 Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. Welcome to Fix My Mix number 17. It's so good to see you here. We're going to be listening to some songs from the community and giving you a bit of a critique about the mixes in the hope that the artists involved can improve their mixes before they release them, but also and probably mainly so that we can all learn from the experience of actually trying to objectively listen to a mix and think about how it can improve. Hopefully this can help us all, myself included, by practicing that skill of objectively listening to music. I have a wonderful new guest on the show today, who I'll be speaking about in just a moment. However, before we get into that, I would like to thank the sponsor of the show who is DistroKid.com and if you follow that link, you don't have to look at the screen and carefully type that in because the link is in the description down below. You can just click there and you can start to distribute your songs to all of the places that you would want to distribute your songs to, like Spotify, iTunes, all of those wonderful places and you will get at a great price because they are actually fantastically well priced, but I will get a little bit of a commission from that at no extra cost to you. You're going to get a 7% discount as well if you do follow that link, so it's worth it. We'll talk about DistroKid throughout the show at moments during the show. Now, I would like to, as I say, thank the people who are in the chat here. I'm going to say hi to a few of you and I'd like to say hi to Mark, who is here. Nice to see you in here, Mark. Always good to see Doug in here. He's been just so dedicated to the show recently. Thank you, Doug, for being here. Keonra is here. Thank you, Keonra, for waking up so early and taking part in this and I know you're super, super excited about today's show because of my guest and why wouldn't you be? We have Jeremiah in here. Nice to see you, sir. And we also have, let's just find a couple of other people. I'm going to upset people aren't if I don't say hi to all of you. We'll try. We'll try. Now it's someone's name who I'm going to struggle to pronounce, but I'll give it a go. Javier Lopez. I'm sorry. Is it Javier? Or maybe it's, how do you say the J? I've been talking about pronunciations with my guest. We might have a whole segment on the show today, I think, about pronunciations quite potentially. So anyway. And I can't actually start the show without saying hello to my good friend, Mimo Japan, who does so much for the community is always, if not often here, moderating along with Doug and Keonra, so they're going to keep you in line. And I'm sure you won't need to be kept in line to be honest with you. I'm sure you'll all do a fantastic job of behaving well. Now do make sure you take part as we're listening to the music. If you're in the live chat, it's awesome to be sort of here in real time, what your feelings are about what you're hearing and quite helpful to me and my guests as well. So do make sure when the music starts to play, that you don't hold back from giving your opinions. This is an unusual thing to say in this day and age, isn't it? To say to people, don't hold back from giving your opinions because everyone on the internet usually wants to give you all of their opinions all of the time, my kind. Anyway, I am going to talk about our guest. Our guest is a fellow cake walker. And I know that many of you watching the show use cake walk, not all of you, but many of you. And she has a channel which I'm going to call now we're talking about pronouncing things here, I'm going to call it the produce aisle. Now it's a bit of a play on words. I guess I should be calling it the produce aisle. But given that it is a play on words, surely it is a produce, the produce. I don't know. Don't ask me about pronunciation. Let's have a quick look at a clip from her channel. The link is in the description, by the way. Let's have a quick look at how she does things over there. This is Loreen. I think I've got that right. From the produce aisle. Quantization is the process of constraining an input from a continuous or otherwise large set of values, such as the real numbers to a discrete set, such as the integers signal processing, there it is at the top. Surely that must tell me what quantization is. And it's a even worse process of mapping input values from a large set to output values in a smaller set. Here's what quantization is. It does the same thing for rhythm and meter that Loreen. Hello, welcome to the show. Thank you. Let's just cut straight to the chase. Are you always drunk when you make videos or was this just too jolly? Is that what it is? Really nice to have you on the show. And I will quickly explain to everyone watching because they're bound to allude to this in the comments. Loreen has the old internet connection issue. So she is a little pixelated and a little bit out of sync with the audio, but we roll with what we've got here, Loreen, don't we? We're going to go with it. And it's a bit of a shame because we can't see your wonderful headphones, which have jewelry on them. Tell me about the headphones. Yeah. Well, I love I love to shopping. And I was shopping with a friend who was using longingly the big stupid costume earrings and thinking, I can't wear earrings because I wear headphones just all the time. I have an idea. Super glue and fancy earrings. Yeah. I think I might want to do like Velcro. Oh, no. I thought you could get them on Amazon or something like that. I thought, why doesn't she have, you know, a link to these in the description of every video? Because she'd be making a fortune in affiliate sales on Amazon. See, there's a mystic there. We were talking about pronunciation, weren't we, before the show? Yes. First of all, you brought it up. I mean, you know, you were super critical of me pre-show about my pronunciation of the word the word reverb, which going back some time ago now, I was corrected by my fellow YouTuber Pete Johns from Studio Live today, who might be here later. He being a little bit nitpicky as a personality, he picked me up because I used to say reverb instead of reverb. I've corrected myself now. You like it, don't you? I love it. Yeah, stick with it. I think we should. Let's do it together. After three, how do we say the word? One, two, three, reverb. Reverb. It sounds good when you say it in American accent. Talking about your accent, which part of the world are you from? People will want to know. I live in New Orleans, but I'm not Southern bread. I am a sturdy Midwestern stock. Yes, that's where this accent is coming from. I grew up around Chicago. Sometimes that comes at the school in Wisconsin. I also have that part of the world. It's interesting. We're off right away to pronunciation again. You said New Orleans, whereas I would have said New Orleans. And you're not alone. There are many correct pronunciations of New Orleans. One of them is New Orleans. One of them is New Orleans. One of those is New Orleans. Tourists say Nolans. I don't know that. New Orleans. New Orleans? Yes. Even the mayor said New Orleans. Weirdo, mayor. Okay. But it brings us to the main point here, which is how do we pronounce the name of your wonderful YouTube channel? The produce aisle. The produce aisle. The produce aisle. If you're from that's American pronunciation, but non-American English, it could be produce. Yeah, as in vegetables and you know, yes. I'm going with the produce aisle. Sorry, LaRaine. That's fine. It works. I've said LaRaine twice now, which only just before the show started, I was either saying Lauren or I thought it might be LaRaine, but it knows. It's LaRaine. LaRaine. Like Jelly Bean. Yep. I don't want to make the whole show about pronunciations, but I've opened it today and this is this is what's this is what's happened. So, LaRaine, thank you so much for joining me. You do have a wonderful channel and your cake hook. What's what I love about LaRaine's channel folks is that she is kind of learning cake walk on the fly and making videos about it, which is a great angle because first of all, it means you don't come across as arrogant and kind of know it all. That's good. And I and I think when you've just learned something, when you've just learned something, then it's a really good time to explain it to other people because it's just kind of lodged in your brain and you're going to explain it in a particular way. I really like that. That's basically what I do. I just look stuff up just before I make a video and then everyone goes, oh, why are you so knowledgeable? I go, I don't know. I've just no stuff. But no, but you don't hide the fact that you've only just learned to it, which is so much better than me. I'm really, really good stuff. I like the vibe. People, what I want to tell you here is I'm just going to open up a little tab here for my own sake. I'm going to go to I'm just typing it in. The produce produce. Oh, come on. Come on, YouTube. I'm just going to go over to your channel now. Currently, I'm seeing that you have 405 subscribers, Lorraine, which is so I want to say to everyone in the audience. Yes, I know. Go to the link in the description. You've got to right click and open up in a new tab. I don't want you to leave this video. Okay, folks, I want you to go over to a new tab or on your phone or whatever. Go to the produce aisle. It's called that from now on and I want you to make sure you subscribe right away. I'm refreshing. I'm refreshing and I'm seeing I'm still seeing 405. Should we go on with the show or should we just? I'm not going to do the show. I'm not going to do the show until I see it go up to 406 subscribers. So, look, I'm just going to keep refreshing here. 406. Oh, hang on. Mine's gone down by one. My subscribers have just gone down by one. That doesn't seem right, does it? I will keep an eye on that during the show. Let's go to the first piece of music. I agree. Oh, by the way, thank you to the people who send their music in. It's very wonderful of you to do so and it's also very brave. I think exposing unfinished work to people in public is an incredibly brave thing to do. Now, someone was asking earlier in the chat before we got started whether I have every piece of music which is sent into the show on and the answer to that is no. Most of it gets on the show. How do I choose? I don't care about genres. I don't care about whether it's an instrumental or whether or we've discussed this on the show before. I don't care what kind of music it is. There's no preferential treatment because I actually really enjoy all kinds of music anyway. But that student wouldn't be useful to just listen to one type of music and it doesn't really depend how good it is or how bad it is either. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you've been producing for a week or for, you know, 10 years. I don't really care about that. However, I can't always have everything on the show. So what's the deciding factor? The deciding factor is just whether there's something I think we can address in it. It could be that we're addressing this is really awesome. Everyone should listen to this, you know, get some inspiration from this or it could be there's a specific problem in this mix which we could all learn from if we identified it together. So look, there's not really, the whys and wherefores depend on the moment when I open the email and listen to it. But don't be discouraged. Send in your music. Around about, I reckon, I'm going to say 90% of it gets aired eventually. So there you go. So we're listening to our first song which I now have to professionally queue up so that this goes smoothly. It is from. I'm going to let you read it out, Lorraine. I'll pop that up on the screen here. Kamikaze shots. All our girls must die. That is an evocative title. It is, isn't it? First of all, let's go with the name. Well done. Given this is pronunciation week. Is it kamikaze shots or is it kamae kaze? I don't know. And it's quite an interesting topic. Should all heroes die? I don't know. I don't know if it's, I don't know if there's a must in that. But always it just should be all heroes die because they do eventually, don't they? I'll be very curious to see if you have the titles in the chorus or if it's even in the song. Oh, well that's a good point, isn't it? Should the title always be in the lyrics of the song? Have you ever written or created a song? I think it's rude to not put the actual, you know, what the main line is. Don't, like, using something other than your hook. Come on. Come on. Okay, Jeff, I don't know. Maybe this is pre-critique here from Lorraine. I like it. I like it. Maybe, maybe. So the person who's saying this, Kamikaze shot, but the person who's saying it is Jeff, I can't really, I'm going to refer to the creator as Jeff, I'm afraid. But now Jeff said, I would like to maybe become good enough to compose music for sync licensing, licensing someday. I'm currently involved in several, yes do it, I'm currently involved in several courses to teach me improving, mixing and mastering and learning about the business of music. I'm in the early process of learning and understand, even at this point, I don't know what I don't know. Very good point there. I've been mixing all wrong on nearly every mix I've done, but I'm trying to learn from those mistakes sessions. I know this particular track is mixed terribly. I think he may be playing a mind game with us here, Lorraine. I think, anyway, we'll continue. But I like to know what could be done to improve it. It's missing low end tremendously, but what else could be done to improve it besides deleting it? Oh, don't say that. Let's have a listen. Now this isn't instrumental. Oh, it's an instrumental. So, yes. It's not true to name an instrumental, whatever you would like. But let's see within this instrumental whether we can hear heroes dying or not. Okay. I caught you deep in thought there. I was taking notes. You were taking notes. That's good. It's good because my other guests are not as professional as that. You know, I have these guests on week in and week out. They're not very professional, but anyway, nice to have a program with you. So, oh, look, just checking over there, by the way, the produce aisle has got up to 411. That means six people from our audience of 28 subscribe to your channel. Not good enough, folks. Not good enough. That's very kind. That's very kind, regardless of what Mike says. Thank you. I appreciate your support. So, thank you Kamikaze shots for sending this in. I'll let Lorraine start off by letting us know what you thought. Yeah. Thank you for sending this in. Again, applaud the bravery and the going for it. Or even to have anybody listen to our unfinished things, it kind of can feel like you're standing in your underwear and you're like, what do you think? So, I understand how you're... So, I think it's great to get in sync. And I have been writing for sync quite a bit lately. I'm a member of Taxi, which is one of the... They've been around since the 90s. I kind of thought they were a scam. They are not. And they are things that have been... Basically, they're in a way, but they handpick music libraries and people who are music editors and supervisors that come to them with a pitch. And so, Taxi has hundreds of pitches that you can write for all the time. And from that, you really learn what those industry folks are looking for. And it tends to be a lot of similarities. So, I can go through some of those things with you. And also, I can recommend you to watch TV. It's on Monday nights. And if you look it up, it's got tons of information so that you can learn what you don't know. Just knowing that you don't know is great because there's always something to learn. Be suspective at everybody who tells you, I know everything there is to know about things. So, just follow me and buy my course and stuff. And it's like, okay, some of those people are for real and they know what they're doing. But there's always, always, always more to learn. So, that said, one of the things that supervisors often look for is they don't want something that is too distracting. You are not serving the song. You're serving separate from the music and industry where it's all about the song. You're serving the song, everything for the song. But when you're in the, it sink is the entertainment industry. Different industry entirely. And for serving the scene. And with this piece, there's so much going on. There's so much going on. I want you to think about what sort of scene you're tracking. And so, having that in mind, not keeping very theme. Something I know, let's see. I was trying to note what yours is. Yeah. I like you had a simple theme of Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun, Dun. And I want that, if that's going to be your theme, stick with that and around that. So, if you're going to do that, start with that, then find different ways to do it. And you want it to be kind of like, have a story arc too. Like beginning, middle, and end. Again, not too distracting. There's a balancing. You want it to be exciting, but boring enough that it doesn't have a scene. That's less about the mix and more about the actual composition. So, I hope you don't mind that I'm talking about that too. It's okay. Yeah. So, yeah. Imagine the scene, imagine the scene that you're tracking. And I'll say turning off your tea, watching some like a spy movie or whatever, and figure out what you... And try to write for like, have that running as you're writing and see what comes up if you come up with something exciting to go under that. I think it needs a main theme, or if there is a main theme right now, just strip away anything that's not supporting that. It's almost like a thesis statement, right? That if you have your main theme, that's going to be the thing that people... And, yeah, because we think of like... So memorable. Like how simple is that? Very simple theme, but it's repeated over and over in different ways with different instrumentations. So that's something to think about. Mix-wise, getting some separation and stripping out some instruments, I think would be really would also serve it. So in the beginning, it starts with the kind of piano, and then there's some ear candy things that are happening. And I'd love to hear those things separated in space. And maybe you already know this, but thinking about mixing as a physical space, and you're putting the devounds in physical space. And when you think about it that way, both in frequency, with frequencies, like with EQ, and with panning. Yeah, so that kind of separation, sonic separate will really help. Like look at the EQ, see what frequency range this in, and make sure that the ear candy isn't getting in the way of that. And like maybe you could put like a high filter on it so that it sounds more far away, or so that it's like moving around your head. Just give it more movement. And it'll also make it feel like it's less things stacked on top of each other. And more like a journey, like an adventure. Which I get the sense that you wanted to create a sense of adventure in this piece. I'd be careful with sound effects, like you have the thunderstorm in there. And again, you don't want that to be, this is interesting. You want it to be universalized in several different scenes. So if there's thunder just inherent in your music, they can't use where it's, you know, a clear day. So thinking very carefully about those kinds of special effects, if you will, flavor things. I think that you could use it as a texture, like way in the background, the way down they could up sometimes, and then go back down, sort of be a constant. Then that gives it the whole vibe. Yes, there's a part in this song, but it could be used as a vibe for a rainy day. But just then you're leaning into it, right? Figure the whole time and giving it moments where it comes up. And using automation as your friend. I have been trying for the past 24 hours to a new video that I made about automation. And YouTube is not letting me. So what on automation? Because it's really, really good. Upload it twice is my trick. Really? Upload it twice and see which one gets through first. Yeah, they do. Apparently when they see you uploading more than one video at a time, they prioritize traffic towards you. It's a little trick. Thank you for that, Lorraine. I think it was really interesting because I don't make sync music. And I sometimes obviously make my own sort of background music for my videos and things like that. It's very interesting because obviously as a person speaking from a video maker's perspective now and sometimes needing some music happening in the background while I'm yabbering away. It's curious that the pieces of music we end up using, they more create a color and a texture to what's going on more so than standing up as pieces of music in their own right. And Lorraine's quite right. When they get too busy, they get in the way of other things. And in my case, it's usually going to be dialogue. And that works, I found from my experience in terms of frequency ranges as well. So actually, you know, you hear those sort of pieces of music that sometimes feel like all the top ends being cut off and they're sort of muffled sounding. They can be very, very useful pieces of music to have. And I sometimes EQ them myself to do that because they can interfere with dialogue when there's certain frequencies going on. That's my sort of experience with it. But I don't create that sort of music. So I'm so glad that Lorraine was here to give an educated opinion on it. From the point of view of, let's just have a quick look at production. Look, if you've only been doing this for a while, I think that there were some parts of it which were very, very good indeed. In terms of just sort of balance and things, I think there was a lot going on there which was pretty good. There were some interesting things going on. There was a one section which did sound like, as I said, someone had just chopped off all the high frequencies and it went kind of muffled for about a bar or two and then it went back to normal. If that was on purpose, then that was great. That was really creative and different. A bit of ear candy, if you like. But I actually chose this to come on the show when I was listening because there was a lot of submissions in the last couple of weeks. And because it almost highlights an extreme which we don't often have on the show, I mean normally what I'm saying to people is your music should sort of progress. And we're talking about regular three and a half minute contemporary pieces of sort of songs and things, right? And often we're saying to people, look, it didn't really progress. It was part one repeated three or four times and I normally discuss the idea of adding or removing elements as each verse comes or what have you. And normally sort of encouraging people to keep the listener interested by just adding subtle new elements to what's happening. The reason I think this was interesting because this is almost the opposite of that. So kamikaze shots and this is not a mixed thing. This is really a writing thing. There was too much change in my opinion as this piece went on. In fact, it was felt like just as I started to get used to a theme that that theme kind of went and was replaced by something else. That's good for you because it means you've got lots and lots of ideas in your brain. And some people suffer with not having enough ideas. It means you've got hundreds and hundreds of ideas, but I think you've got to learn to edit yourself and strip out the bits which are not needed rather than include every single idea. Because one of the things, we often talk against repetition in too much repetition, I should say, in music. An example of this would be Justin Bieber's baby, baby, baby, ooh, baby, baby, ooh. Which I know Loreen has in fact critiqued on her own show. And you can't argue with how wildly popular that song is. So I have nothing against it. I think repetition is songwriter's best friend. Well, I'm going to disagree with you here. I think that Justin Bieber's baby, baby, baby is potentially one of the worst pieces of music I've ever heard in my whole life because of the repetition. Do you know what? I think when it came out at the time, what bothered me about it was there was a video that surfaced of him at a concert where he actually forgot the lyrics to the song. Can you believe it? Anyway, that did happen. I don't know, I keep relating. I have a big fear of singing on stage because forgetting lyrics, even though I used to do it all the time. But yeah. Not baby, baby, baby, ooh, no, not baby. But anyway, I digress, I digress. So Kamikaze, sometimes there's probably a little bit too much repetition sometimes in music. But what I'm going to say to you in this piece, there wasn't enough. So repetition is needed to create a familiarity with the theme and the motifs of the music for the listener. It's a hook in some ways we could say, you know, hooks can be created from repetition. And then there's always this difficult balancing act of when have we gone too far so that everyone's like, really, you know, can we have something different, you know, than just that one motif? So I feel that unusually and wonderfully, it makes a good topic here in this piece, all heroes must die. I think there was not quite enough repetition of some of the themes that were in there. To sort of really get them embedded in me. So yeah, food for thought. This is all opinions. This is not science. This is not fact. And potentially someone could disagree with me or Loryn. Of course, I wouldn't invite them on the show if they disagreed, but that wouldn't happen. But this is not a democracy, I don't know. But yeah, I think it's great. I want to encourage you, though, to keep doing what you're doing. I know that you're joining all of these groups. And Jeff, Loryn has potentially put you onto some good places there where you could practice the art. But nothing is better than just doing it. Keep doing it again and again and again. Looks like you know that already. You've alluded to the idea that you've made mistakes. I don't know if... Please let us know in the comments and in the live chat here if you think you've ever produced a perfect piece of music, which couldn't be improved upon. I bet no one's going to say that, are they? I don't know if we can actually moderate comments for arrogance. Maybe not. I don't want to go that. I feel like I personally alone haven't made perfect music, but some of the collaborations that I've been part of are just absolute magic. That's another thing I would say to you, Jeff, with this is that don't be working in a vacuum. If you get the chance to have a good collaborator where you really enjoy each other's company and trust each other's opinions. Man, that is golden. Hang on to that person and keep collaborating and having fun. Because having fun really will come across in the music. And everybody needs more of that. Now, one of the great things about collaborating with people these days, if you were to release your music through a company like DistroKid, you can split the earnings quite easily on there. It's all done. You just put the other artist's name in their email address and DistroKid works out the rest. Who's DistroKid? Part of that, but it's not publishing though. They don't do publishing splits, I don't think. Who? DistroKid. I don't know about publishing, but it's certainly in terms of the plays anyway. Let's have a listen about DistroKid. Let's. Now, if you do follow the link in the description down below, it's going to take you to a special page on DistroKid with this yellow banner at the top. That banner is letting you know that you're going to get a further 7% discount of your first year if you sign up here. And let's face it, it's already very cheap. If we scroll down, we can see that year's membership is $19.99 per year for an unlimited number of albums and songs. And so long as it's your own music, there are no extra charges and you get to keep all of the royalties from the various platforms. Platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, Pandora, Amazon, Instagram, Tidal, iHeartRadio, Deezer and more. Oh, the art of the segway. The art of the segway. It's very interesting. Thank you. It's informative and interesting. I must make a little advert, as it were, about DistroKid's splits. So there's this thing on there where what I was talking about was he trying to make a segway. Thank you, Louise. Sorry, messed it up. I thought, oh, she's talking about collaboration and that's a good way to get into talking about it. Well done. It was. And then I had to go say that dirty word, publishing. Oh, well. Anyway, look, I'm going to move on to our next song. It comes from, let's put it up on the screen. Great job. Yes, thanks, Jeff. And now I'll pop this up on the screen. We'll get into some pronunciation again. Lorraine, this is your job here, too. Andrew Schatz, When Trouble Finds You. Let's see. When Trouble Finds You. I wonder if the song title will be in the lyrics. I feel like this is going to have to be a new criteria. We'll talk in the third song we get to in a moment, there's a particular criteria I have with specific song. But with this one, with all of these now, I think, yeah, we're going to call it the Lorraine effect or something like that from now on. The Lorraine criteria. I don't know. I mean, let's, I guess, I guess, you know, probably where you've been inspired from is the Justin Bieber song was called, what was it called? Baby, wasn't it called Baby? And what happened was he went, I better make sure that the song title's in the song. And he said, I'm going to make doubly short. No, triply sure. No, quadruply sure. Did you, you did a count in your video, didn't you? I did. I can't remember any. It was like well over 30 times. Yeah, I think it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It felt like, like 300 this time. But I mean, I can't argue with the show. I mean, you can't argue with that level of success, though. Like I'm not my, oh, that level of success. Absolutely. Absolutely. I was watching a video. Do you watch a YouTube channel called Justin Hawkins Rides Again? He was in a band called The Darkness. Oh, oh, oh. He's got a great channel where he waffles on in a wonderful way. It's called Justin Hawkins Rides Again. What a long name for YouTube. It's a great channel. Yes. And he was revisiting. I don't know if they were famous in America, but a boy band called Take That, who are a British boy band from. What a great name. Yeah. But they were huge, you know, pretty boys and what have you. And back in the day, about 20 years ago, they decided to do a cover on stage of Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit. So this was a boy band who thought, oh, we're going to do. And anyway, they made a pig's ear of it, as we would say. And he did a little critique of that. Not that I'm into sort of criticizing other people's art or anything like that, but his art of critiquing it in a humorous fashion was really. But he was noting that they, on average, had sold 1.7 million copies of every album, on average, that they'd released during their career. This boy band, Take That. And who was he to argue with that level of success? But there you go. You know, in the end, it just matters if you're happy. Do what you like to do. Absolutely. Well, unless that's mass murder, probably, if no, I'm going to just... Oh, hang on. This is for a different show. It has to be different. I think so. Absolutely. So, moving on to... We've already read out the artist's name. We probably should actually get on with listening to the music. So, Andrew Shatts, When Trouble Find You. He said, here's my mix. Made in Cake Hawk. It's called When Trouble Find You. A pop song I wrote for my sister, who had a very difficult times in the last two years. Her husband and daughter both had cancer. Luckily, both of them recovered near miracle cures. So, I'm very glad to hear that, Andrew. I love it when music comes from real life experience. And I think that usually normally gives it a certain amount of integrity, which is awesome. Let's have a listen to the song. Well, curiously for the inspiration for that song, which was a difficult subject, I feel curiously happy after listening to that. Which is a good thing. Because I'm at the beginning of my day, and it's probably set me up to have a really nice day. But anyway, we'll go to my guests' opinions first. Well, quite a different track here, Loreen. I think this may be a little bit up your street, actually. Having heard some of your music, I don't think it's a million miles away from some of the stuff you may have produced in the past. What do you think? Man, wow. First of all, well done. Well, music for songs like this definitely has me on it. Maybe you should talk first, Mike. I don't even know. This is good. This is music. If it doesn't move someone in some way, at least, then isn't that the point of music? And I say that, actually. I'm not trying to be deep and meaningful. I want to say to you, even if you're making music for a jingle, for a radio show, and it has the effect of making people want to buy a product, I don't know. You've done a job because we are in the business of manipulating people's emotions. It could be a comedy song as well, which makes people laugh, or it could be a disco song, which makes people want to dance. When I say music should move people, it doesn't always have to be deep and meaningful. It's just about, as I say, affecting us in some way. This was one of those songs that I wanted to have on the show to inspire people. It was most of our viewers, not everyone is here, as I say, but most of our viewers use cakewalk or a door-like cakewalk at home. And this represents to me, this is saying, look, you can do this too. You can achieve really, really commercially viable results. With your own skills and with your own equipment at home in a studio. I have very little to, in terms of mix, to say about this song. It's very, very good in my opinion. And Keonra did pick up here and there that the vocals may lack a little bit of presence, and I will agree with that. So if there's one tiny, tiny, minuscule little bit of mix critique I can give here Andrew, it's those wonderful vocals which were good. The lead ones were a little bit, just sitting back a little bit in some parts of the song. There was one particular part where I noticed that just those incredible lovely harmonies were just overpowering the main vocal, just a tad. And I'm really nitpicking here, I have to say, because the main thing is the song was great. And there's so many levels to which the song was great. I say that it was, interestingly, it was sort of a mixed message there because we know the backstory. But if I didn't know the backstory, this just would have made me have a kind of a little skip in my step for the rest of the day. I could have had this on in the car, had great fun listening to it. Now, one of the things I personally really, really enjoyed about this, and I've been bitching about this recently, Lorraine, and I hate to be that old guy who's bitching about modern music. I don't feel like that about modern, like I want people to make great modern music and I love that people are not doing the same things that they were doing when I was younger. But, however, I do think that we have lost the art of instrumental breaks in mainstream music and passages of the song where completely different chord progressions are used for bridges and things like this. This, for me, just, what's the word? Is the word exemplified? This sort of exemplified how wonderful to me it is when a song does that because there was, I don't know if you call it a middle eight or it was a sort of middle eight instrumental right in the middle of this, which just threw me in a wonderful way. It was completely different. And it was just so musically rich and almost slightly challenging to listen to because it takes you by surprise and jolts you. I love that. I really, really love it. But at the same time, it was also very palatable as a mainstream piece of music. It wasn't what you would call avant-garde, but at all, you know, but it did have that little bit of variation which I thought was just delightful. It just was wonderful in there, was just once in the song. Love that. The rest of it was awesome. Not much to say, Andrew, apart from whatever you're doing in terms of mixing, you are definitely on the wrong track because although I picked out that little, the vocal that was just a little bit quiet, oh God, I'm sure if I listened to 20 of my songs, I could at least find something, you know, wrong like that in every single one of them. So I just think you're doing a great job and just keep doing what you're doing. And I can only say, I hope this is helpful to people in terms of just being inspired by some good work from other people. Okay, Loreen, tell me why this affected you so much. I'm learning really well too, but also I am a cancer survivor myself. When I was 19, I had Hodgkin's lymphoma. And so I know well the difficulty of navigating that. From, it's a little different being the person who has it, but it's just, I mean, freaking weird is it to tell people that you have cancer? It's like, they don't know how to react and it's like, you felt like I would have to take care of them. Yeah, I have cancer, but I'm okay. Like, no, I'm actually okay, I'm not. So the lyrics, I wish I could have seen them written out, but yeah, hold on to the ones you love so tight. You know, the day comes after night. Just because something is simple, doesn't mean that it's... Oh, absolutely. This is a universal way of writing that is accessible. Accessible does not mean dumbed down. Accessible means that you want to talk to millions of people and them that you understand what they're going through. And like, people need that. I think that's the magic of music is when you hear a song, oh my God, it's what I need to hear. This is the right thing at the right moment. I think that this could have the power to be that song like that. Some structured things. I was confused at what I think was the pre-chorus that was like between the first verses. It was a spot where I was confused. It's like, is this the song like a pre-chorus? And so isn't great. And I think that it'd be good to structure it in a pretty common way. So whatever that looks like for you. But I think getting to that, the chorus is friggin awesome. Get to it sooner. Just get right to it. And let's hear it again. And again, seriously repetition. This song could use more repetition of that chorus. It's such an empowering message. It's such an uplifting message. Say it again. So just getting that structure. And yeah, I like the instrumental break quite a lot. I wanted it to go back to the chorus rather than down. Yeah, right. Just think about getting to your chorus sooner, like within the first 45 seconds. And then you'll be able to do it maybe a time or two more. Yeah. In fact, you can even, there has been some great songs that start off with the chorus in the past. You can do that as an idea. Maybe, I never did that. I'm always kind of a build up kind of guy. But you can do that. Yeah, yes. Yeah, you absolutely. And somebody said in the comments that there's like a little Beatles vibe to this. And so they, you know, they just do it. And so I've also heard where it's like the chorus instrumental is used as an intro. That can be really effective too, because it's sort of prime pump. It's like primes your audience for the one they hear. They're like, oh, I know this already. You see, people singing along. Or the other technique, which was sometimes used was acapella chorus. So the other way, not instrumental, but acapella. I'm thinking the Queen fat bottom girls, they did that. Yes, you could do that too. Totally, yeah. That could fall. Either one of those are great intros. Not to say that your intro now as it stands, it's good. Like, I mean, the first thing I wrote down was like that there's really good separation and mix and it's got a kind of, the vocals could come up. The lead vocal could come up. Something you might do. Harmonies are friggin amazing. I love them. They're beautiful. And I'm a sucker for harmonies. Do you ever find yourself just when you're driving on the car, you've got some music on, you're just singing harmonies all the time? Yes. It's a fun thing to do. It's weirdly kind of rewarding, isn't it? It's just so rewarding to do it. I don't, and you feel like a bit of a smart ass when you do it as well. Like this is actually my super power. You go, this is my super power. Everyone else sings the third above, but I think I do the fifth below. Yeah, I think backing harmonies is honestly one of my favorite parts of the progression. Isn't it? Yeah, it's just a joy. And I just learned about vocal sync too on K-Class. Yes, I saw that. I saw that. Yeah. Good stuff. In my very crappy quality video, where I need to do a proper video on vocal sync because it's awesome. But yes, so. You did a great job. You did a great job. Oh, thank you. Oh, thank you. Oh, you did. Well, thank you. I was, I'm always trying to steal ideas off other YouTubers. Good. So we have to watch the chat. Good. We won't do it. Well known for stealing ideas. Carry on. Something that you might consider, I didn't really know they were getting in the way, but something that is a helpful mixing tip with harmony is to, if you have all your harmonies going, like the VV bus, right, then you can scoop a little bit of that frequency where the lead is, just a little bit, so that take up a little bit more different sonic space than the lead does. That's a little trick. One thing that if you happen to be a melodyne user or use anything like that at all, which I'm, I'm going to call myself a light melodyne user. I love melodynes so much. Yeah, certainly if something really stands out as, you know, the rest of the performance was great. I just want to fix that. Then I definitely do it. Probably it's increased over time, not just with my own vocals, but other people's vocals that I'm recording. But one thing I'll say about one little, that's not a trick, I guess, is that don't over pitch correct your harmonies. My sort of rule of thumb obviously is pitch correct the lead, but then don't pitch correct the harmonies as long as they're not too far out, right? You get more width with, when things are perfectly in tune with each other, even though you're panning hard left and hard right, it won't sound as wide as if there's a little bit of pitch difference. And sometimes you can over pitch correct and things get narrower. So yeah, I sort of tend to not pitch correct the harmonies unless, as I say, probably if they were that far out, I would be considering re-tracking anyway. But yeah, but... That's cool. A bit of detuning certainly makes it a bigger sound. That's the point. It does. Yeah, yeah. But these harmonies, look, he knew what he was doing with harmonies in music. Yeah, gorgeous. Gorgeous. I love those harmonies. I was, I kind of wish that I could hear it again to just sort of like go through. Especially with that structure stuff. Oh sure, let's listen to it again. Let's do that. Can we? Change my mind. No, the reason I say that is because we do have to move on to our third song and there's a specific reason why we do have to move on to it. But I do want to say the well done on the sort of production side of things here. Oh yeah. You know, we've given you some tips here, but I think we're in agreement that on the whole, you could probably, you're very close to being able to release this. And it is, it is. And listeners are not going to be as nitpicky as us. And just in case you're ever fearful of releasing, I recommend DistroKid for releasing your music. I don't know if Lorraine wants to intervene at this. Oh, your crass commercialism, Mike. What are you? But indeed, I will say, and this is genuine, that the first time I ever used one of these services, I thought this is going to be hard, isn't it? I'm going to have open up a bunch of accounts with Spotify and iTunes and Google Play. But you don't have to do that. DistroKid does it all for you that you just have to upload it once. It's really easy, really easy form to do it. And it looks a bit like this. So if you want to release your music via DistroKid, there's just a couple of things you need. First of all, the music itself. Here's mine in my door cakewalk. And I'm exporting it to an uncompressed wave file for best results. Now, the other thing you'll need is some artwork. I just grabbed an old photo, which I'd taken on the beach, trapped on some text here. And that's what I call art. Then I went over to DistroKid and I just have to fill in this extra easy form. It's a no brainer form. You get helped all the way through with little hints and things. You can't really do anything wrong. You just go ahead and confirm a few things about your music. And then you just have to actually upload the artwork and the song itself. And DistroKid takes care of the rest. It's going to send it out to all of the best platforms so that people can hear and buy your music. I think if we had to pick a quote for the show for today, like if that was a thing, which I think it might be a thing now, I think today's quote would have to be I support your crash commercialism, Mike. Even a t-shirt. I think a t-shirt. Perhaps a t-shirt. I support your crash. I was going to say, no, DistroKid is good. And this is... No, no, no, no. DistroKidalight now. YouTube is your support. The produce aisle. They've put a bigger red line through there. It's funny, like the thing about art, isn't it? When it crosses a certain point where you want to do it all the time, it's a thing that you have to... You think, I want to do this all the time. I love what I do. I love what I do. And the other thing you have to do all the time is eat and pay bills and things like that. So I'm not talking about myself personally here, but I'm just talking about creators in general will always come up with the thing. So what I think is really sad about that is that say venue managers for local bars and things take advantage of the idea that musicians are supposed to do it for the love of their art and not for money or anything like that and then pay people below the minimum wage. It usually works out between a bank. So I'm in favour of musicians making some money out of what they do, at least to the degree where it just makes them comfortable enough to concentrate on their art without having to think about whether they can afford a loaf of bread or not. And the reason I bring this subject up a little bit is probably our audience do not know and are not aware of the fact that in terms of YouTuber music people making money out of being a YouTuber, there is a little threshold you have to cross. There's no reason people should know this so I'm a little bit of education here. So if you've ever wondered how YouTubers make money, one of the ways they make money folks is by those, I was going to say annoying adverts, I shouldn't, but those adverts either side of the video or sometimes in the middle of the video. And there's a little bit of tiny, tiny, you can imagine the small percentage which gets paid to a YouTuber of that. But anyway, the point is before you can earn money from those adverts, you have to have over 4,000 hours of watch time on your YouTube channel in the previous 12 months, and 1,000 subscribers. And at the point you've got 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time under your belt, then YouTube start to pay you a percentage of those adverts. And I can tell you in the first month after I went over 1,000 subscribers and had 4,000 hours of watch time, which is quite a significant amount of watch time, I earned $10.80 in that month. So my first month as a YouTuber. So there is a reason I'm telling people this, because if you would like to get Lorraine closer to earning her first $10.80... Oh no! ...and $10.80... Oh no! ...and $10.80... And $10.80... And $10.80... And $10.80... Given that she's now blown the chance of any sponsorship from District here, help the poor lady out by heading over to the link in the description where she has grown a little bit closer to the potential of earning $10.80 in her life. I said that. So in the course of this show, she's gone from 405 subscribers to 412 subscribers. I'm glad to see. But I'd like to see more, if I'm honest with you. Like about 588 more subscribers would be useful because then we'll know, then that Lorraine can continue to make her one of her forms of art, which is helping people with how to use Katewalk and make music and stuff like that. Because it's true though, isn't it Lorraine? Is that, you know, having your electricity bill paid does enable you to focus at least on the subject of making some money. That's why we're making some music. Well, here's the thing. It takes a lifetime of skill that we as musicians build up. And so to put such a low value on it, like I think we all need a much shift about our money shift that it's not something that we should just do for the exposure. As I like to say, bye, I'm exposed to exposure. So take free gigs, have them. I take that. There's a mindset shift about like getting what you're worth and stepping into your own value. And it's hard. It's hard because it feels, I mean, I make the joke that I support your crass commercialism, Mike, but I feel like I shouldn't have said that because it's honestly- No, no, that's fine. I'm joking. No, no, don't say that. Well, I mean, I just don't want there to be that kind of dip between artist and moneymaker. Well, there's of course a way of doing it, which is, what's the word, still has integrity. Genuinely, I'm not just saying this. I wouldn't promote a service like DistroKid unless I thought they were providing a good service, which is a good value for money. You've helped me to re-advertise in here, haven't you? But no, I wouldn't ever support a product. I couldn't live with myself, literally just doing that. But there's ways of- We all come to that, don't we? I guess as musicians, it's like you want to go and play the music that you've written in the local bar, don't you? But then again, you probably should play some covers to kind of, you know, help the bar out. And you know, there's always a decision, isn't there, which is semi-commercially based at least. But I think there's ways of doing it without selling your soul, definitely. And I think that's so important. So it's like, your soul is worth more. Don't sell it. It is worth so much more. We were talking, weren't we, before the show, about the fact that as YouTube channels grow, of course, and I make no, I don't think I hide it, that obviously manufacturers send me equipment. I'm very fortunate to have good relationships with people who make great equipment. I have had things sent to me, which I didn't think was good, and I've just not reviewed it. I don't want to make videos about what not to buy, to be honest with you. It doesn't really help you. You're still going to know what to buy. But you know, I digress. One of the interesting things about that though, I have found that although I've been sent another, a number of audio interfaces, it turns out I can't pay my landlord in audio interfaces. I've tried, I said, hey, I know I know rents to you, but can I interest you in a focus right? Turns out it's not a currency I can really deal in. I guess I could sell them on eBay, I guess. I don't know if I'm allowed to do it. I don't know if I'm allowed to do it. Or reverb, you could sell reverb. I could sell them on reverb. Reverb.com, yes. But anyway, look, here's the interesting thing, is a subscriber count is nothing, it doesn't have too much to do with the quality of the channel sometimes. It's hard to grow a channel to a reasonable size without having something of worth, of value to pass to people. But what I'm trying to say is, I think the produce aisle is going to be a huge channel eventually based upon the most significant part of any channel is probably the person hosting it. And I do enjoy your videos for that. There's definitely a sense of who you are in what you're doing, love for your craft, good amount of hilarity in there. I think producers are such serious people, don't you think, Lorraine, they're so serious? Seriously, I don't know. I think maybe there's some inferiority, so I'm just trying to get past and be honest and be like, I'm not good at this, but here we're trying it anyway, you know? And sometimes I am good at it, and I like to celebrate that too. But yeah, there's always more to this, Lorraine. And so that's really what I want to encourage. I kind of like starting the channel, how would I like to encourage 16-year-old me to be a good girl producer, making, be having just like a lot of fun and empowering the production as per your position to make loads of creative decisions. And so I work with the different creators. Now, I'm going to interrupt you at the moment, Lorraine, because you're breaking up quite badly at the moment, so Robot Voice has been introduced to the show. You may not be aware of it yourself, but what we'll do is we'll play the next song in the hope that by the time we get through the next song that you may have got back up to speed in terms of your bits and bytes. I'm going to introduce this one, and it's interesting. We talked about a new criteria for listening to songs during the show is should the song title be in the lyrics of the song. I already have a certain criteria about, and I think this is true. Once songs go over a certain length, and I'm going to say once songs go over five minutes long, I think that actually becomes then an aspect of the song to talk about. That seems arbitrary, but I think in the culture, in the music culture that we exist in, five minutes is probably regarded as a long song. I'm not saying it shouldn't be that long, but I'm saying it becomes now a part of the song which I feel compelled to critique, as well as the arrangement and the mix and everything else. And only from the lens of if the song is this long, did it hold me for that long. And so I'm going to say suggest to you, Lorraine, that this is what I'm going to ask you as one of the questions after we listen to this song is, did it hold you for that long? Did it maintain your attention for that long? I think it's actually around about six minutes long or so. Now, it is from an artist going under the name of Music Life Hereto. Let me put it up on the screen. Crypto? Yeah, I read crypto, but the spelling is good. It's not a typo because I copied and pasted it from the email. So it doesn't matter. Maybe it's a play on words. Who said, I started using Cakewalk instead of Reaper. Got hooked and your YouTube tutorials were a big help. Thanks, well, thank you very much. Your advice is helpful. Is this email all about me and how I didn't mean to copy and paste this? Usually I get rid of these parts and we just go to the meat of it. I just love Cakewalk. Can't believe it's free. Here's a song I wrote, did the vocals and the music would love you to review and recommend how to fix it on your show. OK, we'll have a listen to this. Let's see how we go. OK, whoa, whoa, whoa, we've already got some critique here. Just quick note, because I noticed that the artist is in the live chat. Nice, it's a pleasure. Music life, music life crypto. And I thought, did I, did I, I'm sure I copied and pasted like I, I try not to type when I can. And I went back and I checked the email while we were listening. And it did the email. It says in the email music life crypto, right? And I've just realized what I did. Just I'm apologizing to the artist a little bit. I copied the file name. So the file name that the artist sent me probably had a typo in the file name. And I just, so. Good to check that metadata, folks. Check that metadata. As an explanation here, I should have probably checked there myself. I've learned something from this. So I think right up, let's answer that question. Lorraine, it was a few minutes long. Did it hold you? I think it's absolutely appropriate for the genre, which is the modern products. And this reminded me of porcupine tree and also riverside. You never heard of riverside. Oh my God. I'm just, I'm trying to look up their album where this is a genre where there is so much creativity available. And I think that there's, it seems like it's not as popular, but I think it's popular in countries besides America. There's so many countries other than America, isn't there? There's a few, I guess. It's funny, most countries are in America. Oh, right. Of all the other countries in the world, none of them are America. I'm already put like that. Oh, good. Music life, crypto is a huge riverside fan. Yeah. Yay, good, good, good. So this is lovely. I had several moments of goosebumps in this. And so here's my notes. Love to hear, and I apologize. My internet is so crummy, New Orleans. Have a drop in drums, especially in the percussion, everything, before the vocals come in. Say that for the intro as well, and for before the chorus. Like, that will build up this contrast where it'll make those goosebumps moments just like heightened because it'll just be like, things to do. And you can just like really soar then. Also, if you would like a collection of female vocals, hit me up. And you sing very well. I've noticed that. Thank you. Yes, you're a good singer. Thank you. That was a especially good example. That's sell you, that's you, music life, crypto. Well, I think all good singers know how to emulate terrible things. That'll. That'll. Indeed. I'm serious about that. Did you sidetrack here? Because I asked, did it hold you? You said it was appropriate for the genre. That's not the same as you saying it held you for that period of time. Well, I mean, it's subjective, but yeah, it did hold me. It did hold me, and I like this kind of vibe. I like this kind of getting me to want to listen to that Riverside album that I love a lot again. It's this kind of just different headspace that it puts you in. So I am game for that. Love the just spaciousness that you had. So yeah, so it did. It did hold me. It did hold me. And I know I've been talking a lot about like repetition. And this did have quite a lot of repetition. It did. Yeah. It was more subtle. It was an evolving repetition, which is wonderful. So yeah, super, super cool. Like, oh, and that guitar line comes in so cool. Chugging along. And then it has these beautiful swells underneath where you have, I don't know what you use, but they're like kind of strings and. Yeah, that was a part of my notes was that there was some sort of pad in there, which just sounded delicious to me. I don't know what it was, but it was just really, really, I love, I love pads. Yeah, it was really delicious and dreamy. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah. So really good. Why are you laughing? Just that I love my pads. Yes, it's true. I mean, I do too. I don't have a good pad. So the drums though could be fatter. I want to hear the drum. If they are real, then try like playing with the drum replacer on to get some beefiness in them. You could almost do that thing that like Radiohead did on some of their songs where the drums almost overdriven a little bit, you know, they get really edgy, like they're saturated so much that they're even breaking up a bit. That can, that one could hear that on this song. Anyway, carry on. Oh, cool. Cool. I have to notice that when I'm listening. I haven't listened to Radiohead like this is making me want to listen. I'm thinking you might have to go back to the Benz or something. Maybe the opening track of the Benz, or I can't remember what it is, but right at the beginning. Yep. Anyway. Fake plastic trees? No. It wasn't fake plastic trees. No, but anyway, yes. Yeah. So, but they could be fatter and more, more spread out like, because you have such spaciousness that you're, and so I want the drums to kind of be a part of that too. So, I don't know if you're using a spectrum analyzer, but be sure to look at a spectrum analyzer to see where, where you're, where those drums are sitting, and if there's parts of the spectrum up to around 60 hertz, it's always nice beefy frequency. And what else do I have? Vocals, I think, could be more upfront and proud. Just a little bit. I get what you're trying to do there, and it is effective, especially in the end, but I think that they could come up, I think it could come up even more. They're being treated as almost another instrument. As an equal to everything rather than a standout. Okay. You use spand. That's, Voxango span is good and it's free, and yeah, good, good, good, good. So, yeah, getting the vocals just to be a little louder, but yeah, the vibe is good. And I think that that's pretty, again, sort of genre specific of like where the vocals sit and how far in a lot of Prague, the vocals are treated like that. They're treated like any other instrument where there's the kind of non hegemony or something like that, you know, with the music where it's like the vocals aren't necessarily the top dog. However, your vocals are so good, man. They're good, yeah. Bring them up. So, I really, yeah, I think this is an exciting piece. I think this is an exciting piece. Oh, here's another thing that's so good. I want you to consider it. We're talking about consider an acapella section where it's just sort of like these layers of sores that are just kind of like holding you in this sort of suspended state. That was maybe just maybe just with that nice pad, just the, just with the pad. Yes, yes, yes. Let's keep it padded. I think you can have a section where it's got the pad underneath it and then it drops out and just sores and then everything comes back in. Can I ask Music Life Crypto? I've actually corrected it in my word. I've got word open here for my note. I've corrected it here. I'm so OCD. Anyway, can I ask Music Life Crypto? Nobody can see that. Anyway, Music Life Crypto, can I ask? There was a, I've got it in my notes here. I was going to mention that I thought that some of the harmonies were just beautifully done and a great example of they were not in your face harmonies like the previous song. They were subtle, right? And there's times in music production where subtlety is just everything when it's there and maybe people are not going to be really consciously aware of it, but it is there if you really turn your attention to it. And I was noticing those vocal harmonies. Now it sounded like a female vocal to me, but was it you singing, you know, in falsetto or something like that? Let me, let's know in the chat there because I thought it was really, really good, really, really nice. And I could definitely imagine that acapella section with the pad that Loreen was talking about. Of course, if it wasn't a female vocal or it was a female vocal, but you don't get along with her, then Loreen's available, of course, for that. Yeah, look, can I say just in terms of overall mix, I'm glad that Loreen mentioned a voxengo span there, but I have to say for me, this was lacking in the low end of the mix tremendously. There was a lot of mid and high frequency stuff going on there. I was, it was the only real thing about this piece of music that sort of thought that bothered me was I want to feel that warmth. I'm not talking about both. I'm just talking about warmth, right? Just feeling like you're being wrapped up in a nice blanket. Yeah. That's the way I sort of feel. That was just lacking a little bit there. Several people mentioned great sounding guitars, by the way, which were the opposite of that warmth. They were very present in the mids, and that was good. That was, I like that. I like the edginess of them. But as I say, I feel that there needs to be counterbalanced with when you've got that sort of, yeah, that very, I'm not going to say harsh because harsh sounds like a negative word, but what I mean is a certain grittiness to those guitars was happening, and I want that to be balanced out in the low end. And talking of balance, I also want to think about the panning here a little bit. For me, I'd have to listen again, but I felt that there was a lot going on in my right side. It made me feel like I wanted to listen to the mix like this, if that makes sense. I just wanted to, the other way to balance it out. Yeah. So I think that momentarily in, for me, it's a maybe a taste thing or a creative choice, but momentarily when we have things that you're out of balance, I think that's good. But over a long period, I think it was like, and I can't remember from memory, I can't recall what it was. It was, it may have been a synth or the guitars or something, but it's okay to have something panned that extreme. But I think you most times want something on the other side to kind of balance it out so the listener feels balanced. Like they don't have to do that. Why would you do, why would a person do that? I have the weirdest thoughts in my brain sometimes. This morning, when I was brushing my teeth and I was thinking about, how do we help Marine to get more subscribers on her channel? And I was thinking about boosting that. We'll get back to the song in a moment. And I know this thought came in my head, just thinking about stupid thoughts. I thought, what if YouTube did it like this? What if you only have a certain amount of subscribers you can do? Like when you join YouTube as a viewer, you can only have 50, right? So maybe then to subscribe to a new channel, you might have to unsubscribe to another one, right? And I was thinking, in this alternative reality, if I asked people to subscribe to a fellow cakewalk tutorial maker, in this case, Lorraine, but what if the rule was, they had to unsubscribe from me to give her, would I still be, would I be altruistic and say, and the answer in my mind was no. Screw that bitch, she's not having my subscriber. That's how my brain thinks. It's fair, it's fair, I get it. You get it? Back to, yeah, you were about to say something about the mix. Before you did, screw that bitch. I've thrown you, haven't I? I've thrown you. Yeah, I'm interesting about the penning. So I really did like what you did with the vocals and that there was like, there's this other, one of the voices is it was definitely in my left ear and I found that delightful. It was just like, it's all on the left and it's like I'm being told a secret. So I think that was a really cool effect that I've never thought about using penning in that way where it's like, it's almost like using Paris or it's like, by the way. So how cool and creative. Getting the drums to be, not, they need to be switched up a little bit and dropped out so that we miss them as a listener. Make us miss them. Yeah, I love the way you say that. That's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Give like, we want it so that when you hit one of those like choruses and big screen, just like, you know, just like, really vet then when the percussion comes back in after we've been like floating in space. So it's very exciting. Yeah, it comes back to what I was discussing earlier about the idea of, you know, keep the listener interested with different elements happening and it could be done in an arrangement way by adding different things that could be done with mixing. It could be, you know, some people will add doubled vocals in some parts and not in other parts. But what I want to say about that, because you've alluded to it there, it's tempting and probably if you listen to me too much, you'll be tempted to think, I need to keep adding things in the new verse that needs to be, but I forget to say sometimes, just as powerful is removing things as well. It's about contrast rather than just more, more, more. It's about things coming and going and moving. And by the way, folks, when I say this, it's only my opinion, but this doesn't need to be overly obvious. Sometimes it can, we've talked about subtlety here, sometimes it can be just the fact that with this verse, there is that new harmony happening there. And in this case, as you say, cleverly done on one side. It sounds like a whisper. What a brilliant-eyed concept to think about. But yeah, it doesn't. But I don't think that people listening at home, as in ordinary non-producer listeners, should be thinking consciously, oh, this song is so good because on the third verse, a trumpet came in. I don't think that needs to be the case at all. But you may be doing something wrong if it's that, crass, like my, like me. But yeah, what Mike said about contrast, contrast is everything. I heard an interesting anecdote about Ansel Adams, who is very best known for his black and white photography. He did have a color career and was not successful. So he, it's all about, his work is about contrast. And it's what makes it good and it's what makes people respond to it. And it's the same with music. So taking something away, absolutely, I second this, just as powerful as bringing something new in. And silence is also a sound. And you can play, you can play the silence and play this, play the space. Like, I love it when a song has total dropouts. That's sort of really exciting. But I don't know that this particular piece would benefit from that because it has this sort of soaring, spacious quality that I'd want to keep like, I'd want to float on something. But giving it that space to do so without the drums would be very exciting. So when they come back in. It's really interesting. We're going to have to sort of tie things up here. But it's such an interesting topic. We're really talking about dynamics more than anything. And once in a while, hey, I love dynamic shifts. And then once in a while, a song comes along and it just goes 150% all the way through from beginning to end. And that can be just great if it's done really well at times. You know, I think there's been some, I don't know, genres of music like punk have been really great at times. Just hitting you hard from the first beat of the song all the way through. That can work too. But there's no rules. But there are some guidelines, aren't there? And you can get them from YouTube channels such as ours. Thank you so much to everyone who's been here in the live chat. It's been awesome to have you here. Thank you to everyone who subscribed to Loreen's channel. We've got your handful of new subscribers in there. So sweet. Thank you all. It's just nice. I'm glad that I'm going to have that. There's a thing. It's like 400 people. If you put 400 people in a room, like, that's a big crowd. Hello. It's amazing. Isn't it? Really pleased. Thank you. It's incredible. Now, next week, I have an artist called Happy Ron who I've featured his music on the show a couple of times before and I love what he does. And so I'm very much looking forward to having him on the show as a guest next week. So, Ron, he's one of those guys I think he always has something to say. I've been on his YouTube channel. He does live shows and stuff like that. Always got interesting perspectives on things. So that'll be awesome. And Loreen, you know, you did that piece of music using Micah's choir. And that's named after a guy called Micah Christian, who's in a group called Sons of Serendip who really are a fantastic group have an interesting lineup. Vocal, piano, cello and harp is their lineup. They play contemporary music. So it sounds like a classical music lineup but they play contemporary music. I caught up with them a couple of weeks ago now and recorded an interview with them both about making libraries and making music libraries and making plugins and that kind of stuff and a little bit about that. And also about their group, Sons of Serendip who happened to be finalists on America's Got Talent, I think about a few years ago. Yes, and since then, because of that, being able to be full-time musicians as a result of that, which they exude enthusiasm for. They're always, they're out on tour around your wonderful country a lot of the time. But anyway, in between touring, they came home and we were able to do an interview which was really, really interesting. I spoke with them for about three hours but I've managed to cut it down I think to about half an hour so far about amazing topics, lots and lots of really amazing topics. So I'm in the process of editing that at the moment but I'll release a clip or two here and there and then try and get out into a three weeks time folks. So I know some of you are waiting to see that and hopefully, well, they've expressed an interest being guests on the show in June as well. Hopefully I can tie them to that and hopefully they won't be put off by your experience during today. This has been delightful. I have had so much fun and I didn't get to shout out to people who were chatting up but yeah, nice to see some familiar names and some really kind words from not familiar names too. So thank you all. They're great. My subscribers are the best subscribers. That sounds a corny thing to say but I really think I've got just the best subscribers in the world. So the subject once in a while comes up about moderation and dealing with trolls and what have you. And I reckon that I probably personally hide people from my channel and I'm going to say at most about four or five times a month where I actually hide, say this person's gone across the line and we quite rarely, probably I'm not so in charge of it but my moderators and advent would tell me but I think we reasonably rarely get rid of people from the Facebook group as well. And I'm really proud of that people can come together and they just prove that people can come together and get along with each other and be pleasant to each other and just celebrate making music and being constructive in that process. Yeah. It's really a great community. Yeah, I love it. Proud of. Facebook community. Well done. And even though we once in a while have to venture into crass commercialism, I think as a community, we generally have integrity. I'm not going to let you forget that. You know, I'm never going to let you forget that. I think I may have a t-shirt with your head somewhere on the t-shirt. No, I'm going to use a distro kid logo. This crap is commercialism brought to you by Okay. Thank you so much. I hope you'll come back again. I'll formally invite you right now here on the show. Oh, I'd love to. Anytime. Anytime. Awesome. Anytime. Oh, this is great. This is great. I'm going to do that on purpose now for a time which is like 3 a.m. in New Orleans. Something like that. That's fine. But yes, thank you so much. Musicians. It's the musicians of power. Vampires. Don't forget everyone to check out Lorraine's channel. And as I always do to my guests, I leave the final word of the show to them. Lorraine, go. Oh, thank you. Keep making art. Let anything stop you from making art. We have all the tools and just go for it.