 Hey guys welcome back to the Nova Show, it's your host International Nova. Now in today's episode we are gonna touch on some music news, but we're also gonna do a partner spotlight on one of you guys out there. Now in today's music news, will Adele break the record for US digital sales? Now the record is currently held by Flowrider for his single, Right Round, which sold over 635,000 US digital copies. Now with that being said, Adele's current single, Hello, has sold over 450,000 copies in just two days. Now with those numbers, Adele is on pace to shatter the record, so big congratulations go out to Adele. Now in other news, R&B singer The Weeknd has pled no contest to punching Las Vegas police officer last week. Now according to his plea, The Weeknd will avoid jail time, but must complete an anger management course, an alcohol evaluation, and 50 hours of community service. Now besides that, he must also pay a thousand dollars to an injured police fund in Las Vegas. Now Instagram has unveiled a new app called the Boomerang, and the band 21 pilots got in on the action. Now this past Thursday, Instagram and the band unveiled a new app, which creates a one second video from a burst of photos that can play forwards and backwards. Now once created, you can post a video on Instagram. Now the app itself is available for iPhones and androids, so go ahead and check it out. So guys we're back and as you can see we're in my home studio. Now today's partner spotlight goes to a freedom member by the name of Mike Hagen. He can be found at the link below, so go ahead and check him out. Now one thing I do want to say, and this goes out to everybody out there, is you want to make sure you give people access to all of your social media accounts. Being at your YouTube page, Mike, there is no way for me to find you on Twitter, on Instagram, on SoundCloud, on VverbNation, and these are all tools that as an artist you definitely want to display and put out there for people to find you. Now as far as your music, I do want to say I went through all of your videos and you do have a great flow, and I will say that you have a great vocal presence, a great vocal tone, which to me is very important, and I can tell that you've been rapping for a while now. Now going through your songs, I did notice a few things that caught my attention. One of the first things is clarity. Your vocals seem to get drowned out by the beat, and that's not only due to the volume of your vocals, but also the clarity. So before you do anything else, the first thing you want to work on is clarity in your vocals. Spend some time on the EQ, make sure you get your voice to sound as best as possible, and one of the tips and tricks that I like to do when I mix my records is to mute the beat and just focus and zero in on the vocals. Another thing I notice is the lack of vocal compression. Now sometimes vocal compression can get a little tricky, by putting too much you may squash the vocal and have it give you a different sound than what you're looking for, but most often than not I do recommend adding some type of compression. A lot of times your vocals seem to have a lot of high peaks and there's no balance in there. Now another thing I would recommend is vocal spacing. Now to me, this is actually one of the most creative parts of mixing a record is adding space to your vocal. Now a great way to do this is by having fun with your reverb plugin. And by having fun, I mean mess around with the size of the reverb, the amount of reverb, mess around with the actual EQ portion of the reverb, if you do have that built into your plugin. The main thing is just getting creative with the reverb. Adding space to your vocal through the reverb can actually give you some really nice effects and again create a great vocal presence. With your tone, there's not much you have to do, but you want to make sure that you're getting the best possible sound from your voice on a record. Now lastly one of the things I did notice is the lack of mastering on all of your records. Now mastering can be a bit tricky, but I do recommend having fun, messing around with a couple of mastering plugins and seeing what you get. People always ask me how did I get so good mixing records and honestly I just have fun, I get creative, I mess around with the different plugins and pretty much learn things on the fly on my own records. And as time goes by, I develop a skill set with that plugin and with that effect and I tend to use those more and more. So mess around with your plugins, see what you like, see what you don't like. Don't be afraid to hit me up. If you have any questions, I'll try to help you guys out. Go and check out Mike Hagen. He has some really great music. I am really impressed by his skills. Mike, keep doing your thing. Now with that being said, a lot of you guys do know that we are launching our own music label here at Freedom called Beat. Now one of the features that we are giving to you guys as artists and partners under Beat is free mastering. Yes, free mastering. A lot of the other companies out there such as Tunecore CD Baby charge you for mastering. We're actually going to be offering this free for you guys. Now beyond that, on the Beat YouTube channel very soon, I will be going back to the Home Studio series. And as part of the series, I will be having a mixing tutorial to give you guys some of the tips and tricks that I use when I mix my records. And it's also going to be very hands-on. I'm going to have my own sessions, my own vocals, my own artists, and you'll see exactly how I mix my records from start to finish. Now I'm hoping this can help you guys out at home provide better music and better sounding records for you and yours. Now as part of my mixing process, some of the things I would touch on, I have already spoken about in this episode, such as EQing, compression, mastering, reverb, delays, a lot of different things. But again, I will teach you guys how to use these things from start to finish. Now with that being said, that's it for today's episode of The Nova Show. And we'll be having three episodes this week. So make sure you tune in. Our next episodes will be on Wednesday and Friday, with Friday's episode being another partner spotlight. So again, please leave comments, leave links. I want to check out your music and hopefully feature you guys on The Nova Show. Now also, please remember, this is not just for rappers or hip hop. This is for producers, singers, pop artists, spoken word, whatever you are, we accept here at Freedom and at Beat. So I hope to see you guys soon. And again, that's it for The Nova Show. You guys take care.