Repairing Hammond Organs, Building Studio Monitors and Borrowing Horses…

In this episode we’re sitting down with Mark and James from Present Day Production (PDP), the brilliant minds behind MUM - the modular upgradable monitor.

We talk through their wild journey from Mark’s early days repairing Hammond organs to the moment a young James rocked up to Mark’s studio for a band rehearsal and basically never left!

Together they spent years running an all-in-one studio service before a COVID-induced reset led them to launching their YouTube channel, racking up millions of views with their notoriously unhinged videos featuring more horses and paragliders than you’d expect…

Now, they’re entering a brand new chapter at School Farm Estate; workshop setups, exciting collaborations, and a sneaky first look at Studiology, their upcoming online venture packing 35 years of music industry wisdom into one place!  

Check out PDP here - https://www.presentdayproduction.com

#composer #composers #studiomonitors #musicproduction #studio #production #recordingstudio #hammondorgan #filmcomposer #tvcomposer 

Transcript

James (00:00.108)

And we did this whole journey, where Mark gets in a plane crash out at sea. We actually went to the point of Mark walking fully clothed in a suit into the sea in Norfolk.

Mark (00:10.67)

And some of the phone calls, the phone call to Sarah. Can we borrow a horse? What do you want a horse for? I said I just need a horse for 10 seconds.

James (00:20.972)

Everything was cancelled. 

Mark (00:23.202)

But that was a good reset, wasn't it? That's what we needed to say, Stop!

James

It was a good reset. We didn't realise that until a bit later, I think, that it was actually a blessing in disguise.

Mark (00:31.438)

But when you need that extra 10 % when the audience are really up for it and the band are really playing and you just need that 10 % it's there.

David (00:49:000)

Welcome to Two Composers, Two Continents. I'm David Tobin.

Jeff (00:52.14)

I'm Jeff Meegan. 

James

And from present day production, I'm James Nugent.

Mark (00:56.066)

And I'm Mark Ashfield. Hooray! 

David

It's a collab!

Mark (01:02.478)

Where are we? What are we doing here in this beautiful location? 

James

Outdoors!

David (01:06.342)

Yeah, well, I mean we were told we'd got John Williams and Hans Zimmer in and they couldn't do it, so the film crew were gonna step in and do it.

James (01:13.432)

Yeah, sorry about that…

David

We are in the beautiful, near Halstead, we're in Little Maplestead in, near Sudbury, Suffolk.

Jeff

School Farm Studios!

David

School Farm Studios, and it was just too nice to do indoors. Outdoor time.

James (01:28.202)

Indeed. Lovely bit of outdoor time. 

Jeff

And actually as we're sitting here, just now that we're just sitting and talking, it feels a little warmer than it did just a moment ago.

David

Yeah we were kind of regretting the decision here. You guys are based around here right?

James (01:38.994)

Yeah. Yeah, so we're actually based about two fields that way. We are yeah, it's literally a five minute drive away. We were based over in Epping in the south of Essex. Or is it West Essex? Basically not here. and it was about an hour's drive to get here and we were doing more and more stuff with School Farm as time went on and it just made sense for us to bite the bullet and move over this way. So two months ago, back in February, start of this year, we moved our HQ over here to a lovely house which doubles as accommodation and an office and very soon to be our workshop as well, for for the the stuff that we make. And so we're right on School Farm's doorstep.

David

We will definitely ask you about that. I just want to know at what stage did you share the dress code that nobody shared with me? Because I mean look at it. They look like a function band and the roadie…

James (02:33.158)

Well it is highly unusual for me to not be wearing a black hoodie. Like if you look in my wardrobe it's like staring into the void of space. Everything is black, there is no colour whatsoever, except for this one shirt which has a bit of white on it.

speaker-2 (02:46.252)

My wife, my wife Sian says when she sees the podcast, she's like, Who the hell is that guy? She's like, you don't look dishevelled and a mess on there and that just don't recognise you. So fair enough. Yeah, fair enough. Nice shirt by the way. And very nice as well.

Mark (03:01.934)

Thank you. I mean, these days I just have to go with what fits still because I'm not very good at clothes shopping. Yeah. I just don't do it. So it’s like, Oh, that doesn't fit anymore. doesn't know what that'll do. So that's.

speaker-2 (03:16.376)

It’s my own fault really, isn't it? This is great. So tell us a little bit, you guys met ten plus years ago?

James (03:23.778)

Yeah, so we met in 2014. So I was eighteen at the time and I was just finishing studying languages in sixth form. Twelve years ago. I'm thirty now. Yeah. As of last week. Yeah, I've made it to thirty somewhere. but yeah, so we met when I was eighteen and I was playing in a really shit rock band, making music that was just rubbish and rehearsing in the studio that Mark was part way through building. And my eighteenth birthday was coming up, I was seventeen at the time actually, and I said to Mark, I know nothing about music or how to record or anything like that 'cause I'm studying languages like an idiot.

Mark (04:03.758)

I said, I know, I can hear you.

James (04:05.918)

Can you teach me just how to record something so I can make some songs and stuff like that? And then I started going down. So we used to rehearse on a Thursday. I started going down an hour before each rehearsal and bugging Mark with questions. What's this? How does this work? What does this cable do? Blah blah blah. And Mark started teaching me what compression was and all the kind of stuff that you'd need to put a a track together. And then basically he couldn't get rid of me. And I started coming down more and more and more and Mark started getting me onto some sessions in the studio, working with artists, doing their recordings. and then there was one big session about six months down the line, which was my first solo session. So we had Chris Burkett, who was Sinead O'Connor's producer, he flew over from Canada to do a week long session with us with a band. And Mark basically just buggered off and left me to it. 

Jeff

Oh boy.

Mark

Trial by fire. He'll be alright. Disappeared, phoned Chris, how did he on? Chris said, yeah, brilliant.

Jeff

I take it it was alright or you probably wouldn’t be here right now…

James

Nothing caught fire.

David

Nobody died.

James (05:07.918)

And yeah, and from that point we then decided to start a new business together, under a new brand, doing recording and all that fun stuff. and then the rest is history. 

James

So Mark, you've had the studio for how long? Tell us about your background, because I know you were managing bands or doing tours?

Mark (05:30.38)

I've lots of things. Yeah, lots of things I did right. Lots of things I did wrong. Like we all do. So I mean, if you go back to school, I was a complete failure at school. I was really good up until I was 13. And then we got to have our options and we could pick what subjects we wanted to do. All I wanted to do was music. There were two of us in the whole year that wanted to do music. So they just locked the room and said, we're cancelling the music course. So every day I had to walk past this locked music room to go and learn about Oxbow Lakes from a slightly creepy geography teacher. 

Jeff

Oh God. 

Mark

So I just basically, I basically just stopped going to school because...just completely...

David (06:10.858)

Why would you go, right? Just not interested in what you're doing.

Mark (06:13.158)

And I managed to get a job, just a part-time job in a music shop in Cambridge. At 15, just Saturdays and got on well and they moved me up to full time. And then I got, I got to manage a competitors shop in another town and that kind of got me into the music industry, met loads of people. and then I really, it's James Taylor's fault. I really got into the Hammond organ, about 17 years old. I'd never been a fan of, of singing, particularly, vocals. Yeah.

David

I hear ya.

Jeff (06:47.63)

I've never heard anyone say that before. I've never been a fan of singing. That's so-

Mark (06:51.722)

Yeah, just just songs with lyrics in it that tells me what the song's about and that means I can't really make it up whereas instrumental music I could decide what it was about in my own head. So I was always asking my dad for records with no singing on please dad, any time you book a T in the MGs? Yeah, I've got records. Really?

David (07:08.334)

I’ve got a son like that, identical. Don't like it if they sing on it.

Mark (07:10.658)

Yeah, no, no, there are exceptions. And obviously, you love people like Stevie Wonder and, and, but yeah, generally I'd always preferred instrumental music. And I think the Booker T records had sown the Hammond seed from a young age. And then I saw the James Taylor quartet in Cambridge and he'd done before the band went on this, the Leslie on the stage spinning. I'm like, what the hell is that? And then James just came on and beat the hell out of the thing for two hours. It was the most, it was the most exciting thing I'd ever heard in my life. And I was like, right, I want one of those. And I'd got the DX sevens and the D 50s and all that stuff from era. Yeah. Sold the lot, got a Hammond from a church in York. And that was it just went completely down the, down the Hammond route. 

Jeff

Playing it, obviously?

Mark

Then I decided I wanted to gig it.

David

You want to gig a Hammond? Okay.

James (08:05.804)

Nice lightweight thing to carry around.

Mark (08:07.982)

So I bought a van. 

David

So at what stage did your back break?

Mark

Well, It never did, it wasn't actually that hard. And it was a lot quicker. As long as the venue hasn't got stairs or anything like that, you just wheel it in on the stage. There's none of this setting up stands and plugging in sustain pedals and all that.

David (08:22.572)

You're up this set of stairs that go like…

Mark (08:24.714)

I've done a few of those. Yeah. And then I very quickly learned if you want a gig of Hammond, you need to know how to repair it because you're pretty much going to be doing it at every set. So I bought another one, and just tore it to pieces and completely restored the whole thing from the ground up. And then this would have been sort of early 90s.

David (08:47.936)

How niche is this. A Hammond repairman.

Mark (08:49.39)

Yeah, they're really niche. And everyone said, you know, you're bonkers. What are you doing? What do you get? I don't think we're about them, but the sort of equivalent. And I was just like, no, it's like you say, it's that visceral thing. It doesn't move when you're playing it. It goes, come on then. Yeah. And it's played with boxing gloves on. Um, and it's that last 10%. You can get there with the clones. You get 90% of the way, but when you need that extra 10%, when the audience are really up for it and the band are really playing and you just need that 10%. It's there, and you can just pull those draw bars out. 

Jeff

It becomes part of the show.

Mark

That's the thing. Yeah.

Jeff (09:26.99)

Any studio kind of worth its salt is gonna have a Hammond. Yeah, it's not like they're rare.

Mark (09:34.124)

Yeah. Yeah. So I thought, I can, I can, if I can repair mine, I can repair other people's and it was just, and it was the end of the eighties, early nineties. So the Hammond had kind of died for a decade as all the digital synths and samplers came out. So the timing was perfect. Lots of bands were interested in the sound of the Hammond again, again, a lot down to James Taylor and his strangely numbered quartet.

Jeff (09:58.599)

For those Americans out there, 'cause really w if you say James Taylor to an American they're gonna think of Jimmy Taylor.

Mark (10:04.462)

Yeah

Jeff (10:05.46)

That's country James Traylor.

Mark (10:07.662)

Not that one.

David (10:09.41)

James J. T. Taylor, who by the way, I think has been known to do the odd Audio Network.

Mark

And here.

David (10:17.866)

At School Farm. Yeah, that must have been, well we'll go down that rabbit hole in a minute when you met him and anyway, but yeah.

Jeff (10:21.995)

So sorry, for the sidebar.

Mark (10:24.684)

Yeah, so that kind of got me into the sort of London scene as well. And then people just started phoning up. This was pre-internet. I'd put some cards out and leaflets out and got in touch with all the studios and said, you've got a Hammond and it's been left for 10 years and it needs a bit of love, I'll do it. And people just started phoning up and I was really busy. And yeah, it just kind of became known as the Hammond Man, I guess, on the scene and was hot.

David (10:53.92)

Sing us a song, I'm the Hammond man.

Mark (10:54.958)

Yeah, I was hiring mine out as well and had my own band and it was a sort of golden era for me, kind of really took off. I was never, I went down a bit in terms of musical education, I went down a bizarre path of kind of not giving up, but when I lost interest in the school education, I kind of lost interest in that as well. And so I never really learnt to play properly or read music or do any of the proper things. And to this day, I think, you know, put me behind a Hammond with the band. I'm all right, but put me in front of a piano and I'm lost. And I, and I realized I wasn't very good. I wanted someone that could teach me that would teach me how to sort of perform with the thing as well as actually play it and do all the things you can only do on a Hammond, like lean your arm on the keyboard and go with the drawbars and use the Leslie. And I thought, well, I've got to go to the source, haven't I? So I went, just went up to James Taylor after a gig. I used to see him gig all the time. I said, will you give me some lessons? And he said, yeah. Come around my house 11 o'clock Saturday morning. 

David

You had lessons with James Taylor?

Mark

And I did. Yeah. Yeah. For years, years and years. And then ended up repairing his Hammond and looking after that. And so, it sort of went full circle. And then I can't use a microphrone stand still.

Mark (12:20.814)

Yeah, and then decided to open a studio. I moved from London out to Harlow, that area. There was a great venue called The Square, which is sadly no longer there, which you used to frequent a lot as well. 

James (12:36.248)

That was where I did my first ever gig. In my shitty band.

Mark

That had some really great bands play there. It was a sort of historic venue. And so I just went down there one day and said, hello, I'm, I'm, and, Smithy, the, the promoter had heard of my band and said, we need to get you in and do some gigs. And that led to work with other bands. And so that, kind of spiralled into a little scene. And then we decided that the area needed a studio. So we just got a unit just on the outskirts of the town, turned that into a studio. And that's when it started to go a little bit wrong because I'd done this niche thing andgot lots of work and lots of customers and built a reputation. And now I was doing recording, mastering, live sounds, this genre, that genre, bloody weddings, everything. And what happened was the rates went down, the time spent doing it extended. So instead of doing one job for a thousand pounds, you're 10 jobs for a hundred and then you're doing a hundred for a tenner. And that happened. And that was kind of when you...when you came along.

David (13:49.87)

Well you lucked in then. Right at the right at the peak time.

Mark (13:52.194)

Right in the dip.

James (13:53.772)

Yeah. So at the at the start of the time that I was working with Mark, so 2014ish when we met, I I got involved with a lot of the recording sessions and I learned how to do mixing and mastering and kind of your all in one studio service kind of thing. And we continued that for years, right up until COVID, didn't we? We were doing lots of recording, doing live sound as well. We were touring with bands and doing tour management and doing the whole one stop shop for them, basically. So we'd provide a place for them to rehearse. We would record their albums, their promo material. We would book the gigs for them and then take them on the road, do their live sound and light. The whole one stop shop. And it worked. It was fun. Yeah. But certainly many, many twenty-two hour days in a row and you know, hundreds of miles on the road driving to Edinburgh and back in a day.

Mark (14:42.506)

Yeah, had to book a hotel.

David (14:45.112)

So explain when we were doing the preamble to this and we said, So have you got any good stories? And we said yes. And then told us a story and he I can't actually I can't tell that one. And then I was on tour with that no, I can't yet no, okay, I can't tell that one either. Yeah, pity. Yeah. What's this space though? Because when they die

James (15:08.322)

Sam's got it all recorded.

David (15:09.93)

So you were, you did the live-

James (15:13.454)

Yeah, so right up until COVID, really, until 2020, we were doing recording, rehearsing, live sound and light, all that kind of stuff. And then suddenly COVID hit and it all stopped, as it did for everyone. No one was recording anything, or if they were, they were just doing it at home. So they didn't need us. No one was doing any gigs. And so we suddenly found ourselves very unbusy all of a sudden. Everything was cancelled.

Mark (15:38.344)

That was a good reset, wasn't it? That's what we needed to say, right, stop.

James (15:42.614)

We didn't realise that until a bit later, I think, that it was actually a blessing in disguise for our business. Exactly. So we suddenly found ourselves literally with nothing to do. And we're like, right, well, let's just start a YouTube channel. Why not? We've got a bit of time to kill. And so we did. and that's where the brand Present Day Production came from. So that was formed in 2020. And we just started making videos about mixing techniques and recording techniques and stories of this and that. And it grew a following pretty quick. And-

David (16:13.238)

I think that's a bit of an understatement. I mean you've got getting on for fifty thousand subscribers, so-

James (16:18.156)

Yeah, it's pretty decent. And the channel's had a couple of million views over the years, so it's it's had a a decent amount of success. Yeah. just from people listening to us too waffle on really.

David (16:30.646)

God bless you. If we if that wasn't a thing we'd be in deep trouble as well.

James (16:34.304)

People people seem to really resonate with, so we we started our channel with the approach of no bullshit. There's lots of people out there that will just say things that they're paid to say or you know, it it doesn't feel like the authentic experience and we wanted to avoid that. So we've never taken a paid sponsorship for anything on a video. 

Mark (16:59.694)

We did one. I can’t remember what was. 

Jeff (17:01.838)

I was gonna say, it paid $10 million and we never did it again. 

James

Okay, excluding that one, it was we tried to keep it as authentic as possible, just our own thoughts. No one's paid us to say it, so we can say whatever the hell we want. And people seem to enjoy that. They seem to enjoy listening to an authentic opinion, whether it was right or wrong. I don't know. And also there was a bit of stupidity as well. So all of our videos we tried to avoid being the boring audio channel, yet another one talking about compressors and ratios and all that stuff. And there was useful information in there, but it was intertwined with entertainment because it just makes it easier to learn something if you're not bored shitless, basically.

Mark (17:44.75)

We made some videos and we were really bored making them and then really bored watching them. Just be us.

James (17:53.4)

Yeah, going mad slightly helps. 

Mark (17:55.63)

Yeah, so we thought, well, well, you know, we don't bore each other. So if we just, if we’re just us…

David (18:00.898)

Well it’s that theory that you mentioned to us before of saying, Well, if you'd watch it, if you like it, then then other people will too.

James (18:06.636)

And it it was being creative as well. So there was one video that we did. We did a review of some ATC speakers back in about 2021. I've seen that. And so just because it's we don't want it to be another kind of YouTube speaker review, yawn, we decided to intertwine a story where Mark loved them so much that he decided to marry the speakers. But the only way you can marry them, because you can't legally do that in the UK because that would be mental, would be to go to this made up island called Marzipan, where marrying inanimate objects is totally legal. And we did this whole journey where Mark gets in a plane crash out at sea. And we actually went to the point of Mark walking fully clothed in a suit into the sea in Norfolk in October, bloody freezing. And then there's all these people on the beach watching us film this. This mental guy carrying a box into the sea.

Mark (18:59.778)

The thing I’ll never forget was me just walking into the sea fully clothed with a box and this this paragliding or something whatever it is just came down and just landed about 50 feet away from me just looked and went all right afternoon I just carried on like it was perfectly normal

David (19:16.758)

This is Wednesday. Yeah. I love it.

Jeff (19:19.091)

That is suffering for your art though, 'cause it had to be freezing!

James

It was damn cold.

David (19:23.746)

And do know what? And it's at that point that he says, Great, can we just take one more?

Mark (19:26.638)

Yeah, just dry off and do another take.

James (19:31.19)

So it was that kind of thing. It was just being a bit stupid. Yeah. And it really drew in the audience because they knew they could have a laugh. And then I remember Sam, our producer, slash marketing man, slash general genius. I remember him saying that his partner, Anne Marie, who isn't a music producer, she's not a musician as far as I'm aware, she would complain if Sam watched our videos before she got home from work. And that's being repeated.

David (19:54.807)

You're on to something.

James (19:57.184)

Repeated through many, many people, you'd get a non audio person watching our videos because it was just a bit of a laugh. So even if they're not learning anything specifically to their taste, it's still worth watching. Right. And that really helped us. 

Jeff

Just 'cause I'm curious, it takes a long time to put these videos together. Something like this has to be written and did you record these things?

Mark (20:17.454)

Two weeks, three weeks every day and some of the fun calls the phone call to Sarah - can we borrow a horse? Yeah, and what do you want a horse for? I just need a horse for ten seconds and we did.

James (20:34.835)

And there's a horse in the intro of the video. 

Jeff

Oh my god. I haven't seen it. No, I certainly have to watch it.

speaker-2 (20:41.314)

I mean, at the risk of being the dull one in the going, what'll it cost? What'll it cost? So nobody's paying you at that stage because you haven't got to the point where these would be monetized, I'm presuming. Without getting into the geeky world of who gets paid for what ,two weeks to take a video to make a video for no money.

Mark (21:00.056)

How are we getting paid? 

James

It was tight. 

Mark

Well, the answer was so, so COVID taught me my mistake of going broad and trying to be all things to everyone. And therefore being nothing to nobody. I didn't want to do the Hammond thing anymore because you know, the back and the age and I'd fix them all. they worked.

James (21:19.182)

How irresponsible of you.

Mark (21:22.042)

I just did it too well. I should have put little timed resistors that pop after 10 years or something in each one. So I didn't want to do that again. So I thought, what's the part of the part of the audio process I'm most enjoying and I'm quite good at and really loving is mastering. So I started online mastering during COVID and that worked because again, I could, you know, I'm a mastering engineer. That's when people trust you rather than, yeah, I'll do that once I've mixed your wedding and made the food and done everything else. But I went super niche with the mastering as well. And I only did jazz, soul, and basically what I wanted to do and sort of-

David (22:06.92)

I love the idea that somebody says, will master my track and you say, Let me hear it and then you hear it and you say no-

Mark (22:09.932)

Yeah, like no, that's metal. I don't know what I haven't got clue what to do with that. So I'm not, I'm just not the, or just say, yeah, no, no, no. So that kind of sustained the business while we did silly things in between. And obviously it's a relatively fast process as well. And you can do it at two o'clock in the morning or, or at any time.

Jeff (22:33.186)

Does this lead us to how the monitors were created? 

James

Yes, it does.

David (22:37.014)

I'm like where did MUM come from?

James (22:43.502)

It was around 2022, Dolby Atmos became a thing. Well it had been a thing since about twenty fifteen, I think, but it became a big thing. Yeah. Apple started promoting it and everyone was talking about it. 

David (22:55.992)

You are talking to the right man.

Jeff

I love it, love it, love it. 

James

Right. So do we.

Mark (22:59.66)

Well, I didn't think I would. I thought, it's another surround format. It'll be dead in six months. Don't worry about it. And then I heard it and went, everything I've ever heard before is just one dimensional and rubbish. I've got to do this. It was literally that sort of epiphanal moment when we did it.

James (23:22.658)

So at that point we just had a left and right speaker, as most studios do, and we had some big ATCs, the SCM two hundreds, so they're they're large format monitors. And obviously to get into Atmos, you need a minimum of twelve speakers. You need 7.1.4. Seven round the edge, one sub channel, four on the ceiling. We couldn't afford twelve, fift or sixteen or however many ATC speakers, so we thought, how hard can it be? We'll just make our own.

Mark (23:48.686)

Yeah, well, it kind of, we did the maths, didn't we? And was like, okay, if we finance this, I'm going to have to do this many mixes a day. And by the time I'm 107 years old, we would have just about paid it off. So that kind of didn't...

James (24:00.096)

It was unfeasible to buy someone else's speakers unless they were budget ones. At this point it just felt a bit shit to do that. So we wanted to do it properly and get a good sound system into the studio. So we thought, what's the harm in trying?

Mark (24:13.032)

And I started taking some speakers to pieces and found that quite often in a 10,000 pound pair of speakers, there'll be like a 15 pound tweeter and thinking, well, what happens if I put a hundred pound tweeter in there? So did just start experimenting with that. And it was like, it does actually sound much better. So we kind of went on a path of, of, of, and we worked out that if we got the best, not just the best components we could in terms of price, but the best components we could, that would, would work together as a, as a system, it was actually quite affordable. And so we, I spent a year trying to develop the cabinets and we went through 35 iterations of cabinet. And I was so obsessed with this. I'd be, was in the car park at 11 o'clock at night in the summer, just sanding with the landlord coming around and going still here then.

James

Cause we didn’t have a workshop or anything, we were a studio.

Mark

Yeah. Right. Just doing it in the car.

David (25:17.326)

So literally in a car park!

Mark (25:22.043)

Yeah. And loved it. Loved every minute of it.

James (25:25.826)

So obviously that was great designing another speaker, but then we were what happened? We we got them into our studio and then people started coming in and hearing the speakers and hearing the work that was being done on the speakers and I remember s you got an email from someone saying, What new bit of kit have you put on this? Is it a new compressor or something? It sounds amazing.

Mark (25:44.898)

Yeah, I just sent some mastering out to a very regular client and they said, wow, what have you done? This is, you know, was good before, but this is like next level.

James (25:53.134)

And the only bit of kit that changed was the speakers. And so we were like, right, maybe we're onto something. And then we thought, what if we can sell them? And then from that, obviously the idea of the MUM, which is our main monitor that we sell, that hadn't been conceived yet. So this was just a speaker. And we didn't know much about speaker design at that point other than what we had been able to kind of fumble together. So we really thenwent on a deep rabbit hole of how do speakers work? How should you design a speaker? And started coming up with ideas. And then obviously if you're going to sell a product, you want it to be unique. You want it to be a bit different and have a selling point. So that's where the mum came along. So the MUM is the modular upgradable monitor. So the concept was that rather than buying speaker A and then in a year's time thinking, hmm, I need a bigger, better one, let's sell that mess around on reverb and eBay and blah blah blah. And then buy another one in. What if you could just upgrade that speaker? And that's where the MUM came from, the modular upgradable monitor. We created a speaker that you can modularly upgrade over time as your budget grows, as your needs grow, as your room gets bigger, whatever it might be. So is that something just to know a little bit more about the product? People can do it at home or do they need to send it into you guys? 

James

It's all user doable. What’s the word? User serviceable.

David (27:16.522)

User doable.

Jeff (27:17.59)

Did you invent like Kontakt things? Or I mean are you still with a screwdriver or is it something that's like so if you're to swap out the mid and the tweeter drivers, which is the most common upgrade, is literally you take six like Allen key bolts out, take some spade connectors off, put the new ones on, and then there's a remote software upgrade that tells the speaker what you've done. Because our speakers are all digital. So the crossovers are entirely DSP based, digital signal processing, that is, for anyone watching. So they're entirely digital, which means that rather than changing the crossover to put a new driver in in the analog world would mean unsoldering capacitors and putting new bits in. No one wants to mess around with that. And not many people can. If you asked me to do that, I'd probably die. You don't give them a screwdriver where we want to do that. So the the answer is software. So software controls the sound of our speakers and it can be remotely updated and upgraded for the new configuration. It becomes a hugely flexible and versatile product that we can keep adding to over the years as we come up with new tech or new software. So we're at the at this point now our abilities have grown substantially in what we're able to make, both physically because we know more about speakers, and also software wise as well. So I'm in the process at the moment of making some room calibration software for our speakers. Which is a pretty deep, difficult task, but it's only possible now because we've got a deep understanding of how speakers work and how they interact with rooms and stuff like that. Which we could never have done four years ago. We were just fumbling around making speakers. So it's been a really interesting growth over the last four years to where we are now and what we're now capable of, what we know we still can't do because we're only a small company. S up until what, maybe six months ago, it was just me and Mark. It's always been just two of us for the last twelve years. and then we employed, well we've we've had one of our colleagues, Nigel, who's who's come in and out and helped in the workshop here and there. But he's now kind of on board a lot more. and we've got Callum who is our new guy in the workshop as well. So he's in a couple of days a week and the team is growing. As I say, we've now got Sam on board doing our marketing as well. So it's like a business starting to grow.

Mark (29:33.902)

It is almost like a business.

David (29:37.151)

I am interested though, so these are stereo speakers. As opposed to what I mean by that is this is not an Atmos system.

Mark (29:43.96)

It can be either. Yeah.

James (29:44.654)

So we had an Atmos system in our studio. So we had seven point one point four in there. If you want just a pair of them, that's fine. 99% of our customers buy a pair of them. obviously because Atmos is very expensive to get into. but yeah, I mean that it'll be in whichever configuration you want. If you want five point one, seven point one, you just buy that amount of speakers. 

Jeff

So you guys ou're coming out with a subwoofer though, right? 

James

Yes. Yes. so we've actually just started taking pre orders.

David (30:12.046)

He’s working his budget out on this.

James (30:15.914)

So we like to try and another big thing for us is our main selling point with the speakers as well as the upgradeability is the fact that it's direct sales. So there's no retailer, there's no distribution. If you want to buy a pair of speakers, you email me and I will sell you the speakers, we'll send them worldwide. So we've now got them in 40 countries. And because of that, we're able to give really good customer service as well. So when it comes to upgrades and stuff like that, we can help the customers out in certain situations. So like the room calibration software will be free for all of our users. Completely free, no cost. And the subwoofers, which is what I was coming to, we always like to try and help out our existing users where possible. So before we we haven't actually officially announced the subwoofersyet. I spent two or three days ago, the whole day emailing all of our existing customers saying if you want this, you can get in early for a little bit less money. Just to help you out, because you've helped us out by buying a pair of speakers, you can have X amount off if you wanna get in early and get them. So we like to try and keep it kinda homegrown and and kinda look after the people that are helping us run our business. Absolutely.

Mark (31:26.51)

So many people said to us in the industry said to us, you can't do a direct sales model. That's suicide. It will never work. And it's absolutely the best thing we ever did. You get to know all your customers. And it's a high value product. If we were selling something for a tenner, you know, to make turnover a million pounds, you need to sell a hundred thousand or you don't get to know every customer that needs to go on Amazon or whatever.

Jeff (31:36.034)

That's really interesting.

Mark (31:54.574)

Because it's a high value sort of niche bespoke product. We've made so many friends through people buying our products, which is really nice.

Jeff (32:05.87)

Yeah, I'm fascinated. I still haven't heard him. I wanna hear em maybe even later on today we can- But what a cool idea. Is anyone else on the market doing that? I think you guys are the first to do a modular upgradable speaker.

David (32:20.014)

Never before in the history of the world!

Jeff (32:22.516)

Never in the history of the world. 

James

Exactly. So it it's true that someone probably has thought of it before and could have done it before, but when you've got retailers and distributors and all that taking their cut on top of it, it doesn't become feasible to It's because we have that extra margin to be able to play with stuff because we sell direct to our customers that we're able to do that. 

Mark (32:43.0)

And it was about solving a problem as well. So we did something very unique with the amps. Most, most active speakers have a plate amp in the back, which is great. Unless you want to soft it, mount them in a wall and then you've got this heat generating thing in the back of the speaker that you can't get to, in a very well insulated wall. Not a good idea. So we thought, well, why don't we make the amp, rack mount unit that can either be bolted onto the back of the speaker or you can just take it off and put it in a rack.

Jeff (33:10.639)

Oh my god, that's so cool.

Mark (33:11.182)

And it's just little things like that. Why has no one done this before? And the answer is money. It just costs money to do that.

David (33:20.322)

So you’re doing all of this it has clearly taken over your business lives. I don't know, I'm not prying in the rest of your lives, you know.

James

There’s an outside?

David (33:31.394)

We had to talk him into taking the glasses off. But you do that. What about the YouTube channel at that point?

James (33:41.4)

So that's the thing. We love making YouTube videos, but it's finding the time we could throw videos out there, but if we don't put the thought and the energy into making them good, what’s the point? So that's why we haven't I mean, back in the summer we promised our audience that we would start putting out weekly videos. And since the summer we've done two. Yeah. Two videos. Three videos. You are so welcome.

David (34:02.146)

We’ll swap you for a pair of speakers.

James

What a deal.

Mark (34:09.934)

But now there's been a, there's been kind of the next chapter started now and that's being here. We're renting a house from Andrew. We've built a fantastic relationship with him and Stef and Hester and Karen and all the amazing people here. And that, and already it’s opened so many doors. And as you know, Andrew is just the loveliest, kindest, most wonderful person you’ll ever meet. Yeah. He’s just incredible.

Jeff (34:34.646)

We’re sitting on his back porch filming this.

Mark (34:38.606)

Just incredible. And it became very obvious towards the end of last year that we really need to be here because there's things that we're embarking on together with him as well. New projects which are going to involve lots of filming and we need to be able to film some stuff here and some stuff back at the house. And so now we're in a position where we can do that. Moving the speaker business has been a pain and we still haven't largely we've still been way behind with that but you know that'll happen.

David (35:08.854)

It's gonna be fun trying to keep going all it's like plate spinning.

Mark (35:12.684)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm, I'm kind of taking myself out and having Callum and Nige is great. Cause I, so I, when we first started, was, you can't do anything physical labour without blood and just catastrophe. So I was building the cabinet, sanding the cabinets, assembling everything I have, I don't think I've sanded a cabinet for about a year now because Nige just does the whole lot. So having people to do that side of it is great. So that's freed me up to kind of go, right, okay, what's next? What are doing here? Why am I living with my business partner? I'm 53. What's that about? And actually it's amazing. And it's about looking at things differently. The industry is changing, AI is coming along. A lot of people are terrified. And one thing we learned from our customers is that it can be really hard to make money these days as a mixing engineer or as a session musician, and I've learned a lot from that, from the niching down thing, you niche down and do become known for as the specialist for one thing. Yeah. It works. If I'd done synth repairs, tape machine repairs, everything, I've been charging, you know, 30 quid an hour. And I'd have been competing with a hundred other techs at that particular time in, in history, but because I was the Hammond guy and it was a specialist thing.

If, I remember Ronnie Scott's phone in because they'd hired a Hammond in, couldn't get in touch with a company that had hired it from it went down during the sound check. and they, and it's, you know, it's Jimmy Smith or whatever. They need it working. So they find me, I can charge whatever I want at that point in time. It's like, okay, I'll come and do it. But, you know, I was always fair. I never used to, to rip people off, but that really taught me the power of sort of being a specialist in something.

David (37:04.022)

This is gonna sound bizarre, but I saw a Bruce Lee interview. You know the-

Mark

Martial arts guy.

David (37:12.204)

And he said, never trust the person who's done a hundred things once. He said, always trust the guy who's done one thing 100 times.

Mark (37:20.846)

Yeah, that's such a good story.

James (37:23.8)

It's like if you were getting brain surgery, you'd want the guy who's done brain surgery his whole career, not the guy who also like lays bricks for five minutes and then goes and you know, fixes Yes. Count me in, what a bargain. I mean yeah.

Mark (37:38.19)

So our next thing is we're trying to, and working with Andrew as well, he's obviously got huge experience in building businesses worth hundreds of millions, really successful at what he does, again, by nicheing down and doing one thing very, very well. So we're launching a platform to basically try and educate people that are just starting out and might not know what to do to actually earn a living in music to help them. And a lot of it comes from the schooling system as well. I mean, the schooling system was no good for me at all. It's designed for, in this country, it's been pretty much the same since the 1950s. And it's designed for factory workers. You start on the bell, break on the bell, finish on the bell, get your head down. Don't copy anyone else in the class. Whereas actually in the real world, if you've got a maths problem...

David

We’ve got another guest by the way.

Mark

Peebles! Hello!

James (38:42.359)

Hey Bean.

Mark (38:43.63)

So yeah. In the real world, if you've got a, I gave you a math problem this morning and which I can't solve. Um, so you, you actually, you want the swatty maths kid to do your math homework for you. So you don't have to do a crap job of it.

And we're not taught that at all. It's like, you must not get him to do your homework. You got to do it yourself. He's like, well, I'm crap at it. He's like, well, do it anyway.

James (39:12.686)

So we're both good at our own things. So you're very good at things with hands and creative thinking and coming up with like ideas and plans. Yeah. And I'm good at executing them and good at ones and zeros. So he's allergic to computers. If he like the he he emits this aura of anti technology. We saw an example of this yesterday. So there was one day I was editing a video and I'd been going for about eight hours and Mark just walked into the room, and it crashed. The computer crashed. Like blue screen of death. Gone. I was like, what the f no reason for this to crash.

Mark (39:49.806)

I think what really worries me is because we've been living here for a few months now and the sky at night is fantastic because there's no light pollution and I've been looking up and at any time in the sky you can normally pretty much see five or six satellites and I'm always conscious of I shouldn't really be looking at those. I'm just waiting for them to sort of start.

Jeff (40:12.238)

Why’s my phone not working all of a sudden?

Mark

Andrew there’s a satellite in your pond…

James

So yeah, he can't do ones and zeros. And then conversely, I if you give me a screwdriver, someone gets hurt. Normally me. 

David (40:25.054)

Yeah, I mean on another podcast with with Sam, we got asked what makes a collaboration work for us. And it's exactly what you're saying. It's you don't have the same skill set. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean if you if you said actually I could do what he does, it's fine. Then what would be the point?

James (40:42.282)

I could probably try, but do it very badly. Yeah.

Mark (40:44.776)

Likewise with me. It would take me forever. I can build a website. It would take forever. It would be awful.

speaker-2 (40:49.998)

Yeah, well you're not allowed to get anywhere near the computer about the name. Are we I don't know, you'll have to just say no, sorry, not yet. Are we allowed to know the name of this business or is that too soon?

Mark (40:58.024)

Yeah, no, it's going to be called Studiology. 

David

Studiology. 

Mark

Studiology. So Studio-logy. Studio-logy. Yeah and it's, and that, you know, that's gonna, so it's, it's, it's basically everything we've kind of learned or everything I've learned in particular over the last 35, 40 years about, as you know, what, what I did right what I did wrong, I did right again, what I did wrong again and it always, and I'm thinking there's a pattern here, it always comes back to basically the same thing and nobody teaches you that stuff. You come out of music college or wherever and I've been doing some sort of hookup last year, towards the end of last year, I did some hookups with some colleges and universities to really find out what the problems are in the kind of educational market and I was, I probably shouldn't say this, but I was horrified. Sitting around a table with eight, you know, 18 or 19 year olds and a couple of tutors and four of them don't know how to operate a menu in a pub. They just, they don't know what they like or what they want. And I'm like, well, have you got any allergies? You know, you have to, are you vegetarian is you can narrow it down. There's a section there with pizza. 

David (42:25.836)

This is gonna be a long afternoon.

Mark (42:28.43)

Yeah. Yeah. And I thought, okay. And asking them, you know, what they've learned about, business and, you know, what do they want to do? And they wanted to be musicians. They want to be session musicians. So as anyone taught you how to actually go out and find work as a session musician?

David (42:45.784)

It's been a bugbear of mine for a while. I was a Berklee student many years ago. And when we were taught, there were modular courses and they started from the perspective of where do you want to end up and what are the schools you're going to need to get there. And yeah, there were core things. But and I say this without knowing the certainty of it, but from the people I've seen on the courses I've seen that are current, they work the other way. They don't say where do you want to end up? They say here's what we're going to teach you. 

Mark (43:13.324)

Yeah, exactly.

David (43:14.678)

Well I think that's arse about face. Yeah. Because actually when you then said to them what you want to do at the end, I I don't know.

Mark (43:21.39)

Yeah, you don't know what the outcome is. You need to start with the outcome and reverse engineer it.

David (43:26.452)

Like any project management, you don't start at the beginning and then say, Well, let's see how far we get towards our goal. You say, Where do I need to end up? And let's work one step back. When do I need to get to that point and…

James (43:36.152)

Well, I I was in that exact position before I met you. So I was studying languages. My intention I studied French, German and Spanish. My intention was to be a French teacher because I was like, Well, I don't know what else to do.

Mark (43:45.678)

Well that's the system you were thrown into. You will learn this and you'll get a degree in that and then you'll become a languages teacher. And there's nothing wrong with that. No, but the world doesn't work. I mean even now you've got to think outside the box a bit. I think even with our living arrangements, I know people with 100 % half a million pound mortgages that are paying interest only for 20 years. So in 20 years and you know people say to us...

Mark (44:15.694)

Yeah, people have said to us, I'm renting a house, that's stupid, isn't it? And I'm like, no, having a half a million pound mortgage, where in 20 years time, after having paid thousands of pounds a month, you still owe half a million pounds, but you've also spent a hundred grand doing the house up and 40 grand on the kitchen. But we're just taught you've got to buy a house, you've got to have a mortgage, you've got to do this, you've got to do that. And we live in this bizarre situation where we're living with my business partner.

Mark (44:44.448)

And yeah, why did we, yeah, let's just do something bonkers and.

James (44:47.798)

We're fortunate that we're in a place where it's big enough that if we need space we can disappear to the other side of the hill.

Mark (44:53.176)

Yeah.

David (44:53.69)

And I'm hazarding a guess that if you said to Andrew, I just we just need to borrow a horse, he wouldn’t even ask why.

Mark (44:59.406)

Yeah, what colour do you want?

speaker-2 (45:09.903)

I love it. Okay. So, so studio, Studiology is the next thing. And MUM will continue.

Mark (45:12.972)

Yeah. That's the next thing. Absolutely.

James (45:19.97)

Yep, the speakers aren't stopping. If anything they're growing, we've got more models on the way and all that fun stuff. 

David (45:24.152)

I love the idea of the speaker growing. Literally.

James

Yeah, we we plant them in the ground and water them every now and then and they're

David (45:29.644)

And and the web and the the YouTube channel?

James (45:32.246)

YouTube channel carry on. The thing is, so we've got other physical products as well that we're working on. So the the kind of grand goal with the the physical product thing isn't just speakers, it's to be able to have an ecosystem for want of a better word, where you walk into the studio and everything is made by us. So we're working on acoustic panels at the moment. So you can treat your studio acoustically and get it sounding good. we've got obviously the MUMs, the subs, we've got bigger main monitor MUMs on the way. There is a studio desk, like a modular desk system that we're also working on. 

Mark (46:04.43)

A whole monitoring ecosystem really. Yeah. Stand, motorised.

James (46:10.702)

Speaker stand, yeah.

Mark (46:14.248)

Yeah, motorised speaker stands to match.

James (46:16.428)

Yeah. So it's still staying niche, it's staying within one area but expanding within that area to be able to offer a comprehensive package.

David (46:23.49)

What are you gonna do with the other ten minutes of your lives? I mean it's just nuts.

James (46:27.362)

The next product will be a time machine. 

Jeff

You're gonna need one.

speaker-2 (46:31.052)

I’m feeling like we need to up our game a little bit here. I mean they they're doing all of that.

James (46:36.254)

The number one thing is you have to be passionate about what you do 'cause otherwise you just resent it. Yeah. You just hate it. Because if if we were doing the amount of work we're currently doing but doing something really boring or something we weren't interested in, I'd have gone bloody mental years ago. 'Cause most of the time we're doing seven days a week, aren't we?

Mark (46:55.911)

Yeah, but it's not, it's not, it's not work.

James (46:59.15)

It's hard work but it's not work.

David (47:01.378)

We've often said this, we're like, Thank God I don't have to get a job. Actual job. Yeah. Get found out and then we you know-

Mark (47:07.254)

And just knowing that tomorrow is Saturday, so knowing that if I wanted to have Saturday, if I could. But actually I don't really want to, so I'm probably going to do some work in the morning and then we're going to come down here and Andrew's got a concert going on, so we're going to come and film that for him. And you'll chase the Alpacas around the field. And I just love it. It's like working with you guys, it's been an absolute pleasure. We've got to know you over the past few days and it's that, you know, that's not work. It's just great fun.

David (47:34.286)

And it's also proof that there are people in the and and most of the people in the music industry and the and and areas around the music industry that are not pricks.

Mark (47:43.116)

Yeah.

James (47:43.896)

That's one thing we've really found working with School Farm. And we know that Andrew has got his what was it? No pricks policy. No knobs policy. You have to be a a decent person to work here. And we have found that that does hold true. Is everyone within this world that Andrew works is decent, you know. What's the point if you're gonna be horrible? Like-

David (48:04.93)

Well if you're gonna work seven days a week, yeah, then you might as well enjoy it.

Jeff (48:07.95)

Well, and that's the thing. Clearly you guys are having fun. You know, I wouldn't know you guys were working as hard as you are, because it it's effortless. Yeah. It seems effortless.

Mark (48:18.412)

Yeah, exactly.

Mark (48:23.662)

There's still sweaty days and nights where you don't sleep and that's one the things over the last few months with the move and everything we've got a bit behind on shipping.

David (48:33.922)

My dad's favourite phrase was if it was that easy everybody would be dead. And that's true. Well this-

Jeff (48:37.494)

Honestly, just a real s quick thing. It's it's for a geek like me, a dream come true to be able to make your own studio monitor. I, just that blows my mind. Yeah. And I'm really excited for you guys 'cause that's really cool.

Mark (48:54.286)

Yeah, it was was a it was especially even when we got the first sort of prototypes which were badly painted with a roller.

James

MDF with all the little bits of shit that you’ve rolled over.

Mark

Yeah, when it sounded amazing, it was like, oh okay.

David (49:11.17)

It probably wouldn’t have been as fun if you if it had just come back slickly polished.

James (49:13.174)

You know what we've said that? I think if we'd if we had a million pounds spare and we were just at the point of buying an Atmos system, this would never have happened. It happened because we had no money. If we'd have had a million pounds, we'd have paid someone else to install it. Done, job done, start mixing. But we built something out of need and because of our –

Jeff

Ingenuity. 

Mark 

Desperation.

James

You know, ingenuity, but lack of funds.

James (49:38.926)

Desperation. Yeah and and that's what made it happen because now we understand how to build products and stuff because we had to, 'cause that was the only choice.

David (49:48.874)

I love the idea that your strap line will be where ingenuity meets desperation.

James (49:52.632)

Hell yeah. Living life one panic at a time.

David (50:00.349)

Oh that's even better. that's fantastic. It's great. Well we're gonna have to do this again at a point when Studiology I've got to think about that now. I'm like Studiology. We're gonna w when it's running, yeah we can actually then put a bit on the screen and say this is what it is. And

James (50:16.748)

Yeah, that'd be cool. We’ve been prototyping the software and getting all that running and it's looking rather exciting.

Mark (50:22.028)

And it has to, and again, this is where we're a great team. So James can do all the technical stuff, but I'm approaching it from the user perspective. If I've got to put anything in fucking spreadsheet, it's not happening. So when I want any of that, I just want to be able to type at it or talk to it. And, and, and, and so.

David (50:39.286)

Well off you need any beta people on it, just give us a shout. Genuinely we'd we'd be well up for that. Will you come back and do this again? Can we do this again? We'll have to down the line a bit with it. 

Jeff

Next time we’ll do it in the pool though. 

James

Underwater.

David

With a horse. You can be the paraglider!

James (50:59.714)

We were hoping that Andrew would cut the lawn behind us.

Mark (51:02.126)

Oh, that would've been great. He’s already done it.

Speaker-2 (51:05.071)

I credited one of the dogs I just let the other one go. I was just like style it out, the other one will come in. Absolutely brilliant.

Mark (51:11.032)

But yeah, next episode in the pool, me with a suit holding the speaker. Yeah, Jeff can fly in.

David (51:19.404)

And we'll sit the we'll sit the bear up as well. We can sit the bear up and yeah, he can-

Mark (51:21.646)

Yeah, Evie's bear which has been chewing all afternoon. Look at it, look the state of it. Look at that.

Jeff (51:33.526)

All right, thanks so much you guys.

Mark (51:35.068)

Thanks for having us.

David (51:37.4)

Really fun.