 Now there is 5pm in San Francisco, it's 8pm in New York and 1am in London. Thank you so much for joining us here, it's actually 9am here in Little Old Perth in Western Australia and it's Friday in fact, it's Black Friday, yes and I can tell you that there's many good deals coming your way and if you watch my last three episodes on the channel you'll know that for sure. And actually in fact we've got actually a couple of other people on the show today who have some Black Friday news for you on their channels, we'll get to those in a moment. But first of all, if you're in the chat, thank you so much for being here, do like this video right away so that other people know they should be joining in the fun. And also just want to say to people in the chat, make sure you keep chatting, let us know what you think about the music because we are going to be listening to three songs today from the community and we're going to be sort of giving praise where we think praise is due and some constructive criticism where we think that's warranted as well. If you do want to submit a song that someone was asking me earlier, then do follow the link in the description down below and I will take a listen. I also want to thank the sponsor for the show, this is Distro Kid, we'll be talking about them a little later on, awesome, awesome place to go to release your music to the world. Just to see some people in here, we've got Mimo Japan who is indeed our moderator as usual. And I don't think Mimo has to moderate much, but don't test him, I say. He is under instructions to hunt you down and cruelly treat you if you should say anything inappropriate. That could be one of the guests on the show in fact who is most likely to do that. Probably Pete Johns who I'll pull up in a minute who is not immune to dropping an F-bomb on this show, in fact the only one in the history of creative source in three years to drop an F-bomb. But yeah that's Pete, you know, he's got that hidden side to him. Let's say, let's before we bring Pete in, let's say hello to Ricky T Brown, nice to see you here Ricky, I gather it's 1am in London, Ricky of course is the great leader of the best Facebook group on the internet in the world for home recording. I can't remember the name of it, but it's awesome, you should definitely check it out. Put the link in the chat please, before me please Ricky. Okay let's bring up my first guest, I can see he's waiting, probably waiting to say something really, really rude. He is Pete Johns from Studio Live today, the man who's on 99.4 thousand subscribers. He sounds like a radio station or something, now here he is, what do you say Pete? 99.4 FM Pete Johns coming to your live room, Adelaide's at Australia, I hope you're doing well out there. No I'm not going to swear, not going to swear today. Leave it till the end of the show, now let's say, I'm just booking in, we're in the third minute of the show now, I'm going to book you in for some sort of swear word at 57 minutes into the show, okay, track back in the chat, Doug is just saying Pete's a natural, yep, a natural. A natural what though? Now Pete is in another time zone to me, all the way over there in Adelaide, Pete. Correct. You are, what's the, I get confused about this, are we an hour and a half apart? We are, I've forgotten to, it's 11.30 am here, we're two and a half hours apart, I believe, most of the time, but it depends on if it's daylight saving and it depends on whether Mercury is in retrograde, it all changes, it all depends, so no, we're usually about an hour and a half or two and a half hours, which is good because it means that when the cricket on in Perth, it goes till late at night. So you just said the word cricket and you've lost our whole US audience, of which, you know, it's mostly the US today, but how shall we explain cricket to them? Cricket, like baseball, but slightly less boring. Oh no, now you've lost the other half. Have you thanksgiving everyone, while I make you. A sport so, so vigorous you can wear a sweater. Yeah, a sport that could take five days to play and there may not be a result. There you go, that's correct. Now, Pete, you've, you've, give me some highlights. I was watching your show before you came on today and you were milking the Black Friday train just as I am guilty of doing. So give me your number one Black Friday, of all the things you talked about in your show, your number one Black Friday pick. The number of Black Friday pick is actually the fact that the short SM7Bs are on sale for the first time ever. That thing's been three hundred ninety nine dollars since the beginning of time and it's only three fifty nine at the moment over on Sweetwater. So that's why I'm on Mike's channel. You should go to his links down in the description. I think I thought it was three forty nine. It's therefore, isn't it? I think it's three fifty nine. It could be around forty dollars off. I think it's three forty dollars off. Yeah, I was talking about that. And me and you discussed this when we were when we started our channels and we get it or not. By the way, I wasn't given this one by anyone. Sure or not that kind. I've never reviewed it, actually, to be honest with you. So fair enough. But yeah, I bought this one. But we did discuss it a lot. I mean, you you've considered it and you've considered it and you've considered it yourself. Haven't you? Yeah. Yeah. What I'm going to tell you now is it is good right away. Don't waste your money on a cloud lifter is what I'd say. That's what I did. And you don't really need to just whack the gain up on most interfaces as all the cloud lifters really doing anyway. You know, exactly. If you've got if you've got a decent interface and you've got enough gain in there, then you should be right with most dynamics. But yeah, even with some tiddly little interfaces I've used, you wouldn't think of as big deal ones. It's worked absolutely fine. I've just had to have it up have it up on like eight. Yeah, I love it to work. So yeah, just so you know, anyway, let's let's not get too chatty because we'd be leaving out the star of the show. Oh, drum roll. The star. Oh, I see what you did there. Yeah, I thought it would be more switched on today, but I'm apparently less. Yes, let's welcome to the gang our favourite app, YouTuber. The none other than the wonderful Jade Star. I knew that Jade would do that. Hello, everybody. Hey, happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for having me. Happy a turkey day. How are you going, Jade? I'm good. Yeah, it's been a busy morning. Already done a live stream myself, had an interview over on my channel. And yeah, I'm doing OK. It was a weekend weekend. Good stuff. Who was on your interview? Night Train 1989. He's an artist from the UK and it was it was a really good interview. Really cool. And you're doing a. So for those of you who don't know, I'll just explain that Jade's got on. Jade does a lot of stuff about music in general, but the sort of focus of the the identity of the channel is surrounding iOS based apps. OK, and I know many of you will be iOS users in the chat there. So definitely check the links in the description for Pete and Jade's channel and hook yourself up there to watch some great videos. But Jade, I know that you're doing a Black Friday iOS special tomorrow. Is that correct? Yes, I'm going to put together a whole bunch of lists of apps that are on sale by developers. So we just go through the developers and what they've got on sale because there's a heap and they've all just kind of dropped today. Be going through some of the ones I've done shows on. And what I think is worth a look. And if it's not worth a look, tell me to get stuffed because it's all about, like I say in the show, apps aren't Pokemon, you don't need to collect them all. You only need the ones that make you happy. OK, cool. It's PornTube got in that. Anyway, look at the shocked faces on the side. That kind of show is it? We can say anything apart from the C word and I'm not talking about the C word that you were talking about earlier, Jade. Anyway, moving on quickly before I get myself in trouble. Nice to say hi to some of the people who are in the chat. They're already getting going there in the chat. Nice to see. I can't get the pronunciation. Probably Keonra, I almost got it wrong, didn't I? I like to see Keonra around because she is actually in Perth in Western Australia. In fact, we found out the other day I'm having a little bit of a chat with her about some studio gear that she actually lives in exactly the same suburb as me. And I'm like, oh, there's somebody who might actually recognise me in public and my kids all think I'm famous. But yeah, nice to see you in here. And we've also got. We've got Brad example here, which is a great example of surname. I'm used to I used a dynamic stick cloud left on my S and 57. Sounds really cool. But I know it's not important. Yeah, Brad, you look does have a use. I didn't mean to diss the the cloud lifter. I spent three hundred and fifty bucks on mine. I should be feeling good about it. But but but but I just feel, in fact, a good friend of the show from White Noise Studio, Marlon, did a really interesting video about the cloud lifter and why it's almost completely unnecessary. And he's he will explain it to me. So look up White Noise Studio and look for the cloud lifter video and you'll see a great example of how we get sucked into things as musicians that we don't need, which is what we. Yeah, is that one of those things that, like, you know, Pro Tools, HD users with, like, $50,000 studios that are recording like this pristine violin solo are just like, I can't get enough gain. And then all of us regular folks that just want to bash out an acoustic guitar part, we listen to them and do the same. Precisely. There's precisely. Exactly. That's that's one of those things. Yeah, it's all smoking mirrors. You did a great review of the new Volcano 3 this week as well, which I reviewed on. Yes, I saw you that both of you had done that. The fab field. Amazing app. Bang. I haven't checked it out. But yeah, it that. But that's been around for a while. Has it as a plug in? It was Volcano 2. It had an uglier interface and what they've done with the new version. They've taken it taken a little bit from Pro Q and they've taken a little bit from Saturn and they've added that in. So you've got much more movement. So you can pretty much now master with it, EQ with it. But it's really good for like taking a song and taking it to some creative places, using filters, automation and stuff that I didn't think I needed it until I got it. And then was like, oh, wow, this is really good. I have there's it's nice when you discover something like that. Isn't there something that could be marketing hype. But then when you get it, I get it, you know. And I will say this and this is not cheap at all. But I've mentioned this in a couple of my Black Friday. This is not a Black Friday thing, but I've never reviewed it. But I do have a universal audio Apollo X4 sitting in my desk. It's been here for a few months and it's it's expensive. Let's face it. For most of us, it's just expensive. However, I will say having used it, that it's awesome. The workflow, the process of using it. Those, you know, latency free plugins on board. No, you know, nothing and the quality of it is great. All they're routing their mix of their software. The hard it's all good. That's that's nice because some things cost a lot. And when you get them, you go, shit, oh, I swore. Hey, hey, yeah, you followed me for the rain. I didn't do it first. I'm not sure shit's a swear word anymore, is it? I don't think so. I think I heard my neighbors the other day. I think it's my kids. All right, I guess we'd better get on with the show. All the time. We've been getting on the show. Yeah, what are we here for? Music. Yeah, OK. Music. We're only 13 minutes in. Remember, 57 minutes in your booked in for an F-bomb, Pete. No, I'll remember it. We'll save it for the last track. It's either going to be effing awesome or having terrible according to Pete. Love it. I'm ready. Bring it on. OK, so listen, the tracks today, I'm going to openly say up front for people watching that I think they're going to come in for a little constructive criticism in terms of sort of things like mix and what have you. And I've definitely come to the conclusion, mostly through chats with Jade and other guests on the show that this is a better way to go. We want to be able to help people who are needing to move forward a little bit in some way or just look, we're not necessarily super experts. It's just always handy to have another set of ears, listen to what's been going on your music. So that's what we're going to have fun with today. The first track is from Dave Hammond, H-A-M-O-N. It's called Broken, right away. Sometimes there's titles to songs, isn't there? Where you go, OK, I'll dig that. It's just one word broken. But I mean, they're already. He's saying that he was trying for a Led Zeppelin feel, but feels he was struggling and it's never quite big enough. Dave's a drummer and a keyboardist and plays those parts in the song. He plays the drums on Roland pads using session drama three. He doesn't play acoustic drums because his studio situation is in a house. His, you know, these neighbors are not going to appreciate acoustic drums. So that's sort of like reasons for that. And he actually maps out the guitar parts on virtual guitars to begin with. And then he sort of hands those over to real guitarists for finishing off. Recorded in Kate Walk. He did give me a bunch of other information, but I think it's the most pertinent stuff. Probably he says he's done, in his words, done a ragged attempt at mastering using isotope. Anyway, let's have a listen to Broken. Dave, for that, sorry for taking you out of the stream. Yeah, Jade, for a moment, you will be. Something subliminal happening behind her. In that short, I was going to throw over to Jade first. I feel like Jade's going to be most qualified to critique this track. I don't just feel that the sort of music that me and Pete do compared to what Jade does a lot more, more bigger productions and that then Jade's going to be the most qualified. So I'm going to go straight over to you, Jade, and have your say. Thanks, but just a quick thanks to Dave for submitting this. What do you reckon, Dave? I said, Jade, even? Well, Jade's song's pretty good. All right, so the way I'm going to approach today's show is I'm going to put on my my engineer's hat and look at a song at how I would approach remixing it if I got the chance. So don't get angry at me or anything that I say. That's how I'm going to approach it today. So there's what I want to start off with first. I really love the choruses with the vocals. I thought the harmonies in there were fantastic. Really on on the money when I the lead vocal for the verses sat nicely there. So that's all good, you know. And I'm sure if there were any issues with vocals probably being a little bit too loud in the verses, they would be sorted with what I'm going to say next. I feel that staying on the vocals there, you could have taken off what I would do if I was remixing, I would have pulled out some of the reverb from the drums and given them over to the vocals. Just spaced that reverb more onto the vocal because I think the drums were swimming a little bit too much in the reverb and because the rest of the instruments were really nicely balanced. But what I was hearing in my headphones was the drums were just swimming in so much reverb. It was it really was a thing that I couldn't shake. So that's the only really big critique. I think if you pulled back some of that reverb and just a little bit over to the vocals, that would really balance it out nicely. And the only other thing, look, I think it's a really good song. I really love the lyrics. I think for it being a title about being broken, it had a really positive vibe about it. Like there was a thing about putting back together it felt like then they're not being broken and unfixable. The only other thing I will touch on is the length of the song. I would probably rip out some of it and reel it in a little bit because there was a lot and I love a solo in there but there was a lot and I would probably just shorten it up a bit. You don't really need to lose maybe 40 seconds out of it but it would make a huge difference. So that's me saying from putting in my re-engineering hats but apart from that fantastic song I was into it the whole way through. So lovely work. Good stuff and I just want to touch upon what you said about reverb there because one of the ways that I didn't always think like this but one of the ways in more recent years I've thought about this and it's maybe helpful to people in the chat. When you're thinking about positioning of things like we think a pan for left and right. So we want that over there, that over there. Think of reverb as backwards and forwards. Like the more reverb you put on something it's like moving it further away. So it's tempting. I mean there's stylized reverb where you could have particularly like say you want a 50 sound. You might have a certain large reverb on the vocal and then the rest of the band might have a different reverb. But I know Pete often talks about using reverb to kind of glue things together and make them feel like they're in the same space but it's also useful to think about it as a distance thing and I don't know about the whole drum kit but it's often handier to think about short delays first. So like a slap back delay first to put things in space to take the dryness out of them and that doesn't have them disappear and then use reverb as like your secondary kind of thing. Yeah, that's my point on there. Mr. Johns, how did you enjoy that? I did enjoy that. See I've probably got a different hat on. I've legitimately got my hat on. But I've got more of a list of that hat on today because I haven't listened to much music. I've been busy the last week as we were chatting about the pre-show and I haven't been listening to music. So I'm just like, yeah, I'm just gonna enjoy some music this afternoon. But yeah, I thought it was really cool. I thought I had a very 80s vibe and the processing and the way it was produced seemed to be along those vibes. So the big reverberant drums, the lot of sort of panning and depth and space that was in there, the guitar tone with the Hammond as well, very sort of 80s and very, like lots of cool little lead licks and lots of cool and response stuff in there. So I actually really enjoyed it. I thought it was like a jam band. I could imagine just sort of sitting back at a club or watching them on stage and you'd have your keys player and your guitar player and your bass player doing that thing where they get together next to each other on the mic stands and they're jamming together and doing the thing. All the heads playing at the same time. Yeah, exactly. Bob and all that. I like the vocal processing with the delay. Like I'm a bit of a sucker for a delay at the end of a word just to sort of bridge in between things. And yeah, a lot of space in there. So again, I think what Jay covered up on the reverb is what I would say as well. I would probably tighten that up a little bit because it did seem that the drums were in to the point you made that I say offered about space. The drums almost sounded in a different space which created a really good separation of the instruments but it meant it sounded more like four different instruments playing like separately as opposed to one space. And like you mentioned, Mike, if that's the effect and if that's what the production style was that you wanted to go for then mission accomplished. You did a really good job of that. Had some good range in there but I think the mix was quite full on the whole way through. Probably more the arrangement than the mixing. There wasn't really a gap. And look, that's cool. If you just want it to flow and to keep doing its thing but in my head, I heard like a really cool breakdown at one stage with maybe just some organ and bass and vocals or something or just removing some of that stuff because it almost seemed a bit the same the whole way through in that all the... Once the organ and the lead guitar and the rhythm guitar and the drums and voice were there they were almost all there for the entire rest of the song. And I think just creating a little bit more dynamics in giving a bit of a breakdown or a bridge or something that just stripped it back meant it could come in. I think Mimo Japan actually noted this as well. The guitar tone was really good. It was very much like that lead 80s guitar tone with the reverb on there. But I felt, especially in that final chorus where you just bring it on home you could give it a bit more guts. Maybe just turn that distortion up a couple of notches just to really smack you in the face because I found that the end of the song almost felt a bit like the first chorus. And I think when you're finishing off a song like that you really want to just finish with a bang and give it like that big finish sound. So, but yeah, like I said, I digged it. And I love that. I love the lead guitar solo and I love the verse where you've got the lyrics and then you've got some nice sort of lead parts that are not necessarily playing. They're playing some counter melodies and they're doing something different to add some flavor. So I thought that was really cool. But great song. What on Dave or Jade or whatever your name happened to be? Yeah, I mean, I, I very much agree that I think Dave, your strength is in songwriting and I know we felt the arrangement maybe may need some work but just generally you've obviously got a skill for arranging putting different instruments together and all that kind of stuff. It was the mix really that notwithstanding what Jade was saying perhaps about in terms of the arrangement in terms of how long it went for probably could have dropped one of the guitar solos. I think there was two or, you know, and, and because it felt like it was good but I don't know if I needed this bit in here. If you are, if you weren't going to have the second guitar solo or something then you should do something completely different like completely bang rhythm change or, you know, drop. Like what Pete suggested, a drop. Yeah, like, yeah. So overall, I enjoyed it. Here's a couple of things that Jade and Pete sort of didn't touch on so much is I felt that the keyboard sounds in there and the Hammond was mentioned were really nice but they were softening the feel of it. Now if you, you said in the notes to me you were trying for a Led Zepp feel and the effect of those instruments is that they were actually, actually making it sound softer in my opinion. There are not to say you shouldn't use those but you can overdrive, you know, like B3 sounds you can have them overdriven and things like that and they can be a bit grittier. So they perhaps sounded a little bit clean, the keyboards, if you want that gritty sound but if it's not what you're going for then I think they sounded sort of nice is probably the word about it. With the guitars, particularly the rhythm guitars in my opinion, people were saying that they could do with a lot more guts and I would be looking as well increasing the mids to them. They did sound a little bit to me like they were sort of scooped in the middle. I've talked about this before because I'm guilty of this. It's almost like that classic thing with you get with strats. The nicest sounding thing on a strat is when you've got it out of phase kind of thing. It sounds beautiful but it gets lost in a mix. It disappears in a mix. Well, it's that kind of thing. You can get electric guitars sounding really nice when they're soloed but if they don't have the edginess that you need from the mids they'll disappear in a whole mix and I've got, I've mentioned it a few times. I've probably illegally got multitracks of Bohemia Rhapsody and they're great learning sort of thing. I won't use them on the show and do a reaction to them but I feel like when I listen to that it's good learning material. And I've got to say, I love Brian May, I love his guitar tones but his guitar tones soloed sound pretty harsh. They sound really very aggressive and harsh. Like you think, whoa. And then you notice how much softer they are when they're actually in the mix and they sound balanced. So maybe it's an EQ thing rather than the volume thing with the guitars there. And with the vocal, it's very hard. Like I like your vocal tone. It's got a nice, it is a soft tone actually overall but if I'm totally honest with you I might consider retaking some parts and forgetting anyone's ever gonna listen to this and let go because there was one bit and I've written this in my notes where you sort of almost, it's almost like you're gonna shout finally over you. But it comes out as if, oh, people might be listening. I won't just forget my inhibitions and just go for it, right? And it's almost, you can hear the slight half-heartedness in it and we all suffer from that at times if we become self-conscious or anything like that. And so if you can find the right day where you're in that mental space where you're like, I don't give a toss where anyone thinks, I'm just gonna sing this line like a bloody worm in it. Then I think it'll be magic then in terms of the vocals. Because your vocals in terms of pitch and sound is great, you're fine. You know, you're a good vocalist. So, yeah, that's my only thing? Yeah. My only thing? No, I totally agree with that. I think that that's the one thing that I hear in so many, because I do a show every week where I listen to 30, 40, 50 songs in similar sort of format but sort of smaller chunks of them. And the one thing I hear from those sharing their first or second song is always that it's almost like they're singing within themselves. I think we've all been in that position where, yeah, you're just, you are hesitant. And what I said is, if you go with the mindset that I'm gonna try and hit this note and if I miss it, I wanna miss it spectacularly. I wanna miss it so badly that I'm gonna have to go back and retake it. Because if you're singing within yourself, you're more likely to slightly miss a lot of notes and slightly miss the pocket in your timing a few times. If you just go for it, you'll hear if you don't get it and then you go back and try again. But when you get it, that's when you can get lightning in a bottle and that's where you can get that passion that you can really hear and feel in a song. So I agree, Mike, that it's a good point. And another thing just about those kind of vocals here where you may have a vocal where you're kind of almost shouting a line where it's an exclamation. Don't be scared to double up on that. You know, I did, I'm listening to a mix by another guest of the show, Ed Thorn. And a release he did last year had this one line where he was kind of like shouting it. And when we went through the mix, what I noticed he did, he kind of sung it with his main vocal and then he like screamed it with another one and he put a little bit of distortion on there as well. And that was, and it just made all the difference to that particular line. So yeah, I think it'd be worth doing with that song. I agree. Can I just say? Yeah, carry on. A vocal too, because I do a lot of death metal stuff too, but like I've been working on this album to see it for a little bit of time, too long actually. And cause I do some really crazy screaming, sometimes you're just, you're unable to do it. And you're trying to create angst and terror in this one line, you know? And I use the same idea of like, if something's not working, go away and do something else and even come back when you wake up some days, hey, and we all do, we wake up some days and just want to kick the dog. And there's your chance to get up and move over to your home studio, hit record and kick the dog with your voice. And what you suggested there too, Mike, with layering up a scream and a melody, I do that a lot with the metal stuff that I do. I'll lay two tracks of a vocal melody, then maybe a harmony of that. And then in the background, a really crazy, ah, and it just adds this beautiful texture to it, like dragging something through the dirt. But you're not losing any of that melody, you know? And it really, it really makes a difference. So don't be afraid to scream like you're being attacked. Absolutely. And just with that doubling up stuff as well, because, you know, I guess when I'm recording Susie, for example, we're doing a lot more of it on chorus and things, not for the scream. Susie's not really a screamer. Can't believe I just said that on there. But... Ding! Sorry, Susie. We love you, Susie. She's in the other room. It's filthy. But yeah, when you do these doubling in general, but I mean the approach I like to say, take with it, because people will be scared, oh, it's going to sound fake, because people are going to hear like two voices, right? Or something like that. Then take the approach of, you know, get your main vocal up and then blend this other one in. And there will be a point where you don't really notice it. But if you mute it, suddenly everything feels like the life dropped out of it, right? But, you know, so just experiment with balancing things in that way when you're doubling up and you do it with feel a little bit. I see, I made Ricky T Brown laugh and it must be two o'clock in the morning there, so... I like Ki... Sorry, I like Ki and Aura Music. It's got a good point there too. She has, yeah, I was just about to pop that up there. Let's do that. Yeah, very cool. Yeah, so just closing your eyes and feeling it like a... Yeah, I think that's the thing. There's a reason why when you watch people sing that they're really emoting, that they close their eyes, they get their hand up in the air and they're really just... Because you're grippy, you're almost reaching for it. But yeah, that's something that I've learned over time is that if you do it well, if you sing like no one's watching, a bit like dancing. And let me tell you that people watch, I want to be dancing with no one watching. Go watch a Jerkoka video. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Just those movements. There's a reason why you do that. It's like a guitarist playing and pulling stupid guitar face. Yes. You know, there's a reason that happens. It's because you are so lost in that moment that your sex face is coming out while you're playing guitar. And you know, it's the same with singing. And people used to laugh at Jerkoka and go, he looks, what's wrong with him? But like, some people need that kind of thing. It's like when people speak and they are moat with their hands, I do that a lot too. I love to see it though. I kind of feel that I'm drawn into the person's performance more, even if it looks a little uncomfortable or not cool, because that's what the Jerkoka look really was. Yeah. But you know, I just feel like, oh, I'm digging this. This person's really there in the moment with their... I mean, even to some degree, and people will always be advised not to do it for performing. Oh, don't shut your eyes when you're singing. But I don't know. Sometimes when I see people just shut their eyes and they've forgotten the audience and they've got lost in that note or whatever it is, it draws me into the performance. There you go. Disagree. I'm just going to do a quick word from our wonderful sponsor, DistroKid. I don't have a little video for this one, but I'm just going to talk about it and let you guys be aware, because there's a feature on DistroKid where you can split... What they call it splits, don't they, Pete? Tell people what splits are, people. So splits are like when you have someone like Jade Star that plays drums on your tracks. You can go into your splits on DistroKid and you can say, I'm going to pay Jade 1% of all pros. No, I actually pay about 20%. I think I overpay her for drums. But yeah, it means if you're collaborating with another artist or you have a featured artist or you're a part of a band, you can actually split any of those incoming royalties. So whenever I make those four or five cents on streaming or revenues, then Jade Star gets 1 cent and it'll go straight into her DistroKid account just like that. Cool stuff. And the reason I've brought it up is because there's a little addition to splits that I want to mention, they've got something called Artists for Change. So this is a tool that they've introduced on DistroKid where you can assign some of your income to a charity of your choice. And you can use the splits feature to do that. So automatically some amount of your royalties will go over to them. And you can use that and some organizations, I don't know the full list, but some of the examples of organizations would be Miracle Messages, North Brooklyn Angels, Slice Out Hunger, Vouchers for Veggies, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Ground Up Music Foundation, NAACP, Legal Defense Fund and the National Independent Venue Association. So I think it's nice to do these kinds of things to help out the community that you, or the cause that you feel invested in and that you want to support and it can be done automatically and something you won't notice. So great features, nice to see DistroKid doing some features like that. I'd like to see them do some more like that. So we're going to move on to the next track. I hope I actually loaded it up. I think I did when Pete was waffling on there. I'm pretty sure I took the time to load up this next track. Yeah, I think I know that. What's that, that glass houses in there? I'll tell you what. Somebody see Waffle? So true. I have to take that one. So we are going to have a track from Charles. I hope you've got your name right, Charles. Hugh Huigley. I'm going to say that. Interesting title here, Alien Brew. Producing Cakewalk. Sung through in a short SM7B, as we were discussing earlier, Mr. Johns. And using a preamp, which I've heard mentioned a couple of times, actually the Great River EME-1NV preamp. I have never used it, but I know some people swear by it. And then into an Audient ID 22. Love Audient interfaces. I've had good experiences with them so far. Guitar use, just for the guitar nerds out there, was a Gibson 335, which is a guitar on my list of things that Suzie isn't going to allow me to buy. Where are we going to put it? And that was DI'd in. So he's DI'd the guitar in, I don't know which, I don't know which guitar Sim he's used. Anyway, I didn't get the notes for that. Anyway, use the Spitfire Audio BBC Symphony Orchestra Core, which comes up time and time and time and time again in people's tracks these days, and I use it myself. And I've got some pretty expensive string libraries, and I end up using this free one from Spitfire, which is just amazing. Also use Modo Bass, which I love as well, Easy Keys and, sorry, Addictive Keys, and Easy Drama, which I want to have a discussion about Easy Drama. A few people are using this, anyway. Moving on, Effects. I didn't want to list all of the effects, but lots and lots and lots of PSP effects, so great effects. Waves Vocal Rider, which is going to be interesting when we talk about this track, Waves Sibilance and Melodyne, which I've talked a lot about this week, which actually a bit of a faddle. A quote from Charles before we listened to the track. He said, The consuming aspect of the production was arranging the orchestration, which is the most ambitious I've ever done. Singing is challenging for me. I also have a hard time balancing the levels of the vocals and the instrumental mix. One of the vocals present enough to be clearly understood, but not too loud for a rock or whatever you call this mix, which probably turned out to be contradictory parameters. To evaluate the translation of the mix to another system is difficult. I made numerous CDs. People make CDs, still, maybe for this purpose, which he played through on the stereo system in the other room, which seems to be a reliable process. He felt, so let's have a listen to this interesting song. Is this, I'm going to say this is quirky. I'll preempt it by saying it's quirky. It's Alien Brew. MUSIC First in planet night and time Drinking a bar that's stinking with the dread Ooh, that this could not play I saw signs illuminating Advertising drinks, new and old Once stood out, it had some clouds of simple glass The ad had glassed the caption Red for only the bold Would you like to try an alien brew? That's what happens when you press the wrong button. You thought we were in for a part two then, didn't you? There's quite a lot to unpack there. I'm going to go over to Mr. Johns to have a chat first. Pete, did you take notes? I did. You did? I've got all my notes here. So yeah, first of all, fun song, love the premise, original and not boring. Like the worst thing about a song is when you just get bored and over it. But the best thing is when you've got a song that's a story. I love me some storytelling songs and you alluded to it before. A lot of what I write and what you write might can sort of sing a song right at your classic here's a tale, a little story about Jack and Diane. So yeah, love a song that tells a story and that was a funky story. A bit of weird owl kind of feel to that and that's a compliment because I'm a huge weird owl fan and I do love myself a bit of musical comedy and a bit of some sort of interesting premise. So yeah, digging on that, the jazzy swingy rhythm was good and like went throughout the orchestration. So the strings, especially in the intro and the outro and when they were in, they were overpowering. So they were over-compressing and limiting and bringing down. So you couldn't hear the drums when the strings were going. So I like the idea of putting some strings there but I think they needed to be quite substantially more subtle because they were hitting really hard in those spots that they were there. So that got a little bit lost in there and especially on the string stabs and like it just, it was overwhelming and I'm just not sure that they needed to be honest. I think that there was a lot going on in the arrangement that probably didn't need, I think stripped back. I think this track could actually work a lot better with a bit more stripped back. I heard horns. Instead of strings, I heard horns. So I would have loved to hear some brass stabs, some horns, some trumpets, some French horn in there because it was more like a jazz song to me and I wanted it to have some sort of, some a bit of a, not scar feel but almost a bit of like a jazz feel to it. The panning was quite distracting with the organ. There was a pretty extreme panning on the left and the right side. So at one point there was a lot of very treble heavy sounding organ in I think the left channel from memory and it was just made, it just kept drawing me over to there and I think when you're mixing, it's mixing not only your volume levels but also your frequencies. And I think if you've got a solo and you've got a high frequency track and you're putting it all on one side, it can kind of feel like your head's tilting the whole time when you're listening to it because it's very heavy on the one side or the other. And it jabs up just the pocket and the rhythm that with a swing beat, with a jazz beat like that, it's really important to hit every single note right on the beat. And I think just a couple of times the vocals just got a little bit ahead and it kind of feels like you're tripping over yourself. And it's a complicated rhythm to keep because when you've got a swing rhythm, it's not just your one, two, three, four hit it on the beat, you've got to find that syncopation that's going to work with the song. So that probably just really focusing in on that. Like we talked about before, just when you're singing close your eyes and just listen to the rhythm and go along with that. The lead guitar solo, the tone was probably the highlight for me. I love the lead guitar tone. I thought the tone sounded good and I liked the solo. I think it worked really well in the song. And lengthwise, as Jay said on the last one, I think probably, maybe it's just my attention span these days, but probably one sort of break or one sort of verse shorter, just to bring it down to sort of three and a half, four minutes, because I think it was probably five minutes plus and it just seemed a little bit lengthy. That was, again, I love a weird concept. I love something that's a bit out there and that was definitely not boring. So dig it. Cool. Jay, I saw you nodding a lot there. Did Pete say everything you were going to say? Yeah, he did. Absolutely. And I heard those horns as well. I heard this a-ba-da-da, a-ba-da-da. It was there the whole way through. The strings, they needed to be legatos and they needed to be a lot more subtle and just underneath, just maybe some violas, just something really subtle under there, just carrying it through like some nice subtle ways. See, this time, I'm not talking producer for this particular song. I want to talk about actually. We swapped. Yeah, yeah. So this is more about musical, the musical stuff. So definitely agree with that. I think I absolutely agree with that left hand organ is just pulling me way too much. I think with the panning, need to come down a little bit, 100%. Well, not 100%, but need to come down. And I think the panning needed to be more, you're 45, 45 on there and just a bit more syncing. Maybe everything down 100% to keep it in balance. The other thing, like with the vocal too, look, I agree 100% that it wasn't in the pocket and that's with your phrasing. I mean, you know, you can really, some of the words that were written in, look, I really love the song too. Really love the quirkiness of it. Really love the story because I love character driven stuff. It had me watching and really into it. But with the phrasing, and you've just got to really nail those words. And I think more go back and just make sure those words fit because when it was in the pocket, it slapped. It was great. And then when it was just in and out, the other thing I would draw attention to as well, being a drummer also, is we needed some more variation on the rides and stuff. Just to give it a little bit more color because it kind of just was so much the same. And when you have a song that has so much space in there, you need a little bit of variation with those rides and those little hi-hat, little thrills and little things that make it a bit more exciting. They're only tiny touches, but they're those little surprises in there that as you're listening to it, you go, oh, what was that? Oh, wow, what was that little thing? You need some little surprises in there because it is such a groovy song. It pulls you in and you need to be, what they used to tell me when I worked at American Express, you need to surprise and delight your customers. And those little thrills, they're the things that surprise you and get you to go, oh, so yeah, it's just missing a little bit of that, oh, is that a thing? It is now, it is now. Thanks, Jade. The discussion, I guess in the notes was, Charles seemed to think he didn't know what kind of song this was. He thought it might be a rock song. This is sort of a jazz song in my opinion, just because it's got a distorted guitar in it, that doesn't mean it's a rock song. So if this is treated as a swing song, it works very well. Just quickly what Jade was talking about with the dynamics there, so the ride symbol is like highly important in this form of music and it felt both not enough dynamics, meaning it was at the same level all the way through and it was a little bit hard actually. If you listen to it again, it was a little bit loud and that sort of swing music has that lovely light sounding ride. You will never forget it's there. It's always there, but it just feels like it's out there now. In terms of the strings, I thought, I couldn't judge the sound as much because of the way they were being used. I think someone mentioned in the comments, they were just like these big swelling chords. Whereas if they were used, I think in the way Pete mentioned with the last piece of music as a sort of a reflecting back to the vocal line, so if it was dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. You know, just lines like that just echoing back. Whether it was strings or horns as you've suggested, which I think was a good suggestion, then I just don't know that those big swells worked. And also in terms of the length of the song, there was the intro for me was about twice as long as it needed to be. It had some of these big swells happening. And there was another part where they were happening where you could probably got rid of it completely and could have kept all of your lyrics and everything and just had a song that was a little bit shorter, which the song was about the story. At the end of the day, this is a story song and love, love it. I mean, I love the quirkiness. I'm always bitching about how songs in the mainstream today and are about the same three things over and over again and that subjects of the songs were more varied. When I were a young lad, they were much more varied. And but I will say, and another thing, just lyric it's the only song I've ever heard with the word transmogrified in there. And I thought that was just, that was, that was worth so many points. I actually had to Google the meaning of transmogrified after I heard it. Cause I thought, is that actually a word? Or was Charles made that one up? I love it anyway, but it means to transform in a surprising or magical manner. So Jade wanted to be more transmogrified by some of the elements of your song, Charles. But you know, overall it's a memorable song. And as Pete said at the beginning, it's much more, it's much better to be sort of memorable in a way of all that could be fixed than just lost tracks, I was so bored and it was the same old thing. That's the worst thing to be boring. So yeah, good on you Charles for submitting. And I hope we've been able to help you out in terms of looking at that mix mostly for that song and perhaps a little bit of arrangement stuff. Jade, you look like you wanna say something. Yeah, I just wanna remind Charles that these comments are absolutely said with love. So you know, this is not like American Idol or any of these things trying to demonize you. Everything that I know I definitely say on here is said with absolute love and care, hopefully. And you know, keep, keep. And you know, don't be worried about your vocal either. Like you did say that you were worried about your vocal. It sat really well in there as well. And you are a vocalist. That phrasing, that's just that little thing. And it's what you get when you feel things. When you're a bit more confident about it. So just stick at it 100% because you rockin' it. Absolutely. I'm talking lastly on this because I was just reminded there about, you know, that sort of attacking and stuff. But there is something I feel like attacking to do with this song and others. And I'm just, today noticed a trend in this. And you know, I do have a little bit of a relationship with Toontrack actually. So they're probably going to kill me for this. But I've noticed during this series, and we're on episode 18, that whenever someone uses Easy Drummer, we go, those drums don't sound great. Those drums don't sound great. I'm starting to see a pattern there. I don't normally criticize products on my channel. I'd rather focus on the ones I like. But I just happen to have noticed about it. I'm not an Easy Drummer user, but I'm not compelled to go out and get it in the Black Friday sale site. So there you go. Not a fan. I think Jay's mentioned it a bunch before, but I think any automated drummer, the temptation is to sort of set it and forget it. And you don't, like exactly what you're saying about the rides there. If you're hand programming in drums, as annoying as it can be, you can make sure that you've got some feels. You can make sure that you've got some subtleties and some variation. It's too easy to copy, paste an entire pattern and just go, yeah, it's good enough. And I think a lot of the time people don't spend enough attention really. See, what they need to do is hire Jaystar to play their drums for them. So there you go. And even worries me to copy a pattern. Some people, you know, I was tempted in the past, I'll just temporarily copy some of the grooves from the drum plugin over while I record the rest of the song. I never do it because it worried me in the end that that would affect everything else about the guitar parts, the bass parts when I was playing them because it would have the effect of sort of flattening everything out and having no dynamics in everything else because you're going to play along with those temporary drums as well. So do it right, do it right first time. Think about, I've said it a couple of times before on the show, but since it was pointed out to me some time ago that the way Ringo Stard drummed with the Beatles was to play the song. Like there's nothing in his drum patterns which is the same from one song to another. And you'll hear, say when he's hitting a ride cymbal, it'll be accentuating something in the vocals or something that's happening in the guitar or what have you, always tied directly to the song and that's the beef I have with grumb grooves which I just, to be honest with you, I never, ever use them and I very rarely have. So that's a great advert that you have. And look, it's better than a metronome or no drum. So if you go to play along to some drum, play along to some auto drummer is actually can give you a bit of a groove. But yeah, the temptation is that you mold the song around the temporary drum groove exactly as you said, Mike, instead of molding the drums around the song. And I know this because when Jade and I work together on a song, and when I say work together, I normally write a song and then say, Jade, fix it with drums. And then the drums are never, they're always similar to what I've provided but there's always something different. And I think that's the good thing about collaborating and you mentioned DistroKid before but the good thing about releasing music and having DistroKid and their splits feature is that yeah, you can actually collaborate with other people and keep it fair and make sure that people are getting paid for the royalties for contributing to your music. Another guest from the show, Ed Thorne is recording some drums for one of my songs at the moment. He's inspired by the situation there, it's nice to do. I'm so excited to get them back, actually. I'm like, come on, I wanna see what he's done. You'll get the same thing as what happens with me and Pete. So Pete sends me a track and I have the auto drummer from GarageBand in there and I listen to it and go, yeah, that's great. Cool, I like that. That's a steady beat. Then I'll jump on my kit and play a bit and then I hear these different things because the auto drummer, Pete uses it as a metronome and so it's pretty consistent all the way through but then I hear the song and go, oh, I can half time it here and really give the song a totally different direction and normally by the time I've finished it and send it to Pete, it's like this. I'm like this as I press the send button, my hand's shaking and I know every time he's gonna hate it and that's what I want. I actually want him to hate it because it puts him outside of his comfort zone and then he has to listen to it for a day and go, oh, I see what you're doing there, you know? Because you're gonna expect something too, my kid. So I hope you are bitterly disappointed because several hours- Oh, God, don't say that. Every time I hear Ed's drumming though, it's so good. It's just so good. Yeah, careful. Because normally if you are bitterly disappointed, a few hours later when you hear this change that's put in there, like a timing change or a half time, that's when you go, oh my God, I can see what's going on here. For sure. You can see that it's needed that, because the drummer is the expert who knows what to do and can hear that change that you might not hear as a musician, not the drummers aren't musicians. Oh, yeah. There's a quote from the show, right? Jay, it's absolutely fucking right. Oh, sorry, it's 57 minutes. Oh, you were supposed to be old. You're a bit late actually as it turns out. No, sorry, I didn't want to interrupt Jay, but I hit the 57 minute mark and I follow your instructions directly, my mistake. I apologize to DistroKid and the sponsors. I'll do a Tim Payne and get up there and apologize for everything I've done in part. Talking about DistroKid, the sponsors, folks, if you haven't signed up for DistroKid and you want to release your music to the world, you should definitely follow the link in the description for that. And this is what's going to happen when you follow that link in the description. 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. Yes, indeed. Thank you so much again to DistroKid for sponsoring these shows and we are going to move on to our last song. By the way, I keep meaning to say hi to Ron Ward, who's here in the chat. Nice to see you here. Ron. We should have Ron on the show at some point, I think. And we should. And you know, some recommendations here, as I was saying, sorry I didn't pronounce your name and I'm not going to attempt to. I'm dyslexic enough with English without trying foreign names all the time. But I use Superior Drama 3. Yeah, I do sometimes too. It's one of my picks. I have mentioned a couple of times this week because it's Black Friday and I haven't got any links in the description. So this, but I do think Addictive Drama, Addictive Drama 2 has stood the test of time for the many years it's been out. I know, Jade's not looking impressed there by what I'm saying about Addictive Drama 2, Jade. No, no, no, I use a whole bunch of different things on iOS because I don't use computers. So I don't. I just noticed like whenever I've got drummers on the show and we talk about, you know, virtual drums, their head always drops down a little bit and there's a little smile comes on their face like losers. I'm all for virtual drums. I use a mixture of virtual drums and my kit. So like, I think there's plenty of room for virtual drums, you know, and there's plenty of room for loops, all that kind of stuff. It just depends on the song, you know? Yeah, absolutely. That's all you have. You can make. Well, that's a good point at the art of the home studio working with what you've got. But yeah, Addictive Drama 2 is on special in a number of different places. I think I put a link in my other video to Plug In Boutique, but I think some other places. I think Even Sweetwater may have it. I think I can't remember the price. It was like a hundred and something dollars, like the low end of just over a hundred dollars for the Plug In plus three kits, three MIDI packs, and three, because you can actually buy individual drums from them as well. And there's Jade blowing smoke up mine. Yeah, that's what we're here to tell you. I'm worried about the telling off that we might get at the end of it. We'll be like, Pete, you swore Jade, you blew smoke. That's it, you're never coming on the show again. That's right. Get Ron on. Get Ron, I'll totally get Ron on. And we're doing it at a Ron friendly time now too. So Ron can definitely be on there. So yeah. Wigs, it'll be awesome. Let's move on. Somebody just asked me quickly, what do you think about Battery 4? I haven't actually used Battery for many years. I used a very, very early version of it, like 10 years ago, and it was good back then. So I'm assuming it got better. So in that case, yeah, it's awesome. I recommend it. So let's move on to the final song. This is from Dave Maris. This is a great song title again, A Street Called Heaven. Ooh, Street Called Heaven, nice. Use Kate Work, walk, and use the free version of Spitfire's BBC Symphony Orchestra. In fact, this piece is almost entirely that. So there's not much to say about plugins or gear or anything like that. I think this is just an orchestral piece. And the quote from Dave is this. I used to write pop rock tunes in the 70s and 80s, but then real life took over. About a year ago, I started writing again after I downloaded Kate Walk. This piece was written about six months into my journey of learning production and I have a lot of video editing experience which helped me to pick up the Kate Walk door quite quickly, but I have no formal music training. I just write music from the heart. I don't even have a MIDI input device. So no keyboard even to do this. Had to put in everything manually on the piano roll, which is very tedious, but it got the job done eventually. I didn't feel the need to add effects on individual tracks. It's very wise to know you don't need to add something. That's a very wise decision in mixing. I just use the reverb that comes with the BBC Symphony Orchestra plugin. I did a lot of automation on each instrument and adjusted the EQ for each track and balanced the faders, that's it. And honestly, that's mostly my approach to mixing. Balance the faders, make it roughly sound right. Resort to other techniques when things are out of hand. There you go, you heard it from me. It's as simple as that folks. So let's have a listen to this piece of music. This is called A Streak Called Heaven. That was such an epic sounding. There we go, I did it again. I pressed the button again. I don't know why. So epic, we're going to hear it again. I was going, I'm just pressing buttons. Let's see what happens. Anyway, we're going to go over to me first for this one. I don't have a lot to say in the sense of that, Dave, you've just got into this whole game here. So great effort for an early thing. It's really, really hard. Actually, this thing of writing these kinds of pieces. There's a lot of musical stuff going in there. So you've got a musical bone in your body, absolutely for sure. I thought the actual library itself was helping you because it's a good sounding library. There's this one thing I want to talk about, and I'll let my guests actually waffle on, was not allowed to do that, was a couple of breaks in there which were really welcome where you had this really high string happening. And it was nice to have the breaks. I think it was a great idea. With these libraries, the decay, the natural decay of the instrument doesn't always work with you. I find you have to sort of mix it up by using a little bit of volume automation or clip gain automation in some cases, depending on the format. You can't always rely on the instrument itself that it's gonna sort of decay naturally with those longer notes and the release of those. It's just a little bit unnatural in those spaces. There's the only thing I wanted to say about it, but I enjoyed the piece. Well done, Dave. I'm gonna go over to Jade. Awesome, yeah, look, it's a beautiful piece. And I agree 100% with what you said there. And it's hard with virtually instruments because you do get that cutoff where it cuts straight into the next piece. And it's an art to really get that down and then find the right decay for each instrument because you've got so much going on there. Look, but I have to say, you have to be commended for not having a MIDI controller. Very, very cool. I would love to hear you with a MIDI controller with the ability to use some velocity in there because that was another thing that was missing. With orchestral music, velocity is really important just like drums. You really have to have those ebbs and flows and peaks and valleys and those moments where everything does come down. So when you've got those temponies in there that it does build up and it explodes. And I think, who did I see right in here? Keanu, Keanu Wright, his music is a very much cinematic feel. I've sung with a live orchestra and if I may suggest watching, listening to something like Beethoven's 9th, exactly, the ebbs and flow, go back, listen to the classics, the legends, the big Beethoven's, all of them, they will give you those moments where there is that, even go watch Looney Tunes, Warner Brothers cartoons, they use that technique so magnificently like when you see a character tiptoeing to the next point and they bring everything down and then everything comes in. I'm not saying to that lunacy, but yeah, just those ebbs and flows will really, really give that, what it does give, it will bring up the emotion in the listener that they will burst into tears. That's the difference between a real orchestra and a virtual instruments. But absolutely commendable, beautiful work for no MIDI controller. Do yourself a favor, go out and get a Arturia Keystep 37. Not that I'm trying to flog anything because they're cheap as chips. Yeah, I've got one right here. Look how small they are, they're tiny and this thing is a beast. It has velocity, it has after touch. Get something like that and you will be composing some. Absolutely mind-blowing stuff, brilliant. Because I mean, that's the thing is that I remember years ago, not having a keyboard and putting things in in step time and what have you and it's sort of doable and you can even do your velocity and all that, but you're likely to get lazy with it because it's such hard work. So you're likely to go, oh, that'll be fine. And also your headspace gets into just like melody and harmony rather than dynamic when you're doing it. Whereas when you play it on a keyboard, it's just gonna be intuitive that you're gonna put, or hopefully it's gonna be intuitive that you're gonna add dynamics in your playing anyway. So what's that you, Mr. Johns? Can I just say one more thing? Yeah, carry on, Jay. And don't be afraid, because you touched on that before we actually went to this track, don't be afraid to pull things out. And this is with every song. Don't be afraid to pull things out and before you do a final mix, just pull an instrument out here or there and just have a listen to it without because less is always more. It really does make a difference. I learned one time, I went into a studio, I paid a really good audio engineer here in Australia named Pete, not this Pete Northcote, who's an amazing guitarist as well. I didn't think you meant this, either. I didn't think that when you said awesome audio engineer. But I did pay him to go into the studio and listen to my songs. I was never gonna actually use his studio at all. Just wanted him to listen to my songs. And the first thing, the most valuable information I got after years of home recording, he just listened to all the songs, turned to me and said, yeah, you need to pull out about a quarter to half of the stuff that's in there. And now every time I mix everything, it's always nagging me in the back of my head. Take some stuff out, take some stuff out. And it's okay to over put stuff in if you have that voice in the back of your head going, remember to pull some stuff out. So it's a good thing to keep in the back of your mind. Sorry. No, no, no, no. What are you, Pete? Oh, do you think? No, and I agree. I wanted to finish that thought because I agree with that. I think just because you have, I've been playing around with a four track this week and I'm trying to get working again. And for those that have recorded back in the day, using analog gear and using four track recorders, it made you have to make really, really careful decisions about what you include. And I think the problem is now that we have an infinite track count in all of our DAWs. But technically, we use too many because just because you can it doesn't mean you should all the time. Yeah, so this song, yeah, again, knowing what I knew, if I just listened to that and I didn't know that that was hand programmed, I'd be like, that's still pretty darn good. But knowing that your hand programmed in the piano role, that is really hard to do to get the dynamics. The strings just hit you straight away. I'm a sucker for some orchestral string sounds. And I actually thought that they were nice and subtly put into the mix. Even though it was a full sound, it wasn't super overbearing. I actually really, you said, yeah, you've definitely got some musical bones in your body. I agree. I think the choice of chords and the changeups were really nice. One of my favorite things of a sucker from a major chord to a minor change where you just have that, yeah, yeah. That was used to perfection in about three or four places in that. And it's just a great way because you can obviously just use your one four fives or your one four five sixes or whatever. But in classical music, you've got a little bit more liberty to use some of those variations. And I think it was used exceptionally well. And it was a bit spientingly in places, to be very honest. In the first sort of 30 seconds, I was like, yeah, this is up my alley. But I do love some orchestral music. We didn't talk about the, it's almost like the timpani hits. I think that might have been the instrument used. But there was some really nice percussive bit there. I thought they could be a bit louder than they were. That was the thing. It was subtle. I was listening, I'm going like, it's really subtle, but I almost wanted it to be boom. And then it's like bring you into the next phase. But it was really good. And, yeah, but the thing that stood out to me big time, especially when it went from like three or four, five voices playing things to just one, it was really good change up. But like you talked about the decay before, everything else just stopped. And then you heard the other, the one instrument there. So getting that decay right. And even what I found is that even if you're too lazy, like I am to fiddle with your attack and you release on all of your different MIDI instruments, just a little bit of extra room reverb, just stick a whole reverb on there and whack 10% on there. It'll just give it enough of a tail to go over the top. Because if something stops abruptly, it takes you out of the moment. Cause real instruments in real spaces never stop immediately. Now, no matter what instrument it is, there'll always be some reverberance. So I think that adding a little bit of reverb to that overall mix, even on your master bus could have just given it that glue. I know I always talk about glue when it comes to reverb and delay, but it could have just glued it together and it could have made those transitions more natural as opposed to the abrupt sound. But yeah, again, round of applause for, now who was this? Was it Dave or Jade? Oh, this was Dave. Just talking about you and talking about touchy point there, the sort of decay and stuff, it's a good point whenever you get these libraries out. I think especially with strings, I'm not talking as an expert here, but just as someone who plays around with it a bit. I often find you've got to take care of things like the attack on strings, just out of the box, especially if you went around quantizing them, they'll just be out of time. Because they do, so for the song, for any particular song, you'll need to adjust the attack for whatever tempo you're playing at and what have you. At times it will be good, other times it's not. And I think the same with the sustained release and decay as well. It's good to focus on this. And that's what I sort of meant to say about this piece of music. It's almost like, okay, you've done the large part of the work, like the 95. Now you need to be in this process where you go through it and you got just that note there. I need to change that. I need to adjust the dynamics on that. And just that you need to really find you. That's the hard work of this stuff. There's someone in our chat who, Dave, it's worth getting to know. Mimo Japan is there. He's just like an expert on these kinds of things. So hook up in my Facebook group, the cakewalk one and get to know Mimo in there. And he's always very, very helpful. So if you just want to learn a little bit about using these kind of instruments, he's just, you know, I was going to say shit hot, but that would be swearing. So now I've said it. Shit hot. So the only one is who really swears. I'm sorry. I've been in so much trouble for that. You touched on the instruments within all kinds of packs. Like I used to get lazy and like if I was, because with each, like you've got baroque stuff in there. And every instrument in these packs has a different cut, different, you know, a different envelope and stuff. So you really have to go individually to each, if it's a baroque instrument, if it's strings like to horns and you really have to go in there and be caring with each of those instruments. And I used to just get lazy because I use iSymphonic on iPad. And if something didn't work, I'd just keep flicking through them until I found one that already had the envelope set. I was just like, yep, that'll do. It doesn't matter. And I always found I would end up using baroque instruments because they're easier to use. Can I just say, Pete, you know, you did that show yesterday on the four track stuff. And look what I dug up. Oh! I found this in my closet. Wow. It's a Zoom MRS4 with the, look how big this card is. Finally, Zoom will come out with the older smart media cards. Yeah, old school. Yeah, love it. So you inspired me to dig out this monstrosity and I'm going to try and make some music on it next week. I'm only saying with the old technology, though, that, you know, it's one thing to go back to old, like, quarter inch tape. But surely no one really misses cassette, the hiss of cassette. No, that's not a vintage sound that we are looking for, is it? I'd be really surprised. People are adding record crackle to their songs. Record crackle I can get, but not tape hiss. Not four track tape hiss like, I bounced it too many times, and shh. There's heaps of apps that, like, this year alone, I've reviewed so many apps this year in iOS that put tape warble and, like, snapping tape. Wow, and flutter, yeah. Like, broken tapes. It's weird. That was a sound like my album was ruined. I'm thinking that one day, with all of this trend to go back to, you know, I could say distress guitars or hiss, that somebody, like plastic surgeons, are going to start putting wrinkles on people's faces and stuff like that. You know, I'll be walking around like, ee, on this tiny trend. Everything old is new again, even now. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Guys, it's been a blast. I know you've got things to do. I've got things to do. Just wonderful to have two of my favorite YouTubers. I was going to say my two favorite YouTubers. I don't know, look, let me stick with that. Let me stick with that. Screw ad, screw Ricky, screw the rest of them. You two are my favorites. It's out in the open now. And yeah, it's just great fun to have you on. I just wanted to talk about, Jade was just about to lift the T-shirt off there, but talking about the compliments. Ha, ha, ha. I was going to bring up compliments because, Jade, I'm just going to put you up there. We'll just show you. You've had some compliments there on your background during the stream. I didn't know it had anything to do with Star Wars until the pre-show. I'm one of those guys, I would say, is that from Star Trek or something like that? Because Star's something, because I'm totally ignorant of these things, but yeah. But yeah, you've had some compliments there. I had a couple of compliments on my police T-shirt, but Pete, what's going on with the T-shirt there? I can't, I can't. This is one of my viewers, actually, that sent me this. This is from Jim J.K. Martin. He has an acoustic duo called the Martin Brothers. I'll come over here. It's a cool logo. It is a very cool logo, and it's a really high quality T-shirt. So I'm a sucker for a good 100% cotton ring spun T-shirt, and this is amazing stuff, so it's super comfortable. So they get free promotion. So there you go. If you're an artist and an upcoming artist, just send free T-shirts. We are not above Payola, and we'll wear them on our shows, and you'll get free promotion. And I'm living proof of that. Sting, you know, you pop that over to me after watching. Yeah, awesome stuff. Awesome stuff. Well, great to have you on the show today, because it's a bit death-metally in this, I think it's a corpse on the front. That's OK. This is the show for that. We don't mind corpses here, as long as it's not sex with corpses. We're not doing it in this. Courses have feelings. Ask G.E. Savile. Damn, that was a rough joke. I've no longer been the most inappropriate one on the show. I had to beat you. OK, yeah. I'm looking forward to us all physically being together. I hope that might be soon. And, you know, I shall be an onlooker while Jade beats Pete. And I'm likely the way it's going to go for the looks of things on this show. So thanks for joining us, folks. We'll be, I'll be back next Thursday with another couple of guests. I haven't picked which ones yet, but it depends how they behave and, you know. I reckon Mr. Pete Johns is very likely to reach 100,000 subscribers by the time I have on this show next. I just want to say personally, Pete, you entirely 100% deserve it. We've been good friends together throughout this process, and I can't... I know people think that we're competitive in some way. I am, I'm absolutely secretly very, very pissed that you beat me to 100,000, but at the same time, I just couldn't think of a better person who deserves it more. Very, very hardworking, by the way, folks. And just like a super great guy, he's helped me out tons and tons in my journey so far here. So congratulations to you, mate. If I don't get a chance to say it anywhere else, I'd love to say it here. Well done. Appreciate it. And, yeah, Jade, I'm sure, feels exactly the same way, and I'll add Jade, too. I've been one of Pete's main... His main moderator for, what, three years? So, you know, I love everything Pete does. I support him to be... Go to the end of the earth. In fact, I went all the way to his house from Melbourne. One of the few people that it's from the online world that's crossed over and being in the show. I actually exist I'm a real person. I've been on his treadmill. Yeah, it's been on the blue couch, on the treadmill, the iconic studio life today, yeah. Places. I think we'll leave it on that note. Thanks so much. Enjoy the rest of your day, wherever you are in the world or your night. I hope you got some good deals in the back Friday sales, and I'll see you all next...