and I guess that's why we all love reggae. Yeah, what better genre for for human groove and feel in reggae? Okay, say you've had your studio for a longer time and you've know you've gone through a bit of formal education, but how distracting is it to operate a home studio, you know, focusing on the performance at the same time does it take from playing the performance you know, doesn't make a difference whether you just focus on playing the bass or your dumbs and somebody else takes it. charge for the engineering or having to do all of this by yourself just as a take from, from the experience and from the performance. Marky Power I think it's um, you have to wear two hats. I mean, I think our brains aren't wired for that type of experience yet, like you're in a creative brainwave state, you're in the space, you're painting, you're creative with that sort of brainwave that you need to be decisive. It's a total opposite to where you are, you're in the creative state. So I think you need to have that object objectivity in at a later stage rather than next morning. Or you have to find times for when you have creative times and then being objective, because it's really hard to switch. I mean, I find that for myself as a creative individual, that's what works for me, because I'm having a person there, which, which serves that role to be objective when you're in a creative space, because otherwise it's it's a bit hard to be objective, I'd say, Jan 'Yarn' Muths Yeah, you're right. And the other musicians that you work with will do they have similar experiences, you know, the takes that they return to you Do you feel like yeah, that's really good, heartfelt music, or do you feel that the mind was wandering off to driver issues and shortcuts and all the things we don't really want to think about when we make music? Marky Power For me like dub is a deconstructed songs the basic element for me like he stripped something down to its individual elements, and then start to dub from there. And if the performances aren't good, the whole song falls apart. Yeah, yeah, we keyboard line, there are a light drum here. And once you strip things back, and things aren't masking each other, then you can really hear the performance. Musicians wise, I think most musicians, I work with a pretty self calibrating that come out of the session, and then be able to sort of have that objective decision. I think deadlines are the most important things for studios, you've got to work through a deadline, otherwise, things get too long winded. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Oh, yeah, I can relate to that. I've been involved in production where we had too much time, and I ended up overthinking stuff. deadlines are good. And they're very healthy in some regards. Marky Power Yeah, I speak to people who've been working on their solo albums for six years or something. And that some it's a long time to be involved in a project and still maintain that sort of level of enthusiasm, I guess. And yeah. And the ability to see an endpoint that guess well Jan 'Yarn' Muths said, See, you said that you're actually working with an older computer, can you give us a rough idea of what generation that is? And are you happy to share what interface you're using? Marky Power I'm saving for a UID. Like viola, yeah, I'm basically running an older MacBook Pro with FireWire and Thunderbolt out. And I'm running an M audio interface, and a soundcraft, 16. Channel disc nice. And so most of the stuff that comes to me is recorded in bigger studios. And so there are limitations to what I can do. I was touching on that before when I was talking about how I dub in the sense of painting, because I'm limited to two inputs on my sound card. I've got eight outs, which means I tried dubbing across the board with eight outs and doing it that way. Jan 'Yarn' Muths You're right, so you send eight individual signals to your to your mixer. Yeah, but you need to basically return just a stereo signal or two mono signals. Marky Power Yeah, I've tried, you know, we were discussing the ways of creating dub music in that sense. So one being in the box, where everything's inside the computer, then I tried another way, which was to split all the instruments that were inside the DI w across the desk, and then dub them that way. And then how I mainly do it is before I was saying, pick the main instruments, which I want to create from and then I'll do passes, and then I'll edit those passes, and then make a more sort of just an edited version of that. Okay, Jan 'Yarn' Muths looks like you've got it all worked out. So you know, you're making some phenomenal music with, you know, some some older gear, if I see that correctly. And yeah, it's the latest and the greatest and, you know, your performance speaks for itself and even, you know, older, older gear, it's not a showstopper at all, or may Marky Power not affect that discussion amongst many of us audio files in the sense of, if you're always chasing, you know, there's always that dilemma of chasing the latest, greatest thing, the latest greatest thing. And what came to my system was I'm running waves plugins, I'm running Pro Tools that came to the point where my operating system, if I upgraded something, then I lose all my plugins. I've got it at the point now where it's still running Pro Tools. 10 everything's working, nothing crashes. Yep. And it works for me. Beautiful. Jan 'Yarn' Muths That's the number one rule. Yeah, once you've got a running system, just don't touch it. Leave it alone. Don't upgrade. Marky Power Yeah, I mean, so I'm limited by by what I have. But I'm trying to use it to the best of my ability. I looked upon all my inspiration for the old greats from Jamaica, and they were working on four tracks and eight tracks, that sort of thing and phenomenal music that was created from the technology that they had. So I'm trying to use what I have to do to what I can Yeah, I mean at a later stage I'll update some more gear and and a bigger desk, but at the moment, yeah, that works for me. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Fantastic. Well, I think limitations have something really healthy for creative you know, workflows and troubleshooting and Thinking and you know, thinking outside the box can be something, you know, really helpful. Marky Power Yeah, well guess one of the limitations of my system being older is that now with files getting bigger, like a 96k file, my system just sort of get a bit of a bit of a choke. So I need more RAM and that sort of stuff. But I just try to look for creative solutions around that to still work the way I work. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Yeah, I see that. I see that. Say, have you got any advice for musicians who struggle producing themselves at home? Or you know, people who are maybe just lost in this entire new world of recording and microphones and room acoustics? What are the things you would recommend to prioritize on and what are the things that are heavily debated, but maybe not that it's not that important? What What is your take on that? Marky Power I reckon a good pair of headphones is a worthy investment for any studio Amen, brother, because, you know, if you've got studio monitors, fine, you can spend anywhere from 500 to $50,000 on studio monitors, but then you got to treat your room. So you're not getting a true sort of indication of what your sound is, if even if you spend mega bucks on mega speakers, a good pair of headphones is a worthy addition. And then we'll give you a Do you Jan 'Yarn' Muths mind sharing with us which which set of cans you're using there. Marky Power These ones, these are not one on one talk about online. Jan 'Yarn' Muths You don't have to cut that out yet. Marky Power But I know if I was it'd be the HD seven hundreds just got a pair of AKG s on my head at the moment. Jan 'Yarn' Muths So you know, as I've had a cadres and you know, I own sennheisers. And there's so many great models around. And you know, they all sound different. But I'd realized that over time I use some of them themselves around it, they wrap themselves around it, and that becomes the new normal. So I guess I learned to overcome the sound differences. Marky Power Yep. The other thing would be to start with a good drumbeat. I guess that's essential for all good reggae music is good recorded drums, I think your body can't lie to. When you hear a good drum beat, your body just starts moving. That's uncontrollably telling the body that it's a good drum beat or one you can Jan 'Yarn' Muths use. Yeah, nice. When have you got any favorite drum beats? or personal favorites? Marky Power There's no favorites. We all have a good steppers or a one drop. Lots of space in those sort of rhythms. Yeah, I've been really impressed of like with the new stuff coming out of Jamaica like Lyla ik chronics and those sort of guys, they're using a mixture of electronic drums live so they use a live kick, but then they'll have a Roland pad. When the drummer is playing. There's the electronic sounds as a live drummer, snooze and sort of sound coming out of Jamaica. I'm really enjoying that sort of stuff, pushing the boundaries a bit as far as getting more of a hip hop sound to the drums. What Jan 'Yarn' Muths are the next couple of weeks gonna bring for you? What are you working on? Have you got any gigs planned and soon have any new gigs happening at the moment? Marky Power Yeah, it's really exciting. I've got three gigs this weekend. It's it's post COVID. We're coming out of it. So we're happy about our house concert on Saturday night, which is a nice little intimate thing with the Jesse Morris band. We're playing down in coffs Harbour area, and then on a Sunday, and then Sunday morning, and in the Sunday evening, we've got a couple of shows in the coffee area also. So I'll be on the on the live debris. Beautiful. Yeah, looking forward to that. So Jan 'Yarn' Muths that's an casaba, which is the Australian east coast. So anyway, any listeners in that same area, Marky Power maybe stop by? Yeah, thanks, john. often called the banana coast. This area. Yeah. Nice. Jan 'Yarn' Muths So if people want to find out more about you, is there a place online where they could go to listen to your music and find out more about you? Marky Power Oh, yeah, dub checks on Spotify, and then I've got a playlist of some dubs on on SoundCloud. You can find me there on the dub shark. Maki power. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Are you on Facebook? Have you have you got a website? Marky Power I've got personal pages on on Facebook under market power and dub engineer. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Would you mind if we add links to that in the show notes? Marky Power Of course, please, please feel free there. We just make this public so everybody can check out your work. Thanks, Yarn. Appreciate it. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Marky, thank you so much for for making the time today. And as literally the first interview I'm doing, which is phenomenal, and hopefully not the last. Hopefully we can speak again in the future. Marky Power Oh, it's great to chat with you. Jan 'Yarn' Muths Marky, thank you so much. Cheers. So this was our first interview of this podcast series with Mr. Marky Power of dub shag. Thank you so much Marky. It was great to have you on board. So thank you very much for listening. And I hope you enjoyed this interview. I have many more interviews planned for the future. So please stay tuned, subscribe to the podcast series. And I would really love if you could please leave a five star review for me in your favorite podcast app. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. I hope to see you again in two weeks time. In the meantime, please check out the show notes to find duck shack on the internet, who have listened to Marcus records and If you ever need a phenomenal session musician for reggae bass or dap effects mixing, please reach out to our market power and say hi for me. It will be great if we could expand our music family and reach out to new people. That's what it's all about keeping the community going big thanks to Marin of alchemy audio for helping with the editing of this episode. So thank you very much for today. I'm looking forward to speaking to you again in two weeks time. Thanks for listening and bye for now.