 Hi folks I'm Mike and I hope you're well. Welcome to episode 20 of Fixed My Mix. Pleased to have you here if you're in the live chat. I'll be saying hi to some of you in a moment and a big thanks to our sponsor DistroKid of course who I'm pointing to right now or they link at least. If you do follow that link down in the description down below you'll get 7% off if you sign up at the moment and I'll get a little kickback and that'll be at no extra cost to you so good stuff. We'll talk about DistroKid a little bit later on in the show. Here at Fixed My Mix we do listen to music from the community so I'm just going to adjust my microphone that'll be here. We listen to music music from the community and usually we're getting at a stage where it's not really complete where it needs a little bit of fixing in the mixing and hopefully what we do is we point people in the right direction to get them towards release. Now a by product of that is that for you as a viewer as a listener and a viewer if you're in the live chat or you're watching on the replay is that we get to exercise our ears here and critically listen to music and sort of assess what can be done to improve it. I believe that that's a great benefit to me to you and also to my guests and I love this guest that we've got on today. He's very popular. I've always got people saying when's he going to be on the show again? I like his opinion. He's got good opinions and I reckon I have to agree with that. He's a star amongst us and he's here to help me out today. Mr Ricky T Brown. Good day Ricky. Hi everybody. Hi all of our regular viewers. Hi there. Nice to see them here isn't it? Shall we say hi to some of them now Ricky? We have Keonra. She was missing last week. She was missing last week. There was something going cooking in the kitchen. Something was going on in the kitchen. We have Dan. Sorry. I almost said Dan didn't I? I've clicked on the wrong thing. It's scrolling up and I've clicked on the wrong thing. Who got here? Oh Danny Gable. Nice to see you here Danny. Almost to Dan wasn't it? We have Jeremiah here. Nice to see you in here Jeremiah Peterson. I saw some other. Look there's Pete Johns. I've just been over on Pete Johns' channel watching. Yeah. Watching his interview with an artist over there. Very very interesting. Very young artist he had on today and I didn't get to hear any of their music unfortunately but I'll be checking that out. We have Mimo Japan is here. Nice to see you Mimo. Thank you so much for being here. Mimo and Doug is here as well. All here as moderators so behave yourself. That includes you Ricky. Don't go in the chat. They're starting to abuse in people or anything like that. Right? I can't alter anything in there mate but you know that. Now as people can see from the little tickery thing at the bottom of the screen. Let me see if I can follow. Oh I've gone the wrong way. This thing here. Am I getting the speed of that right? Can you do that Ricky? Can you see the little ticky thing at the bottom of the screen? Yeah I can see the ticker tape. Yeah. Let's pretend that we're pushing it along here right? So wrong way. We're off the rails already. As you can see from that folks you can send your own mixes in for us to review. Don't be scared. It's usually quite constructive and it's a very very useful process hopefully to get you over the line. So just follow the instructions down there or in the description down below if you want to send your music in. I'm happy to hear anything of any genre of any level of expertise. You may be just starting out or you may have been doing it for decades and I'm happy that instrumentals, rock songs, jazz, pop, rap and hip-hop, soundtrack music, EDM. We'll listen to any of it won't we Ricky? The whole shebang. The whole shebang. Now Ricky I haven't told you that we have a bit of a theme to today's show. Okay. We have three songs from the community. I say songs. They are three pieces of music from the community. They're all instrumentals today. Oh okay. Yes. Now what do you reckon? Now I've told you that. What do you reckon the challenges are of instrumentals? What are you looking for here? Right well instrumentals because you don't have vocals. You're looking for your instruments to carry the arrangement of the song. So you're going in the wrong direction I think if you're just relying on repetitive riffs. I would say it requires a little bit more musicianship to really pull it off. Because you're kind of exposed when there's no vocal on there. So it's like well you can hear everything that's going on in the music. Absolutely isn't it? I mean I think that there can be a difference in the mix of course. The focal part of the mix has changed. And also because music exists within a culture. So the way we hear music and the way we listen to music is influenced by the culture that we exist in. And these days people don't listen to much instrumental music. I think there was a time and I'm going back to our youth Ricky. Where sometimes on albums there may be one instrumental track maybe or something like that on an album which otherwise had regular songs. I don't know if that's a thing anymore. But yeah it's definitely a different challenge when people don't have that lyric stimulus and that you know that very familiar human voice to focus on. So I reckon as we're listening today one of the challenges is does it hold our attention. Now I know that we're listening to the mix here and we will be giving people our critique on the mix itself. But the mix doesn't exist in isolation. It's a mix of a piece of art which you know hopefully should be emotional or emotive in some way and that kind of thing. So you know we'll listen to it as a whole I think. The other thing is I have to say to you not all of the tracks here but some of them exceed that kind of five minute mark as well. Now you know I always say this I think that becomes a factor in itself. Because again we live in a culture where a certain length of music is expected I suppose for this art form. So that's this tough challenge I think for the people who are on the show today actually for the people who have got their music on the show today. Now we're going to go to our first artist Ricky and I'm glad you're here because obviously it's always helpful when someone else is here to read the names of the artists. Now you're not going to set me up now are you? Come on. Give me a break. Give you an easy one. I do believe it's a little bit pre-warning. I do believe I'm not sure actually let me just read the email from this artist. I'm not sure I think they may be from Holland. I could be wrong. They may be from Holland. Dutch. Okay. There we go. I'll let you read that one out Ricky. I'll just look at my notes here just for perfection. This next one is from Jan Willem, Bigi and the song Starliner. I wish Marlon was here. Yeah he would catch me out wouldn't he? I thought about this one. I thought about this one. Let us know in the comments if you speak in different languages and things or you just have knowledge of other languages. Is it Jan or is it Jan? It could be Jan or Jan. Jan. I think Jan Willem and Bigi. We've no idea. I hope someone will help us out in the live chat. Now as we are listening while we're listening to this piece of music I should mention as well while I will mention in a moment this is a cover. Now I do allow covers on the show. It's fine. You know if people want to send cover music in it's fine. Let's fix my mix. We'll listen to your cover music. But I'll read the email out from I'm going to go with Jan. No Jan sorry or is it Jan? Jan Willem. Let's go Jan. I can't read. Hang on a second. It's one of those mourners. I had a late night last night. I was releasing the video. Arturia released their new effects collection. Ah yes. Yes I released that video and I was sort of around till midnight. I woke up at five this morning. Anyway I saw a track. Jan says the track I would like to enter for fix my mix is a cover of Montrose by Montrose called Starliner. I'm not familiar with either of them. I haven't listened to the track. I'm not familiar with the group. So it's probably a good thing I guess. Do you know this track at all Ricky by a chance? Starliner. I don't think so. Anyway he says hopefully you'll do covers on fix my mix. We do. Here's the proof. It's an instrumental track with guitars, bass and drums. Although the original contains a very annoying theremin. Yeah theremins are annoying aren't they? I'm glad. I feel really good about this track that was left out. My version has my version has two rhythm guitar tracks, several lead guitar tracks and a bass bus. I can't read this one. And a bass track all played by myself. I use the Strat and the Les Paul for both rhythm and lead. Let me see. I use tune track Superior Drama 3 and a short SM 57 right in front of a Black Star Stage 60 combo. This is for the guitar nerds out there. And for the bass I use a Hona violin. Oh a violin bass. Yeah okay. Like Paul McCartney's one. And I use the Samson S Direct DI. The audio interface I use is the Focusrite Scarlett 18 20, 18 I 20. So the door I use is Cakewalk and at present I use Cakewalk by Backland. Okay anyway that's all the background information. I can take the eyes away now. Don't forget in the live chat your opinions are very helpful. I know that the artists do look at this and they often mention to me that they got some benefit from people in the live chat as well. So do let us know what you're thinking as you're listening to this music please. It's very important for us to have you. But it's helpful to me and Ricky as well actually. Sometimes it gets our thoughts going a little bit. So yeah do take part starting from now. Well it's early in the morning here I too. Well that woke me up. I thought that was a link Mike. An explosion at the beginning I said alright it'd be a bang. Yeah we went. I'll let you go first Mr Brown. Yeah I thought it was really really well put together. Love the mix. He got superior drummer sounding like really good. The separation was excellent on that you know especially on the drum rolls. Yeah you felt them pivot from one side to the other when he was going down the kit. Yeah I really like that about it. It wasn't too long. I mean how long was that? No that wasn't one of the long ones. The next two of the long ones. No I think he kind of nailed it really. You know I think one of the our guests you know cited Rush and I was thinking yeah Dan would I love this. Yeah he would like to be on the show. Right up his street this one. Yeah there are enough changes to keep your attention pretty much all the way through. So I think that that could be used as a good example of you know having a tight arrangement where there was no fat on this. There was nothing on there that didn't need to be there and it didn't go on for too long. So yeah it's a thumbs up from me that one definitely. Yeah I think I mean some of that was helped wasn't it by the arrangement and the composition itself really. I mean I thought it was interesting though because we I don't record a lot of covers. I did a few with Susie a few years back for fun but I think it can be a good learning tool to actually try to replicate. Like it's artistically it's best not to replicate with a cover to do your own thing. Yeah it's a bit scary doing that really yeah. But also if you're starting out I'm not against actually trying to do a copy of one of your favorite songs or one of your favorite artists and trying to replicate that mix. I'm not against that. I think there's like anything in music. There's a value in is the word mimicry. Oh absolutely. It's first of all mimicking and then doing your own thing afterwards. So I haven't listened to the original. It makes me want to listen to the original which is a good thing. But yeah some of the work was done there with the composition so you could listen to something like this and if you are writing instrumentals I think this would be of value to you this piece of music because I like the fact there were characters. There was actually characters in this. There was I was aware of three different guitar tones I think. Yes. And they came in and they sort of were almost having a battle with each other you know like they did with sort of rap battles or something like that. They would come in and say yeah so it was really good. I love the guitar tones and the lead guitar playing was really really a couple of points where it struck me like oh this this person's got their chops together. Yeah you might say. So that was that was good. Anyway I agree that the overall mix was was good and and I think we've had some examples recently of good drum programming because I know that we we often have this debate especially when Dan's here about virtual instruments and blah blah blah and my thing always is is that one thing if you are going to use virtual instruments is learn how to use them well. If you are going to use them use them well maybe we hear too many examples of people who don't use them well and it's giving them a bad bad reputation in some ways. This was an example of good drum programming in my opinion very very well thought under. Now not too many downsides. I thought this is going to this is a nitpicky there was a cowbell in there too harshly panned in my opinion it was totally my right year. I liked it actually. No I didn't like it was too dry. I don't mind the cowbell but it was a little bit too dry it didn't sound like it was a part of the rest of the drum kit to me so and and and some of the cymbals were a little harsh at times just a little harsh. I think maybe someone mentioned it in the chat sorry if I can't remember your name maybe a bit of compression on those cymbals and it's great on superior drummer and on addictive drums and all this they're very good with being given you mixing tools you're able to output them to different you know channels in your door is what I favor and you can treat them differently but yeah that'd be the only thing really. I think that just keep going in that direction you know I'd love to hear some original music from you though yarn yarn you know whatever it is. I didn't prepare for the next bit Ricky can you talk for a moment just say something random because I've got to go away I'll be gone all right any a few minutes I've got to take my headphones off see ya. Oh he's like get his a knee. I'm back. Got my guitar here. I don't know if you've been watching the show recently but you do I see you in the chat when you're when you're not a guest and recently we've been sort of making up a district in Jingles on the show okay and I wouldn't do it again apart from but people seem to like it so or Doug liked it anyway what is he up to okay so we've got a guitar I don't know if it's tuned hang on I wasn't prepared for this this morning oh look it's detuned Ricky you've been playing guitar recently haven't you yes yes you've been um yeah I'm starting from the beginning mate because see I've owned guitars for like years but I'm a keyboardist so it's like right okay most of what I do will be on the keyboard and yeah it was kind of neglected so a couple of months ago you know I made the decision to know no I've got to play the guitar properly because you know I love guitars see I've got a lot of them instruments yeah and I can't play them so it made sense so I'm actually getting some proper um tuition I've picked up this guitar and yeah you may know that the the chord of D the open chord of D can be a little thin sounding because uh that's the deepest note there now what we can do is take that bottom E string there Ricky yeah normally it was normally an E yeah but we tune it down to D and then you get this this lovely rich C you see okay but it messes up all your um your chord shapes like G is up here like goes a bit mental if you've got to use that bottom one but that's not the right note there did you spot that anyway Ricky um let's talk distro kid a second here okay when I say distro kid to you what's a word that comes into your head releases releases all right we've got the word releases we've got the word releases and we need a key and I'll let you pick from two keys um you can either have D or E why don't you say E I'm gonna have to retune the guitar now so yeah yeah who told you to mess with that E string yeah oh dear all right and I don't know why I think I did this picking pattern last week but I'm sticking with it sounds like a country song already doesn't it it does no I don't want to do that I don't want to do that that's a bit different here I'm going for these chords right we've got an E and we've got a I should know that are you flat minor and an F sharp minor all right here we go let's we've got you said the word release didn't you release release and another word Ricky just a random word of any kind nothing to do with distro kid band okay nothing to do with distro kid I said but anyway I've released my band on distro kid another word Ricky I've released to my fans on distro kid get another word in there quickie um I need I need to release my song and it won't take long on distro kid all right okay there you go oh well done mate yeah you've got to go back you've got to go back on the hanger all right okay yeah that was yeah we got away with it yeah we got away with it last week the dam was on here because he doesn't write lyrics so he just he just did an instrumental distro kid jingle oh you left to check that out yeah well I guess we we should probably move on to some actual music now yeah let's do it um I'll let you read it out again my friend um this second one this I love the I'm not sure which is the title of the band and which is the title of the music for this I love them both anyway the first one is the band I think right uh the song is called musical ear syndrome by a billionaire in space I think the band is uh I think yeah I think it's the other way around I think the band is musical ear syndrome with us with a piece of music called billionaires I think so we might find out probably right I usually get it the wrong way around here now um they say this is a 70s style prog instrumental that is not necessarily commercially viable but it's intended to be fun sort of okay the song was put together using cakewalk by band lab what a surprise uh and uh with several free vst and highlights sounds from a vintage sequential circuits pro one hardware synthesizer oh rest in case David Smith that that whole sentence meant nothing to me Ricky just over the top of my head there anyway um the song is dedicated to all those synth owners who have spent hours making cool sounds and thinking I should use that in a song someday I can imagine yeah um with many moving parts adjusting the mix has been a challenge all right this is always I I I only listen to the first few seconds of these sometimes in preparation for the show so I'm not familiar with this piece of music um but it is isn't it when when you've got several I like the way they've said several moving parts mixing becomes a real challenge then you know when you've got lots of things going on which which do you highlight how do you keep it in balance how do you stop other instruments from masking other instruments all that stuff which um what do we battle against let's have a listen to this piece of music so as I say um musical ear syndrome billionaires in space there we go you know what Ricky I'm gonna go first yeah go for it man go for it stuff you charbie we're sort of a quick one here look um uh musically I thought this is quite strong sort of in terms of um keeping me entertained for the length of time things going on things changing uh dynamically uh musically it was good um this is a good example in my opinion of when uh the basics of balance are out this is the things that were wrong with this track were all virtually all to do with balance not so much to do with tone or or any other thing really um now in order to try and help um the artists out I'm going to talk in percentages because I can't talk about the names of the instruments because when it comes to synth sounds we don't know what the names of them are that blippy thing I'm just going to quickly say my notes there was a I was looking we're going to talk in terms of percentages or there was a there was a synth tone 25 percent in quarter of a way in too loud this is just for the artist by the way just too loud needs to come down there was a lead instrument about 50 percent in too loud needs to come in there was a few lead instruments which came in which were just too loud um and uh so I hope that helps there was actually more than that but those were the main ones that stuck out drums the drums were thin and weak compared to everything else in my opinion um and uh it's interesting I think as producers we often overdo uh compression I think there's an assumption that drums always need lots of compression on them not true especially for certain genres of music um you actually don't want to go over but in this case I think they needed some compression some beefiness in those drums and something to keep them up uh with everything else all the way through um and they were too dry as well the drums uh I think I've got an idea that that some of this could be glued together a little bit with some similar reverb if Pete Johns was here he'd say use a kind of a reverb to put everything in the same space um I think that's more true of uh sort of traditional band line-ups and things but it could be used here something to some move some especially the drums sound like they're in a completely different uh song um to this one Ricky have I taken all of your points away from you um some of them um I made some other observations I mean yes um the drums definitely were too low but I thought the bass was low as well because um you know especially if you're using like a rock type groove um you'd want your bass line and the bass drum locked together in what they're doing and there are a lot of places in in the arrangement where in the mix they they were just lost um kind of thing and um yeah I'd echo your sentiments about the um the meldy lines the synth meldy lines when they came in um they're just too loud man they're just too loud and um yeah I think there's something in what what you said that Pete would say about this using reverb to to put everything in the same space because of the kind of track that it is the track could take more reverb on certain instruments coming they were just a bit too present um if you know what I mean but conversely I mean the the track had everything in there that it needed it's just um it just needed a different balance I think and um some of the fundamentals were lost um you know it wasn't too long there was enough going on to you know kind of keep your interest and it was just when these new things came in they were just too loud so yeah I'm kind of with you on that one yeah I I think you know I sort of want to encourage the artist here a little bit because this is a good this was a good fun piece of music they said they were doing it for fun it was it was interesting um and not boring in any way shape or form which was which was just probably a really important thing in all music but yeah I thought some of the tones were good though um there was one I don't think it was a guitar but it was a guitar-ish type tone um yeah kind of towards the beginning actually over driven guitarist that was really good nice nice tone it was too loud though again it came in too loud so that was it I mean I I do think that um you know this is a case of someone's having a lot of ideas I'm gonna put this instrument and then you put it in and you push it up and you push it up and you're pushing everything up and it gets out of control so um it may need a bit of a reset this mix in some ways but uh yeah um but I but I think that hopefully those points those especially in those um specific ones that we pointed out if if you're gonna fix one thing first for me with this it's gonna be those drums um it may be a choice of sounds that may be a choice of drum kit as well but yeah it just they just felt like they need more yeah the bottom end yeah good stuff there um I I would like at this point to mention distro kid again um I'm gonna give you a choice Ricky do you want me to play one of my little reels or do you want me to get my guitar again try and come up play your reel man play your reel yeah we've done that don't don't wear it out mate all right folks don't if you do want to release your music then definitely follow that link in the description here's why yeah if you do follow the link in the description down below it's going to take you to a special page on distro kid with this yellow banner at the top that banner is letting you know that you're going to get a further seven percent 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. I'm glad that we've got Ricky back in in in the mix again I think your mic level was getting a little bit out of control earlier all right see yeah yeah we sorted it out but we didn't do anything whatsoever I think just the just the compression kicked in okay we look like we sorted it out I mean everyone's saying oh it's better now it's better now anyway there was a question in here do you allow song remixes that were allowed by artists in open remixes in concerts our songs were allowed a bit um Jeremiah thanks for the question I don't understand the question fully but yes I basically allow anything anything he's not pussy I'm not seeing your music in we listen to the mix we don't we don't care as long as legally works fine okay yeah I think we should go on to our final piece of music for the show today um great input as well by the way from everyone in the chat there I'm enjoying your input there's some really constructive input in there today don't forget to like the stream if you haven't done so already we've got 30 people watching and we've got 33 likes now that means that there was three people who were enjoying themselves but then they weren't maybe they got the arson left yeah maybe it was the jingle they were like please don't do it don't do it yeah you're gonna have to check your stats mate now I do believe that um our final artist is in the chat and he's often here in the chat in actual fact um goes by the name well the artist's name is eShort Studios but I think in the chat as eShort Sax nice to see you here this is our final instrumental for today um I think from memory I think I had a quick look at it that it was one of one of the longer tracks but eShort Sax was saying I wanted to get some feedbacks I've been mixing for a little over a year now and started mastering about a mastering also about a year now now I think it's some really interesting backstory to this the song is called Quiet Times because my wife and I had a baby he's a year old now congratulations which won't be getting many quiet times but anyway anyway which meant I wasn't going to be able to play my saxophone as much yeah as much as I'd like to because it would wake him up um this same goes for drums any drummers in the audience who have had kids and had to give up drums and I've been like that stuff it this is the world you were born into yeah that's it get used to it get used to it you know um this also meant that my daughter and I wouldn't be able to play um as loud as we normally would she's just turned eight I decided to make a song with no saxophone even though the sax makes a lot of songs sounds better it's it's something that wasn't hasn't been in mainstream music a lot are used in the 80s wasn't it Ricky there was always a there's always a sax in there something yeah Kenny G probably that was the that was the artist I was trying to think of and then you know the most what's the most iconic sax song of all time would you say careless whisper no oh that I wasn't going to say that I wasn't going to say that but you right that's it starts of it I was I was going to say Baker Street I was going to say Baker Street oh yes yes yeah Baker Street yeah good song yeah good song yeah somebody look we've got a couple of Baker streets in the chat there yes um Jerry Rafty a Scottish guy it doesn't sound like the music from a Scottish no I thought do you know I honestly thought he was one of our American friends no um damn he was Scottish then what's the documentary on him recently uh quite a talented guy actually in many ways but didn't like the limelight you get those artists don't you who they like to make music and then when they get big and people want to interview them and stuff they're like no thank you don't want to do any of that and he was a bit like that um what about you Ricky do you like the limelight or limelight yeah do I like the limelight yeah uh listen the only limelight I get these days is being on your bloody show mate so yeah that that'll have to do for me but but but in terms of music do you like like making the music or if people want to chat about your music and analyze it and discuss it do you think you'd like to do that or do you just want to leave the music there to speak for yourself I'll be up for that I mean um yeah because it gives you a chance to talk about you know your journey with whatever piece it was and what may have inspired you to do it and what approach did you deliberately use to make it what it was you know so there's a conversation around that challenge for you there Ricky let's let's people in the chat say if they want this should we do a fix my mix uh special where one of the pieces of music on there will be Ricky T Brown's very own piece of music we won't fix okay and then we can chat about it and we can analyze it if you want that to happen let me know in the chat right now okay if I don't if I don't see thumbs up that means you hate Ricky I'm waiting for those thumbs up Ricky you're not coming in okay where's the thumbs come on get your emojis out folks I want to see those bloody thumbs wait you know we've gotten absolutely from Doug doesn't follow instructions well absolutely all right okay we've got some yes in it yeah yeah all right that's all we need couple of yeses yeah um excuse me got a little bit of a cough going on here um so I didn't finish reading out this email did I um so where do we get to let's keep the house quiet and see if I could make a song I'd like without playing a wind instrument it was fun and I was able to get my daughter to help with this song both of us say throughout the song so it has got vocals in it and um and she says and says it's quiet time at the very end there are no words because I don't sing but hopefully the listeners can feel this song okay well hopefully we do Ricky let's have a listen to the final song for the show today and I'll just quickly allow you to read to introduce the artists there okay uh the artist is eight short studios and the song quite times Oakley Doakley uh Mr Ricky T Brown yeah I had a bit of a weird experience there because um I think it dropped out and yeah and when it came back in whoever's like a two of them going at the same time was it oh yeah so it's like an echo all the way through it's like I was trying to work out well okay I can see where it's going um I see what my first impressions were he reminds me a lot of it it reminded me kind of of um always and forever and by heatwave the kind of movement because it's a three four time signature kind of thing so it's like a one two three one two three two three so there's a bit of three four going on in there and that you know that that kind of movement was very typical of the um late seven is early eight is um r&b you know because I don't know why I kept thinking I could have the wrong artist here you might be going to help me I kept thinking of luther van dross for some reason yes he did a version of always and forever yeah oh well there you go yeah yeah the original was by heatwave um but yeah um the way it sounded to me that there wasn't enough going on um and you know it needed a lead instrument in there now I saw in the comments that you know somebody mentioned sax yeah a sax would have worked great in that but it needed a melody going over the top following the the the chord changes that would really have made it feel really different um no disrespect to the the artist but um I think as it is it's incomplete because the arrangement doesn't make sense to me without hearing the melody line and you know if you haven't got a voice on there you need an instrument that's doing the same job um so yeah I like the chords and stuff yeah classic r&b groups going on with that but um it needed more is is the way that I would put it yeah um there's more to be had out of this one so yeah it feels very nice very nostalgic um of the kind of music that was around in that time period but it needs more than that to really make it fly I've um I've I'm gonna use a word now that not everyone's familiar with and I've gone to wikipedia to look up that word the word is motif yes a musical term um I'll read this out in in music a motif is a short musical phrase uh or a salient reoccurring figure musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance um in or as a caster or as a characteristic of a composition um you might think of words like riff as well um associate a little bit with this um but yeah there's melody there's main melodies but there's this sort of melodic themes as well yeah which could be there this um felt like uh I don't want to be harsh to our friend who's in the comments but this sounded I think somebody said at the moment it's more in the realms of backing track I will say quite a nice backing track quite a good backing track actually um uh overall I felt that there was just a nice I put words you know tone vibe down there was a nice there's obviously a mellow it was there obviously going from mellow tone there and it was very warming it felt comfortable nice and all that sort of stuff in there um but yeah it lacked a musical motif a melody to to keep us because my issue now is if we say to each other hey let's sing back some parts of uh quiet times that there's nothing there for us to melodically go yeah when yeah there's some night course called progressions um on it you know and uh as I said before it's very reminiscent of the um late 70s early 80s I mean I mean even in the 90s when you had like boys to men used to sing to this kind of backing track um kind of thing which which then made you feel that um that that motif or repetitive element was missing because it just felt that that's that's what you would do with this you know I mean so uh so yeah overall you know um e-short sax I think uh good good direction I don't think you've got any major problems with the mix there was some there were some people chatting about the kick drum uh maybe uh being a little bit out all a bit too much and what have you I'm sort of on the fence about that yeah maybe try that maybe try out that suggestion was in the chat there didn't really strike me particularly as being out but you know people here actually I picked up um the the um the hi-hat pattern um that being used for this because um I suppose then that's when you want to be using like triplets kind of thing in the three four time signature can I just have a listen to this I just want to remind myself I'm just going to play a bit to remind us we'll just do do look oh I see what you mean yeah yeah because I'm is using a shaker um in there yeah and um even though the the shaker was giving you a bit of the triplet time thing um from a kit point of view you you would have been listening for the hi-hats as well you know so you know because the hi-hat is a great tool for giving accents um to certain parts of the song and um because it wasn't there um even though you've got nice chord progression to go there they're just kind of rolling around kind of thing rather than you know it needed a little bit more drama in terms of how um you know because for something like this you you may do something like you know so there are different ways of making this work you know because look this kind of trap yeah it's a it's the one that you used to put on you know don't if you remember Mike when you start clubbing yeah when everybody's clubbing all the time yeah and every when everybody is tagged up at the end of the night and you must drop the courage to go slow dance with you would a girl you bad your eye on all night you would snog you would snog with someone to this song wouldn't you there's a there's a word that our american friends may not be familiar with some baby making music yeah snogging you would i want to say talking going back to those times though going back to the 80s i used to spend a lot of time with my vinyls with cloths and chemicals getting rid of dust and things so that they wouldn't so that they wouldn't be scratchy sounds on my records and now people are putting scratchy sounds on their records with plugins and things and that's going to be my my final point about this particular piece of music so there was a scratchy sound in this i would like i don't want to be too harsh to our our friend here but i want to i didn't need to be there i mean i'm going to say if you do really want it there in this piece of music have it at the beginning and then fade it out because it was getting away in the way a little bit of these lovely tones that you were creating some really warm mellow stuff going on there and then there was some pop some clicks in there which obviously you're not in control of entirely um they're almost occasionally sounded like a little bit of clipping or something like that right so i personally think the the i would like to know what the artistic role of the scratch because the thing about we used to get rid of those scratches and try and make things as clean as we could make them back in the day and now with scratches and tape hiss and hums and things like that um i feel they're only there for a nostalgic purpose or a stylistic purpose when we want to say to people hey he is an old recording when it's not an old recording so they serve that purpose um i don't know that they serve any other artistic purpose than that i could be wrong so i would say get rid of the scratchy stuff personally in my opinion just not needed probably i personally i think it would have worked better um if if he had gone for more of a fender roads um keyboard sound because um the the keyboard sound being used it kind of reminded me of it's probably like one of the dx roads kind of thing which is kind is quite glassy whereas a fender road says it's a lot more a little bit of actual year yeah so if you're rumbling a little bit of stack in the background that that kind of adds to the the atmosphere you're creating with that so i think it was a bit contrast as the issue with this yes absolutely but i think that's all we've got to say but thank you so much uh to each short each short studios for saying that and i hope we've managed to help you um if you do happen to come up with some more melody and uh motif or something like that for this track then uh please please feel free to resubmit it and we'll i think we'll have a listen again actually i wouldn't i wouldn't have listened to that again perhaps we'll have on that special show with ricky t browns let us know again uh in the comments if you really do want some music to be assessed on the show which was uh created by ricky t brown um but don't give us your thumbs up i'd like to see some aubergines some eggplants in in there that i just want to say now that i'm breaking it okay so yeah i think i've never heard any of ricky's music it could be absolute garbage for all i know i don't know it could be but i've heard people i've heard from people that have heard your music and they've said it's pretty good so you know oh okay thanks canra for your is that an aubergine or what do you call it an eggplant i don't know here they go you know what it means if you get those with a donut ricky you're not doing it i don't know all right okay i won't go into that will you say it elenora will you say it so my teenage kids taught me when they corrupted me um what a great show i always have i love having you on the show ricky really thank you man um i and thank you so much the people who have been helping out in in the comments if you're watching on the live replay i know there's several people that watch the not sorry the live replay that's an oxymoron isn't it but if you're watching the replay uh your comments the most welcome i know many people do because we're doing it in this fixed time now which means for lots of people it's not in their time zone at all especially people in the uk but ricky you are in the uk and you've stayed up late to do this so many thanks to you i'm not going to be i'm not going to be keeping you not because as i mentioned to you earlier i am going out from morning walk as soon as the show's over i've got to go out from morning walk with my uh i'm going out with my mother who's visiting from the uk at the moment she's staying with us and uh i i want to say thank you to chris slam from mixdown online who's been inspiring me to actually take part in some sort of healthy physical activity because i do know physical activity basically apart from fishing and is that honestly a physical activity but uh yeah so um i chris said that he uh goes out for a daily morning walk and i thought yeah now it's time to start i'm on day 10 today and uh using the fact that my mum's here with me but for those of you who i do spend a lot of time in the studio i do think it's tremendously important for us to remember to take care of our health actually because the studio can be a physically really unhealthy environment do you reckon ricky what's your experience yeah absolutely yeah yeah yeah sedentary mate with that said what's the main dangers for you ricky what bad habits did you find you've gotten into over the years when you've been producing um yeah you do spend too much time in the studio you know and usually when you come out you're kind of tired because you're you're focused for the amount of hours you've been spending in there and then you've got no energy to do anything else so it's like right you've got to put it in your itinerary that you have a physical activity um that takes away from the studio you know i mean i've seen pictures of people's studios but they've actually got like a treadmill in in in the background you know for the treadmill in the background you remember pictures he's i wonder if he still has it i don't think he does yeah treadmill you know but you know the logic of actually makes sense you know because you can be on there even when you're listening kind of thing well if you can listen above the din of the motor on it but um yeah just turn it up i suppose yeah um but yeah it's it is important and then um your fluids as well yeah um somebody would don't like to have any drinks yeah people don't some people are so concerned about spillages as well that they yeah where they won't have any drinks i'm i'm bad yeah i actually have cups so i'll try and compensate with that so you see you can see my chamber pot here yeah is that water no that that's tea actually that's tea yeah good yeah it's tea yeah so um i do have it in a place where it can't fall over so yeah um it's important to to um keep an eye on those things you know i mean absolutely um i'm i'm gonna go now i'd love thank you so much everyone who's been here we'll be back next week i'm going to get some special guests in the next two or three weeks not that you're not special wiki but some different guests i should say um that's all right but yeah looking forward i think the next time we have ricky on uh we'll have him on with one of his pieces of music which we'll have a listen to ricky i'm going to let you pick whatever one you want to pick please okay yeah the pressure's on now isn't it but i'm i'm really looking forward to it actually i'm cool with it man i might grab a track from one of the other guests that's been on the past as well we'll have a listen to that time to watch me crash a bird yeah if for no other reason just to say this is how it's done you know yeah but none of us are ever happy with our mixes ricky so don't feel too nervous about it i could not think of one uh the thing that i've ever done where i could say i'll play that as an example of a perfect mix never has happened probably never will but there you go all right thank you my friend thank you to everyone who's been here in the chat it's been a wonderful show and thank you if you do want to send your music in make sure you do it follow the instructions in the description down below and we look forward to