 Welcome to Featured Artists Live, a weekly show to discuss and listen to your music. With help from my other YouTuber buddies, we hope to give you words of encouragement, guidance or simply just enjoy your wonderful creations. I'd like to thank our sponsor DistroKid, all of the wonderful artists and all of you for watching. Now, let's get on with the show. Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you well. Great to see you here. You can see there's lots of people here already in the chat. I'm super happy about that. Maybe it's because I'm doing it at this very different time, a USA friendly time especially, but also not, I mean, I guess late night, early morning for people in Europe and the UK. I know some of you have stayed up late to watch this, so I'm very, very happy about that and thank you so much. And for my fellow Aussies and other people in Asia and this part of the world, it's morning. If you're at work, I hope you got the sound muted, hang on, that would be useless for a show like this, wouldn't it? Headphones on, I guess, something like that. I have been chatting with my guest just before we've started here. A guy I'm getting to know, his name is Zelo, he's going to be coming on the show in a moment and I was having such a ball having a chat with him about music and stuff. I forgot I was doing a show, so that's why I'm a little bit disorganised. And I know I'm disorganised because I haven't mentioned this yet, oh hang on, wrong finger. This is my sponsor, DistroKid. Thanks so much to DistroKid for sponsoring these live shows where we get to listen to music from my community and myself and my guests talk about that music and the good parts of it, the stuff that could be improved in a way that we can kind of get an idea of what we're each other's doing, but also improve ourselves through the experience of listening to other people's music. So I'm always enjoying hearing what you actually get up to. And on this particular occasion, it's kind of a special show because I've just made sure that every single song that we're listening to today was produced in Cakewalk. And so just a bit of a Cakewalk special scene, I've got a Cakewalk guest as well. So I'm super happy to be doing this. Now, if you have not already entered a song for this show, you can still do so and you will be able to do so for the foreseeable future. There is a link in the description down below and you can enter there. And if you remember of my Cakewalk Facebook group, which there is also a link for in the description, and you post your music there, that's another place where I sometimes find songs which I post on the show. And so very cool. Let's get straight into it and say hello to our guest. As I say, fellow YouTuber, Zell O, he is here for it. Hello, Zell. How are you, man? What's going on, people? It's X dot E dot L dot O. How are you guys doing? There's lots of people in the chat here. Now, I'm going to just give you a little bit of a, give people a little bit of a rundown of who you are. I've been watching Zell for quite a while now, actually, because I like to keep an eye on what my fellow Cakewalk YouTubers are up to. And I just, if you haven't checked out his channel, there is a link in the description down below. He's extremely helpful. He's extremely knowledgeable with Cakewalk. And he's just got, I like watching your videos because you've got a nice vibe about you. I feel like I can just sit back and chill and have a listen to Zell talk about his thing. And of course, useful for me because if I need to make a Cakewalk video about a particular subject, you've often made it before me and I can just steal all of your ideas, which is handy for me. But how long have you been, how long have you actually been doing Cakewalk videos now, man? Um, actually, I've been doing Cakewalk videos for about a year and a half. So I'm fairly new still, still trying to catch up to you guys. But you've made an impact. You know, I feel in that time, a really, and a really positive impact. You're really busy in the Facebook groups as well and helping. And that's the thing about you. You're just always helping people out all the time. That's, that's what, that's what I see. What's that all about? I mean, you just got a lot of spare time in your hands and you think I'll just go around helping people. Oh, you know, well, when I'm working, sometimes I'll just go on Facebook or on the Cakewalk site and just look through the chats and see what people are talking about. And just help where I can. Uh, that's pretty much why I even made my channel in the first place for Cakewalk. It's to show people that they can actually use Cakewalk for different things. There's not always rock metal or, uh, no guitars and plugging things up. You can actually use it for MIDI and, uh, you know, different sounds and different effects and add them in their different ways. And that's what my channel is all about and helping you guys along the way, just so you can know that there's another way to do things and what's out there currently like, you know, FL and, uh, Ableton. Those are not the only ones you can make beats on. So Cakewalk is up there. And we're sort of already touching on a, on a subject here that, you know, was one of the reasons I wanted to get you on the show as well is because, um, you know, the genre of music that you normally produce is normally hip hop. I don't want to sort of put you in a box here because I know often people try different things, but normally hip hop. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. More urban music. I do a lot more urban music. Yeah. So R&B, hip hop, drill, trap, like any of those, like urban type music is where I kind of, kind of stay. I've got to tell you just by the way, my 14 year old son is probably, this is probably going to be the only show that he enjoys on this channel because that's what he listens to all the time. And if it wasn't for him, I would have no education. In this kind of music tour. I wouldn't have, no, you just mentioned drill there. If it wasn't for my 14 year old son, I'd be like, what's he talking about drilling for? And he loves drill, but, uh, but, you know, we, on the drive home from school, I'd have to drive about an hour to pick him up from school and bring him home. And, uh, and we, we take turns and listen to music. So I play a song. I try and educate him on the old guy's music and, and he plays me a song and we swap music like that. And he, he just, he just loves it, man. I mean, I, uh, I really enjoy the rhythms. That's what gets, from a musician's point of view, the experimentation with rhythm is really what gets me and lyrics, of course. Now I'm going to confess to you as a, as an old white guy in Australia. Sometimes I'm like, with drill and stuff. I'm like, I can't believe they just said that is pretty out there, man. What's, what's your thing on that? What's, what's your sort of take on that? Um, it's, it's a lot of people, what they've gone through their environment, um, interact, you're trying to put it out there so you can hear and see what they've been going through. Yeah. Um, so that's why a lot of people say it's like really angry and violent music, but there's, this is what they see every day. Like, um, me originally, I'm from New York. Um, I'm actually born from Brooklyn, New York and, um, moved out to Texas where I'm at now, but I mean, there's so many things that I've seen through, you know, just life experiences and things like that, that I try to express it in the music. Um, I do have music out there as well. If you guys don't know, I do a rap and that's kind of what my name is when I say X dot E dot L dot, and it's a extra enhanced lyricist is what it stands for. Um, kind of old school-ish, but that's what, that's what it pretty much stands for, but easier just to say XL or X dot, uh, makes it a lot easier for people to kind of say, instead of trying to say it like I say X dot E dot L dot. Oh, that's the beginning of this. Yeah. That's really, I love the fact that what you're saying there though, because I think, um, it's something J, we've got Jade here in the chat. I'm just going to say hi to some of the people in the chat. We've got Pete. We've got Jade. We've got Mimo, the regulars in there. Um, they're all saying hi. These are regulars, uh, they're all to the show. Um, and, uh, we've got Doug, we've got a few people in here. We'll put some of their chat comments. But, um, off camera, you know, this is something that me and Jade have been talking about recently about what is music really all about? We all make these videos about, we were talking off air about EQs and compressors and microphones and headphones and all that. But, but music is, you know, as you were saying that people write these lyrics in, uh, because that's the life they're living. That's, that's, that's what they want to talk about where they're from. Um, and, and I'm always a little bit cautious about that because if I did that, I'd have to write songs about arthritis and back pain. But, but, you know, but it's true. And, and, and that's a lyricist point of view, but also, you know, I just sort of want to say to people, hey, don't forget what music's really about. It's about expressing yourself and, and your life and where you're from and the world that we live in, uh, at the moment. And a good friend of mine, uh, Brian Henderson Ward, he's not in the chat there, but, um, he always used to say to me that this was almost the purest form of expression in terms of, if you wanted to know where the world was at at a particular time in history, go and look to the music there and see what people were expressing in that, in that music to find out what was really going on, not what it said on CNN or I just didn't pick out CNN. Cause there was just popped in my head, but, but or wherever, you know, I should say Fox now just to balance it out so that I'm not partisan in either way. But you know, it's, that's not really, you can't really find out what's at the heart of what people are thinking in that way, but maybe, maybe music, um, you can really get to some groups that, you know, so I, that's one thing I'm just going to say here for, for the doubters in the, we're getting the chat. You old white guys, rockers. Um, I don't know why I keep going about old white guys, but anyway, make fun of us, but people who are going to, uh, like put down certain genres of music, you know, um, I'm, I'm not with you on that. I'm, I'm here to say it's all a form of expression and people are going to express if they're expressing from their heart in their way, you know, if you love your thing, you love your thing and that's great. But I don't think it's cool to go around putting down other genres because you don't get it. I, that, that doesn't, it's someone saying guilty there in the chat. There you go. So we are going to listen to, uh, three songs today, which have been submitted from the cakewalk community. There was so much I wanted to talk with you about cakewalk and also Reaper as well. I want to talk a little bit about Reaper as well at some point because I know, is it Reaper that you use as well as cakewalk? I use, I use so many Dawson. I use a Reaper, I use FL, I use Cubase at times, Ableton. So I try to get a good gist of all of them. The only one I actually haven't tried is Studio One, which I did see you do a couple of videos on, but I said, I'm not paying that just to have that, like, I can't do it. I, I use cakewalk and I use Studio One. I've used Cubase in the past as well, which I think that's a great door as well. And obviously FL Studio as well, which I think is just great fun and I think the workflow of it leads you, it's a workflow thing, it's just for me, it leads you in a certain direction. And that's why even I did a couple of videos on it as well. And I let people know, like, it matters what you're trying to do. If you just want to make beats and you feel like you're not going to ever record and do other things like plugging a guitar ever, then I would say, yeah, go with FL, you'll make beats faster and you'll, you'll give them a good flow and rhythm with that. But if you actually decide to record vocals and you decide to do guitars or do a whole, you know, drum kit and set, I wouldn't suggest to use FL for that. I would say Reaper or cakewalk for sure. Absolutely. But yeah, the only one that I've got that I don't use, I'm going to say this, I'm going to say this right out there. Pro Tools. I've got it. I've got Pro Tools. I've got the full version of Pro Tools. I didn't buy it. It was sent to me. Yeah. When I go to the studio, I work out of Valley of the King Studio sometime. It's in Dallas, Texas, and they use Pro Tools in there. You know, people want Pro Tools just because they feel like it's industry standard. The cool thing, you know, I really don't like it at all. I really I used to use it years ago and then I used the most recent version. I've never seen a doll crash so much. Like it doesn't matter what it's on. It can be on Windows. It can be on Mac. It's going to crash. Like I don't know what they do to make it crash all the time. But I've never seen someone say, I love Pro Tools and it never crashes. I've never seen anyone ever say that. I've used Reaper and I've hardly ever crashed with Reaper. Like I don't know. Pro Tools. To pay like six hundred dollars for that or to pay the what is that like three hundred dollars a year. The subscription thing, yeah. It's crazy. You know, as much as I get, if people are using it in the chat, I find you've got to do what you love. But I don't mind telling you, I really think it's I don't know, just so hard to use and there's not a lot which is intuitive about it sometimes. I find myself going to drag things in it, which can't be dragged, which in every other door I can drag. And the whole thing about the the plug is in effects like you have to have there was the AAX. AAX, yeah. There you go. You can't use anything else. Can't use VSTs. Yeah, yeah. Come on guys. OK, yeah. Everyone else has gone VST but why? Well, hang on, does logic can logic use VSTs? I'm not sure now. But yeah, I'm not going to dislodge it because I've used logic as well. And I love logic. It's very, very good. I'm on a map. If I had a map, that's what I would sing for sure. It's great. It's great. It's really, really good. And I know and I've got a friend, Pete Jonzu, has a channel. He may or may not be in the chat at the moment. And he's got a great channel, which is really based around GarageBand. And, you know, he's been doing it mostly on mobile because his whole thing is being very accessible, you know, getting just making music wherever you are, whatever you do. So he's recently got a Mac for the first time. And I know he's been playing around with logic as well for the first time. So we'll see how he goes with that. And I had an iPad and I have, like, the FL mobile. I have the Cubases on there. I've got Cubase on there. Yeah. And beatmaker three. Oh, I haven't tried that. That is some amazing application to have on the iPad. It's it's amazing. That's all I can say about. Well, Jade is in the comments and she's also got a channel about making music on with apps. So Jade, beatmaker three. What what do you think, Jade? Let us know in the comments. Now, we're going to listen to our first song and talking about comments. Oh, thanks for the people who are watching in the chat. And thanks for hanging in there. As me and Zell are just having a bit of a natter here about things and enjoying ourselves. And I know you guys are waiting to actually listen to some music. So I better get over this. I can talk for a while. Anyway, the first song that we've got coming up is from a group called Colourtide. The song is called Getting On. Actually, this was posted in my cakewalk group and I noticed it and I thought it'd be an interesting one to look at. As it turns out, it's really interesting. Colourtide is a band who are based in from Ireland, a place called Cork in Ireland. But they have, I think, a least one member who's in the USA, the drummer. So I love this thing, which is particularly come about because of, you know, I'm not going to say the C word. And I'm talking about the C word, which is the virus, not the other C word. I'm not going to say it, but what's come out of that is a lot of people have had to work remotely and work online with each other, which is really cool because it's kind of push that technology in that way of doing things forward a little bit out of necessity. So anyway, but they've been around for years. They may have been doing this for years. A little bit of background on some gear and stuff. The guitar, just for people who want to know, was recorded using, I think, a PV impact guitar by the looks of it, using the Audion Evo 4 audio interface, which I've got and I've done a review on quite handy and using Guitar Rig and then for the vocals and old Akai C3000 and a Focusrite. So they're all recording their parts separately with different audio interfaces and stuff in different locations. The bass was using a Lackland 5594 bass. I don't know what that is. I'm sounding knowledgeable. I've never heard of it through Scarlett 214 interface and also we've got a little bit of background on plugins here. Piano tech was used for the electric piano. One of my favorite plugins, the piano tech plugins are just incredible. They're so lightweight. They're modelled pianos. So they're not they're not using samples at all. But they're one of my favourite pianos because to me, they sound better than some sampled pianos go figure. They do a great job. I hope to do a video about that soon, even though it's some old plugins. In terms of other stuff, some sound toy plugins we use. I know a lot of people enjoy the sound toys plugins, Echo Boy Crystalizer. There was some pitch percussion used with Contact Time Machine Pro. Use some Arturia plugins for pads while it looks a bit. Now and the drums were recorded. This is the part that was recorded in the USA through not sure what interface was used, but they just a little bit of EQ not much done on the drums. So the song, as I say, is called Getting On. This is from Colourtide. Let's have a listen. If you could see the hearts you've broken, I think you'd be surprised if you knew what you had taken and what you left to leave behind. Did you simply stop believing? Did you always plan ahead? You were just so sure of everything you want to quit while we're ahead? You said I'm hoping it's so hard and I should have some like canned applause or something like that. Shouldn't I? I need to sort that out for the show. Thanks so much for sending this. You know, I think it's Aiden from Colourtide who sent it in. So what was your feeling, Zell, as you were having to listen to this? Aiden, I would sample you. That's what more urban hip hop people do. They would sample stuff like this and make it into something else. But I like it. I think I don't know if the drums could come up a little bit more, but that's like my only critique on it. I like the way the vocals stand out then in your face, but not too in your face. He was riding the beat very nicely. I like to switch ups in there. But yeah, I would definitely sample that. It's interesting what you say about the drums there in terms of the balance. And do you think that's because with sort of hip hop stuff, then there's much more emphasis, isn't there, on so is your natural inclination kind of hearing or I'd like to hear just a little bit more on that downbeat, a little bit more snap to the snare. Yeah, the snare was fine. I think it was more of just a kick. Like I couldn't really feel the kick at all. Like it is was almost non-existent. Like I wanted I felt like I wanted to hear when they hit me. Yeah, it's interesting. I like that. I like that. A lot of people in the in the comments there were talking about the vocals. There's something that, you know, if me and you could make videos about vocals and drums, we'd have views all the time on our channels because people are continuously searching for vocal techniques, you know, people people struggle kind of thing with vocals. And I wonder if people struggle a little bit too much in some ways. You know, I mean, what's your sort of approach for sort of making a vocal sit in a mix? I like to have the vocals. Well, see, when when I mix it, I do different genres than probably a lot of people on your channel. When you're doing like hip hop or like urban kind of music, you want your kick and your snare to be like the loudest thing. And like your vocals will sit right there with your kick and your snare and everything else is underneath it so that it'll push the vocals for it. So if if your vocals are just as loud as your kick, you'll probably need to pull it down some. So your kick should probably be the loudest thing in your track. Like I love what you say there, though. Everything else underneath it, so it pushes the vocal forward. That's a mindset for me, which I really like, you know, because I find that when I've seen people struggling and myself in the past and still sometimes now struggling, it's because often this mix has been done with all of, you know, because often you've recorded instruments first and then you may have recorded a guide vocal, but finally you finish off with a vocal. And so you've built up this whole kind of, you know, temporary mix or, you know, working mix with all of these instruments, you know, and then you try and wedge vocals in there. And that's why it doesn't work because the mindset is like, as you say, that was really good. But I mean, in my line, more people do two tracks for their beats. They don't usually have everything laid out, you know, and tracked out. So you're dealing with a two track. So usually when I get them, I'll turn it down. I'll turn the beat down and I'll usually cut in that mid-range section just so the vocals can sit on top of that section because it needs to. And that's how you'll get your presence and your voice to be a little bit more present. Yeah, exactly. And that's what I think is that be straightforward about it. If you're envisioning your song from the beginning, you go, hey, there's a vocal in this song. There's some lyrics which have got some great things to say, I want people to hear those lyrics or it's got a great melody or whatever the emphasis is. And then think of it that way, right? I'm going to put that out front and everything else can sit back a bit behind it. And in your case, of course, in your genre, as you say, then the kick is also like really, really important. And I didn't know that about your approach that you're going to kind of sit even with the vocal. That's really interesting. Not a way that I normally think about it in the genres of music I produce. So that's really interesting. I just want to say about this, the bass line was a big standout for this song for me. It was just so, it had a little bit of offbeat stuff going on there, some nice smooth playing and you could definitely, I can imagine that for that partly would be why you may want to sample this song because it was just, because if you put that bass with a straight beat, it's the two actually, because normally we think about bass working in unison with especially with the kick, but also you can have contrast in bass where it's actually not working with it at all. And that can create some really great effects. The voice, lots of people commenting on the voice in there. It was, as you say, it just sat in the right spot and that's where when you're mixing with the vocal, there's just a point where it's not too loud and it's not too quiet and it just sits there. And you'll notice when you're mixing, when you've got it in that right spot, even when you drag that fader down one or two dB, suddenly everything's wrong up one or two dB, everything's wrong, you find that little sweet spot and that's, I highly recommend with people that that's why mixing quickly and with instinct is a great advantage. You let your gut feel that sweet spot, you don't overthink it, you'll know when it's there. You said the most important piece, don't overthink it. Like that's what a lot of people do, they overthink. No, I think I should just keep turning it up. Nope, let's go back and do a turn and they'll have like 30, 40 mixes of the same exact song. You're like, which one is the right? I remember hearing about that with Michael Jackson, I think they did like 43 cuts, was it a thriller? I think it was thriller, I'm not sure. And they went back to the second one and that's the one they used. Yeah, it's such a common experience. So they did 43 mixes and only used number two. So if you've done any amount of recording, it will be a familiar story to you that, yeah. I mean, there's something about the instinct of early, it's like a performance really, a mix in that way. Early performances are often really, really good because they're more instinctual and often the same with mixed. In terms of the drums, what I really liked about it was this sort of shuffle that was going on in the snare, just a really cool part of the song. I liked the use of the stereo and it's great that the show is finally in stereo for the last few episodes because it was in mono for the first, it was awful. But yeah, there was a good use of stereo. If you didn't pick up on these things for folks who are watching in the chat or watching the replay, follow the links in the description down below for links to the songs and listen out for some of the stuff which is going on with the stereo there. Very, very nice. And if I'm gonna pick out one thing that was not quite there for me, Aidan in the chat there, thank you so much, is the nylon guitar, which I think came in maybe halfway or three quarters of the way in. I don't know, Aidan, well, I think Aidan actually played that part, I'm not sure, but it maybe had a little bit of timing issues, just a little bit. I'm not sure it came off that way to me. Sometimes people use clever timing, like musically clever timing, and I'm not musically clever, so I'm going this out of time, but they're actually doing something really good. But it felt a little bit off to me and just a little bit harsh. Nylon guitar can be very, very hard to mix into mixes and get that in the right spot. It has very different characteristics to steel-strung guitars. And yeah, it just felt a little harsh to me, Aidan, just, and that's the only thing. And I don't want to oversell that because I was just kind of looking for something to improve upon, but that was really the only thing. But yeah, an enjoyable song, very chilled, very laid-back, and I'll have a listen to that again in the evening. When I'm nine o'clock in the morning, there's a good evening song, I felt, very, very cool. I'm just going to mention quickly that for these people who are sending in this music, a lot of them are actually using DistroKid, and one of the reasons they use DistroKid is because it's so easy to do. And I know Zell uses DistroKid as well. And for someone like me who used to actually record things onto CD, and back in the day, when I sold CDs at my gigs, I would be actually making them at home with a CD burner and putting stickers on them. I did all that. There was a lot of work before every gig. Yeah, so comparing to those days, releasing on something like DistroKid to all of these massive international platforms is a bit of a breeze, you know? So I'm going to let people know now just about how easy that is with this little insight into that. 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, chucked 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. So if you haven't looked into releasing your music via DistroKid, definitely you can see it's really quite straightforward, even if you're not that technically minded because the forms and things that guide you through so easy. And something I do mention once in a while, but it's good to release your music. It's good to get your music out there to the world, but in my opinion, you will feel good about getting your music and then moving on to the next track, because I think if you don't release your music, it will sit on your computer and you will keep mixing it over and over again, waiting for that perfect mix before you release it. That day is never going to come and you'll kind of get stuck on just a few songs and releasing your music kind of gets out of your system, you can then forget about it, good, bad or ugly, whatever happens to it, it's gone and now you can record and mix the next and write the next song, you know, so. I've got to tell you though, I had a comment on one of my videos or somewhere on Facebook a few days ago and it was this comment. Could you tell me how to write a song? I thought well. Ooh. That's a big video to make, isn't it? Oh yeah. So for me personally, I started, well, a little bit of a backstory for you. My older brother, Paul, broke, back in, this would be about early 80s, I guess, broke the world record, wait for it, and he was in the Guinness Book of Records for playing Monopoly for the longest period of time. Him and his friends played Monopoly for 19 days straight. What? Yes, and he came to me at the time and I just started to learn to play guitar. I was whatever, 10 years, 11 years old at the time and he said, could you write a song? Could you put these lyrics I've got to some music? That was my first songwriting experience ever and the song lyrics were all had phrases which are around Monopoly. I think the song itself was called Advanced to Go or something like that. And that was my first experience and it's hard for me to talk about writing songs because I've done it since I was 10 years old and it's always that experience for me. It's like, oh, I wanna write a song, this'll be fun. And I kinda do it. But for some people it doesn't come flow that easily and we've all got different ways and some people can write very good music even though it doesn't flow for them so easily. But what's your thing? Where do you start? Do you start from those sort of the music side of it or is there normally a lyric that comes with you first? I get a feeling from the beat. That's usually how I start anything. If I can't feel the beat then I usually can't write anything. And does it suggest a subject to you though? It just kinda matters. Most of the time it's on mood as most people write music on their mood or how they feel at the time. If you get the right beat with the right mood then you have a cohesive chance to make a good song. So that's kinda how I approach it when I actually do music. Even when I did the how to record vocals on my channel, that was a verse that I had and it just felt right with the beat. So it came together almost flawlessly. I was, can you see my footsteps? So if you do wanna check that, it is on all the major platforms. I had to listen to it the other day, really, really good. By the way, I didn't, I put a link to your channel but I haven't put a link to your Spotify account. I will do that later. Cause you've got some great music on there, really good stuff. I'm a lyrics guy, so I just, and the interesting thing about good lyrics is you don't actually have to, obviously I don't always identify with where you come from as your experience in life. You know, we're in different planet, different parts of the planet, different sides of the world, different backgrounds. So, but I don't think that's absolutely necessary to enjoy somebody else's lyric. You don't have to agree with them even. Good lyrics will just, I don't know, take you on a journey anyway, you know? Yeah, I mean, and that's why I kind of listened to like, almost all kind of music. Anything I can listen to, I'll just listen to it. There's only like one kind of music. I don't think I can really do like the screaming music, like I don't necessarily even notice. I think it might be metal or something like that, but it's like just to, I can't do that for a long period of time. I'm not sure if anybody in the chat does that kind of music. I'm sorry. We have some of those guys hanging out here sometimes. I personally agree with you. It's not the music I would listen to, but it's strange enough, my partner Susie who sings like an angel, she loves to listen to that stuff. I would never pick that, you know? Like normally, and I'm gonna be racially profiling her now, but normally Asian women don't listen to like screaming death metal, you know? But she gets off on that stuff sometimes. She enjoys it, you know? So, you know, I respect that the people do that and they enjoy it. I guess that's right. People really, really enjoy it. I have no problem with that. I just don't understand it. Like, it's not clear to me. Like, I like something I can actually hear and understand. That's just how my ears work. But there's people who love it. I know there's some of my best friend, he loves that when we get in the car, that's all you hear. So we just drive into the store and I'm just like, I'm like, what are they saying? He's like, you don't hear that? I was like, no, I don't know what he's saying. That's so cool, man. That's so cool. Now, I'm going to talk about our next song coming up now. This is from Chrissy Strings, Old Man of Coniston. Do you know what Coniston is, Old Man of Coniston? Oh, I should have Googled this. I think it's some sort of landmark or something like that. Maybe it's, let me just, look, maybe people are knowing the chart. I'm just gonna, I feel bad that I didn't do this before. Old Man of Coniston is a fell in the Furnace Fells in Cumbria in the English Lake District. So it's a landmark. It's an Old Man of Coniston. I think it's a kind of, maybe a mountain or a hill or something along those lines. I'm showing my instruments. Yes, I researched before I did the show, folks, not. Anyway, so Chris, this is an interesting one. Again, it's a lot of people taking part in playing on this. Chris played most of the parts, but he wanted to make sure that I did mention a guest appearance from a vocalist, from Tui Nguyen is the vocalist and also saxophone, Martin Lyme. Chris play pretty much everything else by the looks of it. Gretch Drum Kit, Technics Piano. He's played acoustic guitar, jazz bass. He's obviously one of those sickeningly talented people who can do all of these things. Use a Rode NT2A and SM57, both great mics, to have in your studio and you can get a lot done with them. Use Cakewalk Drum Replacer to beef up the kick, which I've occasionally used myself. Do you ever use that at all? No. You haven't used that? Definitely. I've pulled it up and I was even gonna do a tutorial one time on it and I'm like, I'm not doing this. Too hard? It's just too much steps when I can just put a kick in there from somewhere else. That's true though. That's another, that's a good thing though, that don't overcomplicate things. I can see when you want the process to be automated, yeah, just to change the subject slightly, but I see this again with vocals where people have gone to all of these lengths to fix a little bit of a vocal with compressors and I'm just going, look, just dive in there with the gain automation tool and just fix that little bit there. You know, like it's gonna take you five seconds and you very little skill level to be honest with you and it'll work, you know. I'm not saying- And it won't kill your compressor. So like- Exactly. Always, I certainly always do that before I'm using my compressors anyway, so that you're getting it about right. You know, before you're fixing it with a compressor. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people would have ever understood that, like, and this is why a lot of engineers and mixed engineers charge a lot because most of them will actually start with the track and they'll go through the whole thing and level everything out through the waves and then they'll put the compressor and all the other stuff on top. And it takes time. And it takes time and effort. But I find it to be a very, at the end of the day, a compressor is a tool which is great. By the way, this is not a show about dising compressors. They've got great use. But it's an automation tool, yeah? It knows nothing about music. It doesn't know about music. It knows about volume level of things, right? And it's adjusting them. I always say, a compressor's just an automated volume control. It can work really, really quickly in really small degrees. And in that way, it's a little bit better than humans. But when you're doing that thing where you go through the clip gain and you're doing that, you're thinking in a musical way. You're thinking about what is this phrase from this vocalist's need at that point, right? And you're thinking about the song and what it needs. A compressor can't think. It's an automation tool. You've got to put your dial in the right settings to make it work well. But yeah, so that's my little beef about compressors. Glad to see we're on the same page because I wouldn't want to have an argument with you the first time meeting. We'll save that for the second episode. But... Great minds think alike, maybe. I don't know. Anyway, he uses that drum replaceer. He used melodyne in this, which I'm not ashamed to say I make use of melodyne. I know some people are anti these kinds of things. I don't overuse it, but I certainly use it on most songs at some point. But he's used it in an interesting way. He's used to stack a couple of lines of saxophone together. And also, and I'm just quoting from him, he used the formant tool, which I don't think I use that much, to adjust the saxophone to mimic a trumpet. Interesting, very interesting use there. And he's a little quote, I probably should have read this before. I did my research earlier. This is a little quote from Chris. I find it interesting that the tallest mountain on earth is, and I can't pronounce this, Moana Key in Hawaii. And this got me thinking that the idea that not everything we see in person is necessarily on show. Before I knew it, I'd whipped out my guitar and switched my gear on. And two months later, bang, the whole thing was done. So, yeah, that's where the inspiration come. Nothing, I'm confused about the origins of this song. Chris, maybe you can correct anything I've said wrong about the origins of this song in the chat, showing a lot of ignorance here. So let's have a listen to this. It's helpful. I have to say, Zell, do you do many live shows? I do a couple. I try to get on here when I can. There's so many things I do. Well, I'd say it's helpful if you're prepared. And the only reason I asked you that question was to stall for time so that I could actually load the song up, ready to play. Good job. So here we are, old man of Coniston. I'm Eastern, there's an old man and I want to ask a question of you to see what would you do? It's what the Lord wouldn't ever know. All could show it far as the younger woman's sitting here and I want to ask a question of you if you could pull up on your roots and branches, take your chances, go across the world, featured in the news, making friends with a random man or you didn't ever know that it was. Thanks to Chrissy for old man of Coniston there. Nice to listen there. So thoughts, my man. Very sort of a feel this time. Yeah, when it first started, I thought it was going to be a Christmas song. I'm not sure if that was the feel that they were going for but that's what I heard when I first started off. It felt kind of busy. Like there wasn't enough room for the vocals to really shine the way it could have. At least that's what I hear in there. And of course, once again, I didn't feel a kick at all. So the snares and the hi-hats, those are actually pretty loud compared to the other track. And I'm not sure if that's the we're going for or not, but that's kind of where I hear it should go. It's like I said, it just seemed like it was getting a lot of clutter in there. I'm not sure if that's the approach they were going for with the instruments, but I would probably just take out the sax sometimes. I guess that was a saxophone. I'm not sure. And just give the vocalist more breathing, breathing space. Yep, yep, yep. I sort of pretty much entirely agree with you there. And I wonder about first of all, I just want to say there's some nice vocals in there. There's some nice voices in there. I think there was like a female vocal part, which came in at some point. It felt in contrast to the other vocal at the beginning. It felt a little too low. So it's kind of, it wasn't there. I'm often singing, I'm often recording myself and Sue's and we do sort of a lot of duets. So we'll go from one to the other. And one thing I'm always focusing on at some stage in my mix is listening to those vocals and having that feeling that they're just in balance with each other, that neither one of them was louder than the other as a starting point. So an actual fact, I often, once I've got that mix of two different vocals, then I'll bust them through to a master vocal track, which I can just do my vocal right on there. Yeah, there was that element. I have to agree with you. There was a couple of things there, which were overpowering the vocals for me. First of all, again, we had another track with a shuffly snare in it. But in this case, that shuffly snare was just, just sitting a little bit too harshly on top there. I think Chris, I think Chris was unwell today. So he may not be in the live chat he was saying to me, but he'd be watching the replay. So that was sort of overpowering things. And again, the saxophone, and I do wonder, years ago I used to play with a saxophone player in the band and he was a good sax player. And I think that the player, Martin, I think it's obviously a good player. And sometimes there's this temptation when you've got a good instrumentalist in your track to just kind of oversell them a little bit. So, wow, that's so good. Let's have another sax solo here. Let's, you know, and I think that maybe potentially what's happened here is that rather than serving the song, we sort of serve our own love for particular instruments at some point. And I'm a great believer in being in service of the song. And there was some interesting backing vocals. Like they were like kind of behind, I don't know how he mixed them, but they were like behind, I don't know. Me and my mother saying that in the comments, I can't find the actual, but he was saying that at times that the vocals sounded like they were behind and in a right ear sort of thing. Oh yeah. Which is really interesting. I guess you're hearing like a surround sound or something. He was probably using one of those. Yeah, and talking about the surround sound, there were some parts where there was a sax solo and then there went to, there's some harmony came in part of the way through. And what I was noticing there, I just put this in my notes, I felt the stereo width on that was a bit too wide. Now I'm a little bit old fashioned with this. I tend to go, if I've got a solo part, I'm gonna put it down the center because things in the center tend to occupy people's consciousness a bit more. And to me, and I could be wrong, I'd have to listen again, but it felt like the melody line of that sax solo was just a little bit off to the left. And then they did a harmony a little bit off to the right. And I would say, keep your melody line just down the middle. And if you're gonna harmony, perhaps push them out to the side. But anyway, that's my own personal taste. Maybe I'm missing an artistic thing that was going on there. But it felt too wide to me. Do you do a lot of stereo widening in your tracks or in your recording? Do you reach for sort of widening? Not for vocal, but if it's like certain sounds I'll do it, like if I'm using like some kind of pads or something like that, if it's not wide enough, I'll use like a wider on there. But mostly for vocals, it's either you have to restack them or I don't usually try to spread those out or anything. Just doesn't fit well in a mix. I'm really simple with it, with stereo. I go, this is not a proven technique, but if there's vocal harmonies and sometimes myself and Sears will layer two or three harmonies, I go main melody down the middle. Anything on the low end like bass-y stuff down the middle. And I go a little bit wider as they get higher. Probably I don't go too wide, but if there's a vocal third and then a fifth or something, I'll spread them out a little bit. That's just the way I go. If I'm doing doubling that is, if I'm spreading them. I usually just pan. I'm not usually a spreader. I'll pan more than spread. Equally good, you know, but yeah, I just tend to think that main lines down the middle and low end down the middle is a good rule of thumb for most things. Of course you need to be creative in music and try different things. So anything that people like me and you say on our channels is to be taken not too literally, not as gospel, yeah, grain of sultras. An idea that you could try out, but yeah. Added two cents. So I think, Chris, that you're obviously extremely talented person. You played all those instruments on there and stuff. Good on you for that. And also I feel like your other performers on there were good and the song. And I kind of was a little bit intrigued by the story of this song and that's where I felt the mix detracted a little bit. I wasn't hearing the story that the singer was saying, talking about so much because there was this, as you said, this busyness going on, particularly with the drums and the saxophone. And I think you alluded to the fact that busyness, you can have busyness in songs. I wonder if this would have been better with a busyness in parts, but then a really exposed just a vocal and just the rhythm section and a vocal in some parts as well would be a way to go. I noticed that in a lot of hip hop that sometimes it's real dead simple. Oh yes. There's only a few tracks used. Yeah, that's why usually it's like, your hook is like where you have all your amp and your big parts, but when it actually comes to like the verses, it's very minimal. Just so you can actually hear what the person is saying and it gives it more clarity to the mix. And it's interesting because if people could kind of hear what a vocalist is singing about in just some parts of the song, so it's really exposed, it kind of tunes them into that vocal. So when it does get busier later on and everything's coming in, they're now tuned into that. They're tuned into that feel anyway. They're now tuned into that vocal and the story which is being told and what have you, is kind of the way I like to think about it personally. Who knows? Who knows if we're right or not? Yeah, so a great effort anyway. Chrissy, thanks so much. I just did like the song though. So although we've had some negative things to say about the mix, I hope that you'll go away and maybe think about this. Either for your next song, you'll have to remix this, but it's a way of thinking. Or you may like to have another go at the mix on this song. But great playing, great song. Thanks so much for sending it in. Very much appreciated. The next song I'm going to be playing is a cover song. We'll talk about that in a moment. But here's the thing. So educate me a little bit. Okay. I can say you see this thing where from rappers where they have these kind of battles, right? Guess which movie I watched and I saw that. Eight Mile. But there's this idea that good rappers are free-forming off the top of their head. These lyrics are just coming out and you're shaking your head that's rarely the case probably. But it makes me think about covers. Because I never thought would you cover a rap song? No. Does that happen much? That is one of the things that makes that hip-hop or rap genre very unique and special. You can't rap someone else's rap and they say, oh, you're a good rapper. You can sing someone else's song and they're like, oh, you're a great singer. Yeah, right. There's no form of doing that inside of rap. I mean, you can rap someone else's lyrics if you're in a party, you're singing a song you'll just repeat what they're saying. Sing along kind of thing. But you can't just go up there and spit like a Jay-Z line or a bar and they're like, oh, you're a good rapper. It just doesn't fit that way. And I wonder, you know, because I'll be a little bit controversial here. I don't mind being controversial. What the hell? Are they to your ears? Have you listened to rap from overseas? Like, there's some, for me, there's Australian rappers and when I first listened to Australian, again, my son was educating me on Australian rappers and when I first listened to it, I'm like, oh, okay, that accent with rap. I'm not used to hearing a different accent with it. How do you feel about that? It's great. I mean, it's so weird is that it doesn't matter what language you speak but if you have a certain rhythm to where you're actually flowing to the beat, they're like, oh, he sounds like he can rap. No matter what language it is, as long as it has that certain feeling. Can we at least agree on this? Can we agree that Ed Sheeran shouldn't rap? Can we agree on that? Because... I'll put you on the spot. There's a lot of people out there that have not so lyrical songs but they're very popular so it's to each his own. Let me know. Am I being awful? Let me know in the chat down below. One of the regulars on the channel here, Keon Rutt, is a singer. He's a singer. Keon Rutt. One of the few people who watch my cakewalk videos who is actually in the same city as me, I live in Perth, Western Australia. Little fact for you, I know you're from Texas, though. Do you know how big Texas is? It's huge. It's huge. I've got it somewhere here. I did some research. It's 200. It's got 268,000 square miles in Texas. 268,000. I am in Western Australia, a place you've probably not heard of, potentially. I want to let you into a little secret in this contest of my state's bigger than yours. Western Australia is almost four times as big as Texas. It's 975,000 square miles. I don't know that myself. You have a population of 29 million people in Texas and in this state of mind which is four times bigger than Texas, we have a population of 2.6 million people. Basically, what I'm trying to say here is there's no one here. I live in this massive state and there's no one here. So it's nice that Keon Rutt who's left this comment is somebody else in my city who watches my videos because she's made a comment that there are some great Australian Indigenous rappers and I have to say there are some awesome Australian Indigenous rappers and what I was saying earlier about me hearing rap for the first time with an Australian accent was not to put that down because I've come to love some of those rappers now and what's great about it as well is although they're still singing from an urban perspective which is often about people who are coming from perspectives of low incomes or unemployment or crime and those sorts of things. But there's a different twist on it because we're not America. We've got different things going on so I kind of enjoy that those guys are obviously inspired by hip hop with its roots being in the USA but then they've added their own thing on it in terms of subjects and sitting with their own accent and not mimicking an American accent when they do it is so cool and the heartbeat of music really when people do that isn't it to take something and adapt to it and change it to their own thing really really cool. I don't know what Mimo is saying here I'm just going to pull it up here that's why rabbits in Australia are that huge and make big long jumps haha very good nice dad joke kind of thing in there Mimo thank you yes people think I used to say people think that kangaroos just hop around everywhere here I used to mock that for ages especially Americans because we love to mock Americans in Australia we enjoy that it's a pastime and the weird thing is where I live now in this kind of what would you call it suburbia we do actually have kangaroos everywhere I stepped outside the other day to take my trash can out and I was always knocked over by kangaroo which was hopping down the sidewalk do they actually box like that there has been that's a bit of an urban myth we don't see them doing that they're kind of where I live because there's lots of different types of kangaroo Keonra is not going to believe this she lives in Perth and she says honestly Keonra I'll show you I've got some video footage of a kangaroo and he's taking me out on my sidewalk but yeah there's different kinds so the ones here are probably a bit higher than hip height they're not huge in this area and then when you travel to different parts of Australia different breeds of kangaroos some of them are pretty big and kind of scary actually to be next to but yeah it's good fun I do love the wildlife in this country if you're ever over you've got a place to say and we can blend some acoustic guitar music and some hip hop together and do a thing like that anyway let's move on the reason I was bringing up cover songs a little bit actually was because the next song is a cover song you can record as I was talking with you off-air cover songs on DistroKid and they make it really pretty easy they are sponsors for our show of course and I found that the process of I haven't got a little video about it but the process of releasing a cover song on DistroKid was again like simple like we were saying earlier with the form you just upload your song as per usual give all your song information you need to probably maybe do a little bit of research on the songwriter there's a little form on there and you put that in and DistroKid does the rest they get the permissions for you to release that music so that you're legal with everything you do and I always imagined in the past this would be a difficult part I've got to find out, you know I'm going to cover say a Sting song and that means I've got to contact Sting's publishers and write them an email and say if you've got that idea in your head and you sometimes record cover songs it's nothing like that whatsoever no no no it's not that hard as I say you just need to know the composers there are websites where you can research the composer's name credit them with it DistroKid does all the rest and then they charge you $12 per year for having that song in your catalogue which I think is an absolute steal and that a lot of that money goes to the original artists who compose the music which is fantastic and you should be making sure that people who write music you record are being properly compensated of course for their compositional work it's really really important that we make sure that's done and that's all you do your music's out there and it's really interesting that the song that we are going to look at is a recording of a song by one of the biggest artists in the world ever which is often a dangerous thing to do so it's a cover of a Bob Dylan song the song is called Tomorrow's a Long Time I wasn't familiar with this I'm not like a huge Bob Dylan fan there's lots of songs I've loved to sing in the past and I've found out afterwards they were written by Bob Dylan he's one of those artists that's a Bob Dylan song I didn't know that's a great song he's often been covered by famous musicians are you familiar with any Bob Dylan music at all? yeah but I'm not like a big fan like that and sorry I should mention that the artist who's singing this is Jimmy C I think he's in the chat Jimmy he's a regular I think he's probably been on your channel Jimmy's a big cakewalk fan he's in group a lot and so I'm going to say this up front again in the interest of being controversial Bob Dylan for me is a divisive artist because of his delivery the way he sings I think it's going to be something you love or you absolutely you know in the way you were talking about I think it was death metal singers and stuff earlier on you don't really understand that delivery you don't know what they're saying I've heard a lot of people over the years talk that way about Bob Dylan like what the heck he's saying I don't understand it I don't mind it I don't mind his delivery I think it's interesting and he's got his thing but because it's divisive I think there's opportunities for people to cover his songs and for people to love those covers more than the original you know just because of the style and so I think that I've had a listen to this track coming up a couple of times just up front without wanting to pre-empt too much the Jimmy's delivery is not like Bob Dylan's so he's got a different he's got a different delivery on this old song from Bob Dylan it is an old Bob Dylan cover the vocals recorded with an AKG D880 dynamic microphone he used the CLA vocal plugin for compression and delay I've used that a little in the past myself I've used Cakewalk Breaver too it's one of the stock plugins not something I use an awful lot I have to say do you use it much it's actually really good people don't use it I mean it's up there it's a really good reverb I know a lot of people use the waves one but it's the same settings I don't know why they don't use Breaver at all I like the plug I have used it sometimes and definitely for me I felt it was something that kind of I use it on a bus I don't use it directly on the vocal I'll do that with all reverbs anyway but yeah I have to use it a little bit I always forget it's there for some reason that's what it is you always forget it's there he used again another CLA waves Crystal Lauderdale R plugin on acoustic guitar I've used that one myself in the past for sure and use an Apex I'm not familiar with this so I should be showing my ignorance Apex or Apex vintage Aural Exciter and also Breaver as well on the fiddles that you'll hear in this song so thanks so much to Jimmy for sending this I know Jimmy sent a lot of songs in the past or a few songs and I just haven't had the chance to get to them it's a pleasure for me to finally get to the chance to play one of these songs and again I'm so bad today I haven't actually loaded it up in preparation to play it but it is now takes a couple seconds here we go let's have a listen to this song then lonesome of me nothing did at all if only my own true love were waiting if I could hear a heart softly pounding only if she were lying by me I'd lie in my bed once again I can't see my reflection in the water I can't speak the words to show no pain I can't hear the echo of my footsteps or remember the sounds of my own name if only my own true love were waiting if I could hear a heart softly pounding only if she were lying by me then I'd lie in my bed once again in that silver singing river there's a beauty in that rainbow in the sky but none of these and nothing else can match the beauty I remember in my true love's eyes if only my own true love were waiting if I could hear a heart softly pounding only if she were lying by me then I'd lie in my bed once again probably a good sign that I couldn't tell right off the bat what was your feelings there? how are you feeling about this one? that was actually pretty good I have nothing really to say about it the vocals were on point I liked the guitar and the fiddle was cool too in the background I was like, that's really cool I have nothing really to say about that very good work Jimmy we found on this show me and my guest have obviously said the better something is the less there is to say about it it's so hard because it's really good I'll try and say a couple of things about it but not too much to be honest with you you will have struck me about the vocal and I think this is really important if I was going to be very technical on this there were parts where it wasn't pitch perfect if you were doing that and if I was asked to use Melodyne on this I wouldn't because that's not what this vocal is about it's about the character of the vocal and in some ways if we were probably looking at it on Melodyne there might be a note here or there it was a little bit sharp or flat and it would show it but I don't think I'd be going around fixing it it almost adds to the feel of what the song was there that's exactly it the feel that's exactly it and almost reflecting back on some of the other music particularly the last song where we felt it was a bit busy I actually think the last song was equally a good song in terms of lyrics and things like that but what this mix showed is what happens when you really let those lyrics and the voice have centre stage because as we say the fiddle was in there but it wasn't getting in the way of the storytelling you know so it was a good mix I guess I know Jimmy Zell didn't say this and he's being kind he just wished the drums would be a bit louder and a bit more kick so I'm stealing that from someone in the comments but no it was just actually put a backbeat on that one you could ruin it but you never know I don't know just something like this for me again it's not quite my style of music to me sounds like I'm going to pin and hold it now but what I might call a country ballad it's got that sound to me which is not where I'm from musically but didn't matter to me because it drew me in it sort of drew me in I think the vocal was a big part of that I think those graphics were from DistroKid as well I think so yes I meant to ask Jimmy about that you can let us know Jimmy in the in the comments because maybe this is a feature that I'm not aware of because he had DistroKid kind of a link which played that whole video on there I didn't know you could do that I think it's like in the hyperlinks or something like that there's an option in there to create like a little graphic for your music you could pull it behind your soldier I knew you could do it with short ones I didn't know you could do it with long ones I'll have to look into that maybe I'll make a video about it DistroKid but yeah what a nice ending to the show and really sort of shows cakewalk showcases what you can do in cakewalk like a lot of people are asking me oh can you really produce a whole song on cakewalk yeah we we have had this sort of cakewalk show but I did want to just quickly go back to you because we touched about it earlier the fact that you used many or a few different doors and I noticed that you particularly had some videos about Reaper so what is it that draws you to that out of interest? well I would put it like this Reaper is a tinkerer's doll if you like to tinker with things and do interesting little tweaks to your doll then Reaper is for you that's pretty much what it is like the rest of the dolls out there are standard cakewalk you go in there it's kind of already set up for you where Reaper you have to go in there you have to actually align everything to it you like it in order to use it the way you want to use it so that's what I say it's a tinkerer's doll and you can make it look like whatever you want to look like they have like a logic theme they have a cakewalk theme that I actually showed on my channel but it can look like pro tools or exactly like logic you do some actual cakewalk themes as well don't you? yes I have two of them I have a dark theme and a light theme how have you found the process I sort of looked into it a little bit but never enough to think of myself it takes time I actually had to go to one of the Facebook channels and I was like hey how do you change this piece or part because I couldn't find it just that little bit because I'm a member of one of those Facebook groups and I just like to look at the themes someone was in there saying I think they had a logic theme and they were saying how do I do this part just this little thing I love the idea that you can go in and change things to be honest with you the reason I didn't do it because I normally would love to do that sort of thing especially because I come from a web page design background and all that sort of thing CSS so I don't mind playing around with interfaces but the reason I haven't done it is because I didn't want to confuse people on my YouTube channel by having a different look to what they're experiencing that's why I give minds away that's why I say hey if you want to have this theme so they can match it so it makes it a lot easier it's kind of interesting because for me it's like studio lighting yeah I'm a fan of studio lighting because for me personally and also I can't really portray this on video but smell in the studio I have these kind of things around the studio to make it smell good for me anyway lighting and stuff is going to be your own personal taste but I think things like smells and lightings just can put you in a different frame of mind and maybe themes are the same thing like if you've got a theme in your door which is like Keonara was just saying about she's got a dark theme I tend to like dark themes to my interfaces some people like light things but do you reckon that affects the way you're feeling about the way you're using it? it does I have Ableton and I can't stand it I hate the way it looks it's an ugly doll to me I just can't stand the way it looks but there's people who love it it's a theme when I go inside of Ableton just because of that I'm a visual worker I have to see and touch things in order to use it like when I first started using Cakewalk to really make beats because I use Cakewalk for a long time just to record vocals and stuff but to actually start making beats I would go through the process until I get stuck and then I'm like alright let me see if someone knows how to do something and I'll thumb a crown your page Home Studio Simplified Pongonzo ADK Studio all you guys have really good stuff and great information out there for Cakewalk when you do get stuck but there are people out there that don't really try they'll just come and just keep asking the same question over and over and over and they're like did you look at the video at all? it's in here just watch it yeah there's something about skill sets if you want to get better at this and one of the skill sets is about the way you learn like training yourself to learn well, to be inquisitive in a healthy way I don't want to get negative here but people who think they can just go to YouTube channels and say how do you I mean by the way, nothing wrong with how do you do things guys but there is an attitude with some people of a demand tell me how to do this I get emails from people which I never answer and the tone of their email is tell me how to fix vocals in Cakewalk first of all that's a very broad question there's an attitude towards learning which is not about somebody else out there who has all the answers and they should be on tap just to give me I'm going to ask some questions from people that know and they'll help me out but like I've got to be prepared to do some of this work myself as well and to be inquisitive in the right ways and you know I'm probably not explaining that very well but I have a little bit of a rant there but yeah but learning how to learn what I'm saying to you is a thing you know so and I do want to reiterate as I look in the camera I'm not saying don't ask questions from us we're happy to answer your questions yes I answered almost every comment that comes into my channel I know you're amazing I look at you in your comments and I'm like how does I can't I sort of do a number I do a few and then I don't do a lot to my shame enough hours in the day it's been just great to have you on the show there was so much more I wanted to ask you about really to be honest with you about your music in particular and we were sort of talking about before because you actually do well with your music on Spotify and stuff and you know you've got people who really enjoy listening to your music and I know that you take pride in your lyrics and when I was listening to your music I was paying some special attention to that a little bit because I'm a lyrics guy and yeah just really loving the expression and you know you speaking from the heart about your experiences in life and what's going on for you in your life was really great so I will try and remember to put a link in the description to your music as well as your channel but I'm sure they can find links to your music from your channel as well or you can just google me exactly that's the great thing about having the only one on there exactly that's the great thing about having an unusual you know my parents call me Michael for God's sake Mike thanks parents but yeah so look for those of you who have been watching and there's still a lot of you in the chat thanks for hanging in there and watching the show and being with us today it's been a great show I think I'm going to be doing some more at this time of day it's nice to be able to get some different people in there definitely check the link in the description down below please do this for me I know I'm going to say it and you're going to probably ignore me but don't ignore me you owe it to yourself especially if you're using Cakewalk to check out Zell O's channel click the link in the description subscribe even though subscribing doesn't mean that you'll always see our videos that's a myth what you need to do if you want to make sure you see our videos is watch lots of our videos and then YouTube will show you lots more of our videos there you go and there's lots of room in this world for different YouTubers to cover the same topic and for you to watch all of us and myself and Zell come from a different background a different approach to our videos have different information on some of the same subjects in our videos so if you watch my channel it's also a great compliment to watch his channel as well you'll pick up some different pieces of information from his videos he's got a great vibe with the way he explained things and and also it's nice for someone to have a different perspective to come from that hip hop background and then be using this door and I think we can all learn even though we're from different genres of music from people who come from different genres of music like that as well so it's a great perspective my man thank you so much for being on the show you're such a gentleman and your input has been so valuable I appreciate it thank you for inviting me here to bless your audience and you guys should definitely make sure you hit a thumbs up on his video just so that YouTube will actually push this out as well thank you for reminding me about that thumbs up definitely that helps out and for those of you who are thinking about sending in music please do that I'm interested even though there's lots of music coming through and I'm listening to so many you know even if you're you may be listening to things like my music's not good enough that's not true I'm interesting in hearing music at all different levels from different levels of experience and I'm prepared to play people from all different levels of experience different genres I don't care what genre you send me I'm willing to play it with all kinds of things on here I've had a serious lack of either rap or hip hop coming through there's been one or two artists not many I'd love to see more of that come through as well as well as electronic music soundtrack music rock and even though me and Zell have both diced thrash metal we're happy to hear it we're happy to hear it I'll listen to it and we'll listen to it it can't be like an hour long ooh you're gonna get the fatigue you're fatiguing really fast so you know do send your music in follow links in the description down below for that and we are going to say goodbye for now but I hope Zell I'll do this publicly I'll invite you on the show again perhaps with one of our other guests as well I hope to have you back because I just love having a different perspective and your input and you're a gentleman as well which is always nice to come across in this life so thank you so much for being here and thanks to everyone else who's been watching we'll see you next week not sure what the time will be but around about next Thursday or Friday depending what part of the world you're in thanks so much for