(00:03):
Welcome to behind the space bar episode one. RTFM why reading the manual is the key to your success. Hey everybody, this is will Doggett and welcome back to what used to be called the from Studio to Stage podcast, which is now called behind the space bar. It's been over year since I've done any podcasting. And if you follow along with the original from C to stage podcast I wanna say thanks or playing along. Thanks for listening. And that was so, so much fun. What happened towards the end of the podcast is I really had this drive and desire to do what I was calling at the time behind the space. And it was a segment and focus on playback texts. And I have some really incredible, incredible interviews recorded. Some of which you still have not heard that have not released.

(00:50):
And I got three episodes into that and I gotta be honest. I was just burnt slap out. That was the most work I've ever done on any project. I did all of it from editing, mixing, recording, interviewing mastering the podcast and it was so, so, so much work. And so I just gave up, I just absolutely quit. And I think one that's unfair to you, those of you that are listeners that have been following along really enjoyed the podcast and it's 100% unfair to the folks like Mike McKnight, Laura Esk, a Pablo Moonia Eric Morris, great friend of mine, a lot of, lot of just people that took their time up to do interviews. And so here's what I wanna say one, the podcast is back it's weekly, Monday mornings, 10:00 AM central. It's now called behind the space bar, which is gonna make a little more sense.

(01:42):
The come is from studio stage. The podcast is behind the space bar. We also launched a podcast particularly for worship leaders in musicians, production techs called volunteer friendly. That's out Thursdays at 10:00 AM central, if you wanna listen to that. But I will rerelease that content that we were working on before. I've kept all of it archived on this page, which may be a little confusing for some people. It gets confused and I'll remove them, but there's a lot of really great previous episodes, but I wanna start fresh. So episode one, we're starting fresh out of the gate. This podcast is gonna be focused all on tips and tricks for playback techs or people running tracks on stage. And we're gonna be able to talk you know, in tutorials, we talk a lot about the the, how this podcast is gonna be a little more relaxed, a little more chill.

(02:27):
And we're gonna talk about the why some, and then we'll talk about some of the, the like philosophy behind things, the way to think about things, not necessarily how to do this particular thing in Ableton live or not even necessarily what audio interface is best or things like that. And that'll be some of the stuff we talk about, but I think of, I wanna talk about some of the, the head stuff. You know what I mean? Like today's topic RT FM took me forever to record the centric cause I kept laughing. RTFM why reading the manual is the key to your success. The I've just thought through things that have helped me personally, things that have benefited you know, folks that I've worked with, that I enjoy to work with. And there's these similar skills that I think that are super important.

(03:06):
I'm not saying the skills I have or the skills that are important, but behind the space bar is all gonna be talking about some of this stuff. So let's get to it. So again, I wanna apologize for the the absence I logged into apple cast last week as I was preparing to start re-recording and saw that it was gosh, over a year ago that we initially recorded and so apologize for the delay. But I promise we're back on it. I am releasing content every single day, starting 2022. So every single day, 10:00 AM central, you can find content podcast on Monday and Thursday day. There's also another podcast I'm potentially cooking up. So if these go well and you guys enjoy 'em, then we'll keep going. So this is gonna be super, super fun. So I'd encourage you also for the first time ever.

(03:52):
This is a video podcast. If you're listening on, on the apple podcast app, which is great, stay there. That's awesome. But you can find on YouTube, you can search the app stores, any app store for, from studio stage in Dell from studio stage app at the time of recording this it's available for iPhone, apple TV, iPad. In one Mac, you can download, listen there, you can listen it from studio stage.com. And then soon it'll be on Roku, Android, all those places. So by the time you hear this it may actually already be out. So just search for from CSA. So do me a favor. We're all gonna chill, relax, grab a cup of coffee. I've got a nice iced coffee here and we're just gonna hang out and have a good time. So if you wanna watch the video podcast, it's great.

(04:32):
You can watch me drink coffee, which it's quite delicious. So I have a couple sips throughout the show but we're just gonna hang out and talk. So again, today's topic is RTFM, which of course stands for read the freaking manual. I will say, just to keep this a clean show. But the SubT for this is why reading the manual is the key to your success. One of the things I thought of when I was thinking about this the first time that this concept, like this is something I've done is, is when I get a product, I read the manual one of the keys to my success, someone emailed me and I apologized, I forgot who it was but emailed me a couple months ago and said, well, how did you learn what, you know?

(05:13):
And I said you know, it's a lot of trial and error, but the most important thing was I read the entire Ableton live manual. And I said, oh, I've been kind of holding off, not knowing if I should do that. And, and you know in fairness to them, like, I think a lot of people haven't read the entire Ableton live manual, but I can say, I mean, for me, that's like one of the things that's been super key and super important to my success as an Ableton certified trainer. But this, this came up to me reminded me the first time I read this book was maybe the first time I thought about this, but mark Cuban is a book called how to win at the sport of business. And he's obviously the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. He's on shark tank.

(05:52):
He invest in a lot of different things. But this is a really good book. It's a short book, really short read. I mean, I think I read this and actually, I don't even know how many pages are, it's 4 99 on Kindle, super cheap. I actually read this as a ebook thing, which I never read eBooks. I always read the actual hard copy of it or paperback, whatever, but it's a really, really good book. I really enjoyed it. But one of things mark said in that book is he talked about how he basically learned how to work with computers, just by reading the, the manual and how he essentially started his computer business just by reading the manual. And then people showed up and asked how to do stuff. And because he had read the manual, he knew and he charged them and he solved their problem.

(06:33):
And that's how he built a business. And it was funny to me. It was really similar. I, you know, I do a lot of stuff on YouTube and have done YouTube videos for quite a while. And I'm, I'm doing more of that now, like I said, in 2022 releasing a piece of content every single day, which is just absurd. You talk about being burnt out a year ago from the podcast. My solution is to do that work time set Evan, but we'll see how it goes. It'll be great. It's gonna be fun, but I've done stuff on YouTube for a long time. And one of the things that's always interesting when you do YouTube videos and my wife and I have talked a lot with my son about this, cuz he's at the age and, and the season of life where he really wants to he wants to get into YouTube.

(07:17):
He wants YouTuber and I'm fine with that cuz you know, I make some money, it's a small amount of money, but I make some money every single month from YouTube. And it's the main marketing input to my business. So I know it's a valid thing. So I'm like, that's great. One of the things we constantly talk to him about is you know, just being aware of there's people in the world that are just, you know, unkind people and they'll leave comments and they'll say things, whatever you gotta be prepared for that. And so I've shared examples with him, of, of people just being like jerks and saying stuff in YouTube comments. But one of the things I routinely get and this is the reason I have two podcasts and release a piece of content in every single day. And I, I still have things to say is I tend to talk lot.

(08:00):
I tend to be more interested in the why than just the how, and that doesn't always go really well on YouTube. That's why, again, I'm super excited for this podcast is you can see me like leaning back in my chair, getting relaxed. That's why I'm super excited about this podcast. As a way to just kind of hang and take our time and, and explore different subjects and talk about things because you have a little bit more time to spend on the why and not just the how, but one of the comments I get often on YouTube is man, this video is 15 minutes long. It could have been two minutes long, blah, blah, blah. And or people will say, you know like I just did a video. It hasn't released at the time of this was, and it hasn't released yet.

(08:42):
That is answering something for worship leaders. And it's like a 22 minute video where I walk through it. And I just, I know some jerk in the comments will be like, this is the answer. Don't watch the video. Just here's the answer kind of thing. And that's fair. But there, I see this continual theme and, and I don't wanna poke on people that are on YouTube, but the, again, a continual comment of like this should have been a two minute video and I'm like, well, my first thought is, if you think it should have been a two minute video, then why don't you go turn on a camera, build a studio in your home and record a two minute video so we can watch your YouTube movie. And of course, people that comment on YouTube videos are not gonna create, they're gonna critique and that's fine.

(09:22):
There's some good stuff about things people say you can learn, you should be shorter. You shouldn't talk as long, blah, blah, blah. Those are all good things. But what I continually think when those comments come up and I jokingly, I, I don't think I've written. This is, I wanna say, why don't you just read the manual? Like if you read the manual, you wouldn't be watching my video anyway. And this is reality. This is kind of, I believe mark says this in the, the book again how to win at the sport of business. So I'll include a link in the show notes to the book. If you wanna check out it's a great book, but he says this in the book. And I, I think it's similar thing. Like if people would read manuals, he's like I would be out of business.

(09:58):
And that's the same thing for me. I have an entire business built on teaching people how to do things. Now there's more than just a manual as a way to learn stuff that you, you get experience, you use stuff sorry, I gotta take a sip of coffee here. You could read a manual and using Ableton live, but if you've never used Ableton live for tracks on stage, then you're missing a bit of that. So it's not just that, but the thing I always think of again, you know, when, when people comment on YouTube and they say I get to the point, man, it's taking too long. Cause I want to go, why don't you just read the manual? If you read the manual, you wouldn't be here in the first place. So I, and I see this as a common common trait, similar trait amongst friends of mine that are really successful as playback texts is there's a curiosity and that curiosity they just dive in, they just dig in and they read everything.

(10:50):
They can. They dive in deep on the content. And I think in the age of the internet and the age of YouTube and the age of sites, like from studio to stage that help you learn how to use Ableton live. It's easy to forget. One of the best ways to learn is the manual. And so that's what I wanted to do. Today's episode RTFM. And I do think it's a key to people's success because one don't tell people, you know, those of you that are subscribed, I don't want you to cancel to your subscription, but I do think it's, if you read the manual to learn how to do something, ultimately it'll be faster. There's a difference between and, and something I've considered is doing like some how to guides, because I think your brain process is reading step 1, 2, 3, you know, the 20 better.

(11:35):
And sometimes it's a lot faster than watching a video, watching a video and listening to someone, teach watching what they're doing is good. It's beneficial. But I think having that step by step thing is super helpful. So for me, I think sometimes reading the manual is a faster way to get to your solution. I think another thing that's helpful is it helps you in a previous episode of the, of the pod, when we talked about cool people said pod, by the way, instead of podcasts, if you didn't know that I, I believe I talk about learning new software, actually. I know I did, but one of the things I talk about there is like learning the, the world view of the software, right? And under standing how that software views the world and how the, the, the people that, that created the software view the world and, and, and how they're thinking about things.

(12:20):
And that helps you understand the software. You get a lot of that reading the manual, right? You understand, as you start to read the live manual, why it was created, it was created for flexibility with audio tracks, it's, it's built more for creative people, then engineers, if you love protos, you may not like Ableton live, cuz it's, it's faster, it's leaner, it's meaner. And pro tools takes about 50 clicks to do something that takes, you know, one shortcut in Ableton. And again, I'm not saying one is right or wrong, but obviously protos is wrong. I think we can, can all agree on that. But the, the point is reading the man and you start to pick up like, oh, this is what they're thinking. So then when you encounter another issue with it and something comes up and you gotta figure out how to solve it, then if you understand the world view, then you can get there a lot faster than if you just are going to YouTube and searching.

(13:11):
How right. And so another up that I wanna do at some point is the difference between how and why and why that's important. I think we get it, but YouTube is all about how we talked about that. Reading the manual is, is about how, but it's also a lot of times about why they explain why there's monitor modes and able to live in different monitor modes. It's not there to annoy you and to make you remember to click off every time you have a mic connected to your computer and accidentally don't have your headphones plugged in or something like that. You, you understand you understand why they did what they did. I think reading the manual too is just, it's a good skill to have, right? It's a good skill to build. It's a discipline to have. It's the same reason why sitting down and reading a book.

(13:54):
You, you can't see it, but above my shoulder, I've got a series of books by my favorite fiction spy, thriller, author, author, Brad Thor hanging up there and I own all his books and they're really good. And there's something about a good discipline of just sitting and reading a book and not watching TV and not being on YouTube. And just reading that book. And I think the same thing in with the manual, like sitting down and focusing and making your, your brain just really dial in to the manual and just focus on that for a few moments. It makes you a better person. It makes you more intelligent, it makes you smarter. And I think in the end you learn more and again, you learn more about that product and understand you know, how that product thinks and, and how the developers think and, and what they're thinking and what they're doing that I think just becomes super, super helpful and super beneficial.

(14:46):
So goal of this episode is just really that just to encourage you to take the time to download manuals one thing I do, I don't have my phone with me, but I have an iPhone and on the iPhone is the files app. So what I do and I have Mac computers, cuz obviously I'm a saying human. And so what I do is I download PDF versions of manuals and I put it in a little folder on iCloud drive that said as manuals. And then if I'm on the go and I'm bored or I'm working with a product or whatever and trying to understand, then I'll open that manual and I'll read it and I'll just nose through it and make sure I understand and understand it. And that's super, super helpful. I can even think cuz I, I always in these wanna make sure I make it very clear that I'm not like the Theen you know, a teacher that gets it all right and understands.

(15:34):
And it's perfect. I'm just thinking of a situation recently where I struggled with a piece of gear. One of the things I do in addition to from studio stage currently is I'm broadcast director at a church here in Austin. And so that means I lead our team to do video broadcast you're multi camera video broadcast stuff. And at the time when we started really digging into it, we were using pro tools for audio. And cuz we were doing that. The, the audio from the computer from pro tools was highly latent. It was very delayed. So we needed to actually delay video to match audio, which is a very odd thing. So we bought this, this unique piece year that's I think 1500 bucks that delays video, any video coming down to STI line. And man, we struggled with trying to get video sync right for over a year.

(16:20):
We had, sometimes that were awful. We had sometimes that were really close. It was never perfect, but it, we were close, right? Well, one day I was just sitting there and I went, huh. And I pulled up the manual and I read the manual for the product and realized that, and this is maybe getting too deep, far into the weeds here. But the, the signal coming into that box was delaying both video and audio. It was not just delaying audio then Ming or mixing the signal together at the end. And so what we were doing this whole time is we were thinking we were making changes, but basical, we were just making the problem worse. And so it just kept getting worse and occasionally our brains would be tricked to think it was better, but it never was. But once I read the manual, I realized, oh, I can get my audio.

(17:03):
You know, I can send my video and delay it and then get my audio and leave it where it is. And then, you know, have those signals meet up and we were good, but the, the solution came and we, and I RTFM, I read the freaking manual and that was after like a year. And so I say that to say, I think this is a really important skill. I don't do it right all the time. And we live in a world where man, it's way more convenient to just Google and search on YouTube, but it's something I think we all should be doing. It should you're out on the road. And the downtime you have, I mean, instead of getting yourself in trouble instead of being bored all your, all the time or binge watching, you know, whatever Netflix series you want just constantly download some manuals and read 'em and I think it'll be super, super helpful.

(17:50):
So I'd love to hear from you. Are you a manual reader? Does it help you have you found that beneficial? Is it something you're considering starting? So whenever you're watching this, listen, just leave a comment below. And again would, would love to hear from you, if you want to kind of join in the conversation with the rest of the community that you, you can go to behind the space bar.com behind the space bar.com. You wanna going to want to look for episode one, which is this episode and you can just comment on this page and again, let me know, are you a manual reader? Do you find it beneficial? Have you tried it and it's not beneficial? You go to YouTube or is it something you wanna start? I would love to hear from you guys. And if you want some free resources to help you run tracks, better, run tracks like a pro or maybe you're a pro and you want to be more of a pro than headed from studio to stage.com/free from studio to stage.com/free.

(18:46):
There's tons of free resources tutorial training that you can grab there again for free to dial in. And it's gonna help you again, learn to run tracks like a pro. I hope we enjoyed this episode. I, again, this is gonna be more chill than like a tutorial again. That's why I got a cup of coffee here. I'm leaning back in the chair, having a good time hope. Maybe you're listening this on the way in to work or maybe you're traveling to a gig and listening to this in the airport or whatever. Maybe you're watching on YouTube watching on from studio to stage. I think I mentioned this in the beginning search the app stores, any of the app stores for, from studio to stage at the time of recording this iPhone iPad M one Mac apple TV.

(19:34):
You can download the from serious stage app for free and watch all of this content. And then very soon, hopefully quarter one to 20, 22 will be everywhere. Roku, fire, TV, Android as well too. And you can watch this content. But this is super fun, man. I enjoy this. It's, it's been a over a year, glad to be back. Again, I apologize for the delay and to help with my burnout, I've decided to make more content than I've ever made in my life. So we'll see how the end of Q1 I feel of 2022, but thanks so much for listening. Do me a favor if you're on apple podcast like, and subscribe leave a rating review. If you're on YouTube do me a favor hit subscribe that definitely helps, helps us be seen by more people hit like all those things. And and again, if you wanna join the conversation, go to behind the space bar.com, switch your episode one, which is this one. And with that, we'll see you next week every Monday and I'm committed to it. So you, you, you find me here cuz I'll be here every Monday, 10:00 AM central episode goes live of behind the space bar. We'll see you next week for episode two. Thanks for joining me, everybody. This is super fun. Glad to be back. We'll see you next time. Take care. Bye.