 Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. This is Fix My Mix 32, where we listen to songs from the community and give advice about how those songs could be improved before they are released. And when you do release your songs, you know I'm going to point my finger, I hope you release them through the sponsor of this show. That is DistroKid and if you follow that link in the description down below then you'll get a nice 7% off of what is already a very very cheap service. We'll be talking about DistroKid throughout the show. There's quite a lot of links in the description to talk about today because we've got a special show and we are going to be listening to some music. Sorry as I adjust my microphone can you hear that in your ear? Nice. What was I saying? I was in a flow wasn't I? Yes we've got a bit of a special show because today we're going to be going through my personal kind of checklist. Now normally for me this is a mental checklist so I'm happy myself to have actually sort of written it out. I may print it off and use it in the future so I don't forget things because I often do forget things and that was the purpose of this checklist really to make sure that we've sort of I was going to say cross the eyes and dotted the T's but that would be the wrong thing to do, cross the T's and dotted the I's whatever it is anyway. But this is hopefully going to help you as well to think about some things you may be overlooking in your mixing process. So we'll be talking about that later in the show as well as listening to some music from the community. I'm going to say a quick high before I do say a quick high I should point out that in fact you can download this checklist. If you haven't done so already there's a link for it in the description and that's the mixed checklist that we're going to be going through today. Just follow that URL that you can see on the screen right now and you'll have to put in your email address and stuff like that and you'll get a link for that pretty quickly hopefully. Some people there seems to be a delay. Anyway I hope a few of you have got it already. I'm going to quickly say hi too. Princess LDG nice to see you here princess and you're from America. I'm servicing the people from the Americas again. Nice to see Doug here. He's from the Americas as well. Doug always good to see you here and we have also a good old Mimo Japan is here of course. I know Keonra's in here as well. I don't have a thing to click on for Keonra here. It's a bit of a shame isn't it? Keonra actually did a review of my new course, The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Katewalk this week which was very very nice of her and she had some nice things to say. We'll be talking about that in a moment. Lovely to see Kevin here of course. Kevin is here dedicated as usual. We've had some of Kevin's music on the show. It's been fantastic and also we have John from Indiana. Someone from Melbourne. Always good to see a fellow Aussie in here as well. Harsha Sri and finally so we can move on quickly. We have Pete Johns. Now Pete Johns just had a great show actually talking about drums in garage band and he is the middle of Song Timber a challenge where people are creating music and writing songs during the month of September. He was on there with Jade Star. Nice to see Jade on there and just really interesting. Fascinating to hear a bit of the behind the scenes process on drums for Pete's track. Now this checklist that we're going to be going through today would be quite useful for people taking part in Song Timber as they get closer to you know perfecting their mix and releasing their songs. So yeah because it's not door specific. You could be using any door and use this checklist. Now I will quickly say if it had escaped your attention that I also released in the last week or so my first course I've got to tell you it's a bit of a labour of love. I've actually been working for this working on this for over a year. Several things got in the way. I don't want you to think I've been working it this and nothing but this for a year but yes but it was really pleasing for me to finally release it. It is an absolute beginner's guide to cakewalk and it is designed for people right at the beginning of their journey. I've hopefully kept the language nice and simple. Not too much sort of a slang or it's a slang. There's no slang in there. I've gotten the words now. The words have gotten. Anyway no fancy words in there. I've kept it nice and basic. If you would like to if you're at the beginning of your cakewalk journey and you would like to follow that course then I do have a discount code which I'm putting up on the screen now but it's also in the link in the description. It lasts for about 24 hours or so. You get 15% off and hopefully you'll find that very very useful. Let's move on and listen to some music. In fact I'm only going to be playing one song today for us to absorb and think about the mix of because there is a lot to go through with this mix checklist so I wanted to dedicate most of the show to that. The song that we're going to be listening to is from... let me find the little thing I prepared here. Let's put their name up on the screen so that you can see how wrong I'm getting. G-Aware Nerd is the name of the artist okay and the song is called Vibe Gone Do. Now the email I got was the artist's name is actually Gabe. Hi Mike, great to meet you. My name is Gabe, stage name is G-Aware Nerd. I'm a conscious alternative artist hip hop, R&B, funk soul, electronic. Talking about human psychology, personal empowerment and the symbolic relationship the individual has with society. Still in process of developing the content to the level I want this song is called Vibe Gone Do about how the current job school career paradigm in western society might be a little too rigid. I've got to say here I was a little bit refreshing to have a song about something. I'm just going to say that out loud. So yeah great it's nice to see someone thinking about the content of the purpose and the meaning of the song. No no no no what do I get to? Yes right okay the song is in three four times singing and rapping produced a mix by me. There are some micro moments where the vocals are a little distant ran out of space on the CPU to tweak those. How could I make the mixing changes you asked? I'll probably just restam everything if possible. Thank you for your time I look forward to be to my blind spots being outed. Now everyone who's in the chat here I hope you'll join in and help this artist we'll all help you hopefully Gabe to find the blind spots you may or may not have here. So let's have a listen to this song as we say Vibe Gone Do and here it is. was told I was no use. 18 hours supposed to be on nation. School of job came find another decent option on my screaming. Get a job for job or school. Meantime word about what my vibe gonna do. Matrix was robbing my youth. Yeah what my vibe do. What my vibe gonna do. Out with it by the devil. Lost comparing mine to others levels. They all seem to know what they was headed. Many failed scheme to get a pigeon pocket breaded. They got it twisted. Can't tuck my heart away. My soul would fizzle. Never got to have my say. Oh they don't really care. Can't change my path. It's rare in me to be on corporate. Get job rules. Job or school. Meantime word about what my vibe gonna be. Matrix was robbing my youth. Used to work at Walmart. Had me work and check out. Draining AF one day I quit during lunch. Had to get the heck out. Everybody say I'm reckless. Feel dumb as fuck. Most managers ahead suck salt nuts. Everybody assault quote looking responsible. RBF said joy's impossible. They say the only way to feed them is to get a job. To have a place to keep a job but you never sleep well in your place. Take up more space. More values lost. Corporate can charge genitals for minimal cost and effort. They differ and differ. That's the repertoire. Kind of makes you feel there's something bigger going on. Boss with half your IQ. Half the staff in high school. Physically mentally social paragraphs but I'm cool with Haiku. Energy vampires need a quota. You can quote me. I'm voting on Haiku. Overall my hustle flow. Oshkosh be goes to a job who? Job or school? Meantime word about what my vibe gonna do. There's gotta be another way. Need some stop in my call. Yeah my vibe do. What my vibe gonna do? Get a job. Meantime word. Stun it millennial. Okay something a bit different there. There was quite a bit to take in in actual fact. Listen I'm gonna say that I listened to this very very briefly yesterday on my phone while I was just in the kitchen you know through the little phone speaker. It's much more of a treat if you've got headphones on and decent monitors and things like that. I will say that about this. So if you are listening through your phone you probably didn't get the best representation as you won't with any music really to be honest with you. I'll talk about I want to talk about the the actual composition in a moment but first of all just talk about the mix because that's what we're here for. Doug's in the in the chat there was talking about more sub on the bass. I think I agree with you Doug. I sort of had to pause for a moment about whether I was correct about that because I've got these new headphones on. I've only been using them for about a week so I don't know quite how much I can trust them yet. With any monitoring system like speakers or headphones you need to sort of get to know them to know that you can trust them. So first I thought myself hmm is this lacking a little bit and I specifically what Doug said sub bass okay is this lacking a little bit in that area particularly for this genre of music I feel it should be there and I felt there's a little bit of sub bass missing there I would have to double check that on on some different things but interesting that Doug spotted that as well. I also felt like in the main parts of this song because there was kind of a break where there was some rapping and the vocals were fine in there I felt in the main part of this song that those vocals could still come up just a tad okay just a little bit not a whole bunch I wouldn't say it would be immediately we wouldn't immediately strike people that are you know the the vocals are too low in this but just a little bit would be nice okay I didn't have a lot to say about this mix because overall is a pretty good mix but I will say that in the mids is where things got a little bit muddy for me okay there's a reasonable amount of backing vocals going on there with some harmonies and they're occupying a lot of the same space as the sort of synth sound that was going on in there and that was all that was a little bit mushy for me if you listen to that it's all sort of a bit of a blur in in there so I would be looking at probably well both the synth and those vocals and seeing where their kind of main frequencies lie their fundamentals if you want to use fancy words fancy words and then you know sort of emphasizing some of those in one or other of those instruments to give it a little bit of separation but the overall mix you're you're very very close very very close in my opinion I think to that degree where any regular listener who's listening to this is going to be listening to the content of the music rather than being distracted by anything in the mix so overall I don't think you've got too many blind spots in there I just want to quickly say though it's a hot topic of debate in my household because my my 15 year old son listens to a lot of hip-hop r&b and rap and we share a lot of time listening to music together especially in the car and so I'm exposed through a lot of this style of music whether I'm into it or not I have been in the past at different periods in this genre and and so what I want to say is for me this any complaints I have about the current state of of this kind of music are quite largely addressed by this song and it's a little bit refreshing actually the odd time signature is nice the topic is nice which is is good in there and yeah I enjoyed it from that perspective there's a lot of musicality in this there's there's a lot of stuff going on with especially on the rhythm side but you know even on the music side there was some nice little surprises in there some some things here and there which I didn't quite expect and it's always good to have some surprises in a piece of music it can definitely you know helps our enjoyment when we listen to things so overall lots of encouragement I think to Gabe thanks for sending this in I think that you you're just a long long way along your journey you just need to concentrate on getting your music out there to the world I would say that's the hard part isn't it is getting noticed but you need to get it out there first so follow that link in the description and what you will find is that when you get there you'll be doing this release your music via distro kid there's just a couple of things you need first of all the music itself here's mine in my door cakewalk and I'm exporting it to an uncompressed wave file for best results now the other thing you'll need is some artwork I just grabbed an old photo which I'd taken on the beach chucked on some text here and that's what I call art then I went over to distro kid and I just have to fill in this extra easy form it's a no-brainer form you get helped all the way through with little hints and things you can't really do anything wrong you just go ahead and confirm a few things about your music and then you just have to actually upload the artwork and the song itself and distro kid takes care of the rest it's going to send it out to all of the best platforms so that people can hear and buy your music please don't forget that if you would like to have your music featured on the show and have us help you with your mix you can follow the instructions for that in the description down below I've got a little ticker going along the bottom here I'm going the wrong way just follow that information there so childish and I would love to have your music on the show all kinds of genres are acceptable here don't worry about that it can even be instrumentals it can be soundtrack types of pieces it can be country it can be western it can be rock pop punk metal all of the things that you can be it can be them and we will listen to it on the show I hopefully I'm now going to help you along with that mixing process though by giving you running you through this checklist let me just get rid of that thing off the screen how do I do that wish someone was here to help me with this there we go I've put this checklist together to help you through that mixing process and make sure you don't miss things it is a checklist as I was typing this out only yesterday I realized I wanted to go into so much more detail than is actually on on the list itself but I wanted to make sure it wasn't actually an encyclopedia rather than just a checklist so what that's what we're going to do now is run through what we've got in the list and and I can slightly expand upon the importance of some of the things on there so I will be kind of following along through my own checklist here as well I've got cakewalk ready just in case I need to demonstrate a couple of things if you haven't got this then you can follow the link in the description to download it and then you know print it out and keep it by your side as you work through your song timbre mix and let's just get started right away here I don't want to dwell on anything for too long but please do ask questions in in the comments if you're here in the live chat okay and I'm sure there in the live chat Kyonra is going to remind you to hit the like button as well unless she's already done it so let's get started right at the beginning of this list folks I have I'm talking about some pre-mix stuff here a lot of what we're going to be talking about in today's show is about preparation because I'm a big believer in as we work towards our static mix and we'll talk about what that is about doing your static mix as quickly as you can like really really quickly much quicker than you think a quick static mix is a good mix in my opinion I was watching a video just quickly I'll say this during the week and they were talking to the guy who mixed born in the USA from Bruce Springsteen a couple of guys went into the studio he pulled it up they had listened to it he'd done a quick mix so to speak so when they're in the studio they could listen to different parts of it and he was saying on the video that they asked him when he said it took him about an hour and a half to create this mix of born in the USA for this video on YouTube and they said well yes but surely it took you much much longer when you originally mixed it back in the day and he said you know he said it took me about two hours to mix the whole thing can you believe that a song of that magnitude of that thickness a couple of hours to mix don't think that just because you're going to labor over a mix for days and weeks that it's going to be a better mix I highly disagree with that idea I think that could could really hurt yourself so yeah a lot of the stuff that we're going to have in this checklist is geared towards actually being able to do it so the first thing we've got is get organized label channels colorize channels and add markers and you would note if you've got a copy of this project here which is available to you I don't think I put this in the description maybe someone's got a link for that but you'll notice if you look at my projects that they always I use the coloring feature on channels to make sure I can easily identify them you can't see it on this screen but I definitely label everything meaningfully it doesn't have to be meaningful to everyone it depends who you're going to be working with on this if you're just working by yourself just make sure it's meaningful to you and the other thing I always do is I put markers at the top I actually tend to if I've already written the song beforehand you know like usually I'll write songs on an acoustic guitar or on a piano and I've generally got an idea of the structure of the songs in terms of verse chorus etc then I actually tend to map this out right at the beginning of the project to be honest with you I just find it helps me to sort of know where I'm going and where I am but sometimes you're actually composing in your door itself so you may not have done that but definitely at this stage it's very handy to have some markers there so that you can easily see which part of the song you're in that's going to help you when you come to doing as I say this sort of quick mix as it were so I don't want to go on about this too much but I do think that it's more than just making things look nice and being a little bit OCD as I am it's more than that it's about helping you to keep things flowing a little bit later on I will say quickly though that if you've come up with an idea if you're in the middle of your creativity and you think I've got this great idea for a song you grab your guitar you grab your microphone yeah don't trouble yourself with making sure everything's labeled correctly at that point okay don't you keep that flow going okay so the next thing that we will be looking at on in terms of the pre-mix checks is edits it's just really important I think again to have all of your edits done before you really get into mixing now sometimes you're going to miss things and you're going to have to do some edits later on but in general edits are fiddly things they're things that sort of really kind of can get you out of your creative flow and your sort of mixing flow so I would make sure a few things done first first of all trim takes okay I like to get rid of as much unnecessary noise vocalist shuffling bits of paper and kicking microphone stands in between phrases and things like that I like to trim all of that out as much as possible you know guitarist shuffling around what kind of thing I also at this stage will make sure I like to finalize any comps now this is actually important so comps I'm not talking about compression here folks we're talking about composites so this is where we've taken several takes of of vocals and guitar whatever it is you're comping and and we're patching them together and taking our favorite bits and making it sound like one performance um hang on a moment I'll just one I think the link above is for the cakewalk setup tutorial do do do do do do do do do do do yes it is camera you the other the actual link for let me just pop it in the chat now sorry about this folks it is uh mix checklist.com I could have just said that couldn't I I think that's the one you all need there so um so finalizing those composites again that's a fiddly job it's it's it's sort of not in the flow of mixing um to make sure those those those comps are done at this stage also correct any like things like timing issues and things like that just make sure they're all done whether they're midi parts or whether they're audio parts okay um and the last thing is on that I would do here is do clip clip gain adjustments we had a show about gain that was it last week or the week before so when we're talking about clip gain um we're talking about the actual tracks themselves um and you're going through the tracks and you're basically finding things that are just standing out as much louder than other things typically this will be saying vocals where and it may have come about because of composites where you've got slightly different levels or maybe the performance is slightly different where suddenly you'll see visually even that oh this phrase is much louder than than the other phrase or this verse is louder than the other verse so what I tend to do at a clip level and at gain level is just quickly go in and make sure those things are leveled out this is not an appropriate task for a compressor so don't think you'll be fixing this with a compressor because these things are two bigger chunks to really deal with compressors and yes once you could um deal with it with volume automation which we'll be talking about later remember that these things these uh these these things at clip level are going to be hitting things like your compressors at very different levels so you're basically just evening all of that out very important to do that at this stage I believe okay and finally in terms of actual preparation um uh before your sort of static mix we or your pre-mix I should say um I would say melodyne if you're doing any pitch correction with something like melodyne get this done now as well and it's also I would say important that you do it at this stage and not so much earlier you don't really want to be doing melodyne before you do comps for example okay that would just be a huge waste of resources and time in actual fact so once you've got especially for vocals if you've got those comps done you're happy with the performance then do your sort of pitch correction after that this is all preparation so that you're not being distracted by these fiddly little jobs when you're actually in the middle of a mix because I want this to flow for you when you're actually mixing okay so preparation here is key all right let's go on to the pre-static mix checks I know there's a lot of pre-stuff here isn't there um so this is a this is a thing a number of things I like to do before I go ahead and do my static mix so the first thing is is I remove plugins or switch them off often I will have put um use some plugins and effects during the tracking process okay it's not unusual for me to do that um I think that when for example you're recording a vocal part or some other part that if there's a bit of a sound and a bit of a vibe going on which has helped along with delays and reverbs and things like that it can help your performance okay more you know rather than just sort of playing along with a very dry backing track so so I do use a few plugins during the tracking process just to give the ears a little pleasure so to speak but at this stage and and I learned this the hard way sometimes I used to leave them on and you know you start to get attached to these sounds as well unfortunately um and and um quite poor poorly applied effects can become normalized to your to your listening um I like I learned a while ago now just get rid of them if you're really really attached to a particular sound or tone that you've created then um then you could just disable the plugins at this point but I like to get rid of all the plugins um because we want to do our static mix and balance our mix without the plugins first okay also plugins are going to be changing levels and you know messing up your levels and things as you take them in and out later so let's start with a clean slate and get rid of those plugins the exception to this would be of course amp sims let me just bring that checklist up again the exception to this would be things like amp sim so obviously with a guitar when you're using an amp sim you are actually creating the sound and character of that instrument okay we're very very rarely going to be using just a de-eyed electric guitar um in a track normally we're going to be either we will have miked up a guitar miked up an amp or we'll be emulating that process with an amp sim so I would probably leave those on but we'll talk about it in a moment with with gain but well let's talk about it in a moment with gain so we're going to move on to gain I've I've sort of almost carefully avoided the term gain staging here okay I've put check gain gain staging for me doesn't happen at one particular point in the process gain staging for me happens right at the beginning of actual tracking even when you're setting the level the input level on your audio interface folks you are gain staging okay so I'm I'm just sort of trying to avoid the terms gains just staging at the moment and I want us more to think about healthy gain levels at any stage of recording and mixing okay but in order to do that at this stage what I like to do and it's one of the points on here is reset all of the faders to unity meaning zero so that we can actually check the actual gain going into the channel we can't properly check the gain if we've got our fader at something other than unity okay so it's important to do that um so I would say um that what's important about this is just making sure it's at a good level whether you decide that gain staging is for you or not and some people don't believe in gain staging in in in the digital age I I do personally but if you don't believe it doesn't matter but yeah the thing that you do want is to make sure your gain is healthy first of all it shouldn't be clipping that should be obvious to you so you shouldn't be going above zero db and hearing any clipping sounds you can't get rid of that with a fader later um you also don't want it to be too low if things are too quiet um then you will find that um you know you're not going to be hitting your effects well enough things like compressors etc you just won't be getting anything out of it and what's going to happen is your faders are going to be up too high and can I just quickly mention something about this which is really kind of important about gain and faders as well I don't think I mentioned it um in last week's show I'll bring cakewalk up here do keep in mind oh you can't really see what's going on here but I'm going to wiggle look can you see this fader wiggling around that's my organ I'm playing with there I haven't even got Pete Johns on the show and I'm being disgusting so if you look at the little numbers on the metering there yeah you'll see that I'm on zero here and there's a big jump down to get to minus six decibels so make a change of six decibels is quite a reasonable move on the fader okay but when we get down to the bottom do you see this isn't a linear thing here to move six decibels down here is a much smaller move in other words you have a higher resolution at the top of the fader than you do at the bottom so if you if you're finding that your your gain is up very very loud on a track and that has meant that your fader is spending all of its time down here later on in the mix then what will happen is to make small changes will be much more difficult on your fader now I think that small changes later on can make a big difference when you're dealing with whether a vocal is in the right place in the in the in the mix or not even half a decibel can make a big difference so we'll move on from there so that's I think we've probably addressed gain enough on the channel now but I will say just finally yeah if you did keep the amp sims in there do check the gain going into those and make sure they're at the right level now the next thing I do after this is actually a little bit of mixing finally I do create some sub-mixes and these I would do these generally pretty quickly but these would be a good example of these is the drums so I would get a mix between all the drums something that just feels right something that just sounds like a drummer in a room we're not mixing it in the context of the song yet but I would just get a rough mix and a balance between all of those elements of the drums and then have them all go through to one bus and that would be called drums okay if I've got pairs of guitars things like you know left and right guitars they will all go through to one bus and they will you know be called guitars I've put on here other sub-mixes would be things like string sections brass sections vocal harmonies etc now I've put a last point on here optionally send leftover individual instruments this typically might be say bass where there's only one track for bass I still send that through to a bus why do I do such a silly thing I'll show you why because most doors when they create buses here's all my buses I'll slide them out over here for this track most doors are going to put them over here on the right hand side yeah of the console I'm not sure I think there's some options in some doors to have buses over with the rest of your tracks but most often we have the buses over here on the right hand side so later on when we're mixing if we've got a whole bunch of things like I've got here the drums you know I'll wiggle that around so you can see it and then I've got you know strings and things like that rather than going backwards and forwards during the mixing process because there's quite a lot of tracks here yeah I don't want to be going back backwards and forwards I like to have everything together so over here I've got some tracks some buses I should say for example try and look for some good examples actually well the organ itself we'll talk about at the moment so look the only thing on that bus is the organ and that's it and but what it means is I can do my mix later all from this area mostly from my from my buses so I'm going to be doing fine parts of my mix we'll talk about it later on by going back to some of my tracks but essentially that's what I do so those that's the next thing I do because later on when I'm trying to do my mix quickly I don't want to be sort of fiddling around with routing too much I don't want to be going oh right okay I want that the drums to do this but oh I've got to quickly now make a bus for them or I don't want to be doing that so this is a sort of an again this is just an organisational thing that if you do it before you really get into your mix proper you'll find that you can work quite a lot quicker now that is sort of everything in terms of actual preparation so then we go on next to the static mix but this is a good time I would say and you should do this quite often to take a breather because you've already been listening to some stuff here with your sub-mixes right you've already been sort of have your ears getting fatigued a little bit already when you've been doing your sub-mixes so make sure this sort of stays that you do take a break okay to get those ears unfamiliar with the track again so that when you listen it's a bit fresher and indeed that's my segue to a break that I'm going to take now while we hear about what DistroKid can do for 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, iHut, Radio Deezer and more Happy Ron is here always nice to see Happy Ron big fan of Ron's music of course as you probably know what's the advantage of disabling plugins yes so basically it's it's to Ron plugins themselves will first of all that affect levels and they can often sort of muddy things all right so it's basically about clearing the decks it's about having a fresh start and knowing first of all before you've added that plugin before even added that reverb or whatever it is I added I know that my vocal guitar whatever it is was sitting at the right place in the mix so it's a way of sort of um yeah starting with a fresh slate I guess now if you then switch the plugin on and that mix is all messed up then you know it's the plugin that's causing the problem but yeah it's it's a way of creating a base a starting point really a good starting point because if you've already got four or five plugins in there you don't know as you start to mess with those later um well you I pretty much guarantee that they will mess with the mix but yeah so it's just creating a good starting point is the main thing I would say there um looking for any other kind of questions in there um in there but I can see that a lot of you do use um I'm I'm not sure if this is a joke or not I I like it if it is a joke I've gained a lot we did talk about gain quite a bit there didn't we um and finally Danny is saying being a bass player I always make three tracks of different signals of the same song dry mix cabin effect yeah it's a pretty good idea actually especially with bass as well because as we know bass is one of those instruments that can actually in my opinion often be only di depending on what you want from it but can be really really good di as an instrument but I personally I like to use a mixture of di and you know I probably assume in my case although I do sometimes mic up my my humble bass amp which is over there in the corner um anyway um true the very true Ron don't ever let anyone mute or disable you yeah I don't think they ever could ask Susie she she wishes I would shut up sometimes anyway bless her let's move on so here we get the fun part the static mix of you'll see if you're following along with a pdf you'll notice that I've got this bit in yellow here uh which you won't have in yellow about midnight last night I suddenly realized ah there was something I forgot to mention in this bit um and I've put some I've just highlighted this completely unrelated point in yellow here just to remind myself so I'll try and update the pdf but um you might want to scribble on your own pdf folks one thing that I would have prepared here at this moment is uh some reference material so uh for those of you who don't know a reference track is going to be a song another maybe your own work but probably another artist piece of work which is going to help you to give some to give you something to compare to okay um and it's very useful to have one prepared at this stage whenever you're going to do any actual mixing but you can use it at various stages during the mix um then a lot of people will ask me well which reference track should I use um and uh there's no real answer to that I would say first of all the reference track should be a goal something you have in mind so a piece of music which you think in terms of an actual mix or in terms of its sonic sound that you sonic sounds I'm not sure that's a term uh its sonic qualities um is what you're aiming for okay and so therefore it follows that it's helpful if it's got a very similar arrangement in terms of what instruments are used um and probably a similar genre um and you know obviously if your song is a ballad there's not much point in having a reference track which is an up tempo song with a lot more rhythm and things in it so you're looking for a similar piece of music so probably something you admire um because the biggest problem we have with mixing is in my opinion is fatigue both mental but also ear fatigue it we very very quickly lose objectivity with mixes it's part of the reason why this show exists in actual fact so that people can now play their mixes to other people to get a different opinion I like Neil's confirming to me that that was a joke thank you Neil nice to see that um now so just have a reference track is very very handy to have at this stage um to give you a sense of where you want to go and often it can just be really helpful if you're you're in the middle of a mix and you're thinking is that vocal is that vocal right is that the right level just have a quick listen to that reference track and then get a feel for where the vocal's sitting in there okay so choose the loudest part of the song first um there's there's sort of a good reason for doing this first of all often the loudest part of the song is going to be have the most elements in it it's usually going to have the most instruments so it's going to be using most of the faders in in your track um so it's useful for that um secondly um because um you always want to make sure you've got kind of headroom okay somewhere to go in terms of volume if you start off by mixing a quiet part of the song and you'll have your fader up say fairly high you're going to find as soon as you go to a loud part of the song that if you you know you'll be clipping and things like that by the way I just want to quickly mention that although in theory let's just go talk about not gain this time but let's talk about faders and things although in theory um there's no correct position to have your faders and there's no peak level on the metering where you should be going with individual parts let's say for example if we look at this mix um and let's just play a bit of this oh which part of the song should we listen to oh that'll be fine so we're in here so you'll see the bass for example here it's actually peaking like really really low in the mix a bit lower than I'd probably have it to be honest with you normally but it's peaking fairly low there all right it's not going up very high at all now although it would be fine um although it would be fine to go anything up to zero in terms of you know where it's peaking um experience has told me um that of course as things start to add up you know if you you've got that bass and then you've got the drums if they're both peaking at minus three for example your your uh master bus could be already getting very very close to zero as you start to add in more elements they all combine so just sort of experience has told me and this is not a magic number anyway but for me the peak number is about minus six dv I don't like to go over minus six in songs like this because I very very quickly find that I will be adjusting um everything down later on okay now you could just say to me well it's fine Mike just turn the master bus down um yeah that's okay but what if you've already gone through a number of different buses and things and those buses are clipping it's not just going to be as easy as turning down the master bus because that clipping will still be there in the mix so anyway um that would be my advice if you're looking for a bit of a guide in terms of numbers um but you know each their own on that I guess but that's just where my experience has led me so going back to our checklist where did we get to on that checklist um where was that yes so choosing the loudest part of the song now I um at this point what I like to do is I zero all the faders now when I say zero the faders there's probably a bad terminology actually I don't mean zero in terms of putting them at unity gain zero db I mean I pull all the faders right down to the bottom so we can't actually hear anything and then I start to introduce elements and as I've mentioned several times on the show before um that I have a particular way of doing this which is not the most common way of doing it most people are going to start off with the rhythm section okay they're going to start off with you know sort of drums bass rhythm guitars pianos and things like that they're going to build up that rhythm section and then they're going to introduce vocals and that's absolutely fine if you want to do it like that but as many of you know I do it the other way around I start off with the vocals first I just get my vocals there probably I've put the fader on zero unity gain for the vocals and then I introduce elements below that and bring them up to levels um and as is sort of fairly normal in contemporary music I like to have the vocals just a little bit on top of everything else so look however you want to do it's up to you whatever you think is important for your for your particular music but as you introduce these faders and as you bring the faders here for this static mix by the way we're only going to be using faders and panning okay nothing else no plugins nothing like that no compression nothing like that at this stage you're just going to be getting a very basic balance and work very very fast okay don't overthink things here if you're finding yourself fiddling around on the faders just with little tweaks and things here there you're taking this way too seriously folks just trust your instincts you've probably spent decades already listening to contemporary music you know when things don't sound right don't you I still don't no but seriously you you should trust your gut on this and just go for a quick basic balance of things balance doesn't mean every faders at zero and everything's equal balance is that sense that things are in harmony with each other that's probably a bad term now just a quick thing on using faders I know couldn't you can't get much more basic than this how do you use a fader just a quick thing when you get that sort of that point where you've lost your objectivity in your second guessing yourself and you're going is that vocal in the right place what I like to do it's a bit like tuning your tar string I like to get it completely wrong first right so so I was getting doing the vocal here and I'm thinking I'm not sure and I'm moving that fade up and down just a little bit I just can never quite decide what I like to do is make sure I make sure it's wrong okay in this case just drag that fade all the way down can hear that vocals wrong it's just just way too quiet isn't it right and then also you might make it too loud okay just make a note of those two extremes and then to make it know as you push it where does it become obviously too quiet or too loud and where do you where you're sort of not sure where is it where is it and just take a note of where that is right those are two extremes right and then it's going to be somewhere in the middle there okay but it's sometimes good to sort of refresh the ears with taking it way a long way away from where it should be that's one thing I'll do so you won't often see like me bring everything up and then start listening it's like introduce things from zero sometimes like shutting your eyes as well can really help okay just closing your eyes have your finger on the fade and gradually push up so that you're not being visually stimulated and you you just only the ears are working then I find that ever so helpful it's one of the reasons I've said in the past that I like to use a controller because you can actually switch your screens off and start to mix by just using the controller which is really really nice Tasha says that I should have more more puns in my tutorial video I know I know I use I think I used to have more have I got too serious recently I think I have sometimes anyway who cares so moving on moving on now you may find yourself at this stage and I think it's perfectly okay look there's no rules at the end of the day but if you want to feel that there are rules it's fine at the moment if you've done this mix using as I would be doing the using the buses to mix okay to get your static mix you will find yourself going back to the individual channels as well because for example you know how earlier on I said I would make a submix of the drums in isolation just get them balanced right but now that I'll be hearing the drums in the context of the mix then some parts of that submix will reveal themselves as not being quite right okay the snare is not quite where it should be when we're listening to the drums by themselves it felt like the snare was okay but now we're in the song so yes you will find yourself going back and doing some little adjustments to those submixes as well okay and that's fine but I would be focusing mainly on the buses that would be my experience and Doug it's so true isn't it it's so true I could just go sleep right now I hope I hope the viewers won't go to sleep listening to this so that is really look it sounds like a big deal isn't it the static mix let's do the static mix and let's say in that voice as well it's just something you know if you've done all that preparation that I talked about earlier oh you know my top my estimation of time on this gets less on this 15 minutes for a static mix maximum if if you've done 15 minutes on your static mix go away and have a coffee have a beer have a night's sleep you don't really want to be sweating over this at this stage but I would recommend though once you finish your static mix again do take a break breaks are really really important when you're working in a home studio in home studios we can be very very isolated we get very very close to what we do and we're probably often the only person listening to it as well and we can very quickly lose objectivity of what's going on so next you will come in and this is where the details come I haven't talked about the details a lot on previous episodes and things all of the details for me just for me and this is a very personal thing I like to get those vocals right I've been listening to this a lot vocals are so important I like to start to get them sounding good I haven't put everything on here there's going to be a focus on EQ is definitely going to be a thing that's to create a tone for the vocal but it's also to make sure that it's got presence okay so I'll be looking at you know where are the mids and the high mids for the vocals because not all things about making things sound louder it's not always about using a fader okay it's also now starts to be about exposing different parts of the frequency ranges on an instrument so it's easily more easily identified or separated in the mix okay so I like to start off with the vocal personally but you can do as you wish compression I've put on here use compression if required I think there's there's a misconception if you watch enough youtube videos to feel like oh you should always have compression can I have a little bit of a winch actually let me let me do a little bit of a winch at the moment I'm a bit over youtubers always talking about making everything punchy I don't know if anyone else has noticed this probably me as well um but you know there's a lot of tutorials around which are about making your kick more punchy and about your vocals have more presence and about okay so we definitely want to make things more punchy and more present but there's different roles for different parts in the mix we can't make everything punchy right it's not every not everything has the goal of being punchy all right so think about that so that doesn't mean that you always reach for a compressor for your vocals if you've got um as as I would often have say um a ballad which is mainly say a piano and a vocal maybe a bass there's a very good chance you don't need to compress that vocal my friends I can tell you don't sweat it and think you always have to do these things really it's the same think about what compression the role of compression is the compression is a volume control okay now it can be a very useful volume control because it can work very very quickly for very short periods of time and it's automated because it's doing it based on the source okay the level of the source so it saves you having to wiggle that fader around but it's not our only it's not the only thing we use for volume we're going to be talking about some other things later but the key things are that the gain clip gain that I talked about at the beginning all right getting that right you can also go in and make some fine adjustments with that here and there I wouldn't do it all over but here and there EQ as we've just mentioned is going to help to keep a vocal present in a track later on we're going to be talking about automation as well so that's very important and one of the tools is that's at your disposal is compression okay now also obviously compression or compressor plugins can have a secondary role of sort of adding color and character in there as well but I don't want you to always assume which is why I've carefully put in these notes consider using compression if required also I've just noted in here consider using parallel compression I find parallel compression is sometimes I'll use you know compression in the track and parallel compression but I find it's um it's a really useful way of just keeping a vocal very very present so I do quite often in mixes which with more than a few elements use parallel compression and don't forget to DS I've just put that on the checklist many many times I've I've thought I've completed the track and I'm going because by the time you've been listening to this perhaps for weeks for days and weeks um you've already got used to that on that vocal you've become desensitized to it okay so this is a good time to take stock and DS the vocal I also think and I've put a note in here that all of these things there's many many parts of the details of mixed but these are the highlights for me the low end is really really really really really important and it's one of the hardest things to deal with we talked about it didn't we on the first song on this show and Doug pointed out that um the low end in in that in the mix there was all the sub I should say was a little bit lacking and I wasn't sure and I was mentioning I wasn't sure because I'm using a new monitoring system low end is partly difficult because most of us have not very good equipment to judge it with unfortunately we home studios right we don't have the perfect shape rooms some of you don't have room treatment and some of them like me do have room treatment but it's the best we could afford at the time we didn't spend tens of thousands of dollars on it and you know we may not have monitors or even headphones that are the best and the low end so low end um is is hard for most of us to to judge to mix it because what we're offered is obviously even monitoring it for us as a struggle we do the best we can with the equipment we've got but essentially you just always want to be paying attention to what's in the low end you don't want to have things in there which don't need to be in there okay so um when the vocalist was singing that sort of boominess that was coming from the room they were in or some reflections or then when they kick the mic stand or or when they went a bit overboard by getting a bit close and a little bit too warm probably doesn't need to be there in the mix often with guitars the low the very low end if you've got a bass guitar in there or you've got a low piano part in there you don't need to have that low end of the guitar in there okay so I um I think this is there's several elements here but I generally and this is a massive generalization like to reserve that low end for the kick and the bass guitar okay again why is that a generalization because if it's a big piano ballad then the low end of a piano is hugely important or an orchestral piece okay there's there's several parts of that low end but yeah you want to be also creating space for any elements you do have in the low end as well and we'll use kick and bass as an example here and I've put in here considered different different ways of creating that space so one is EQ so looking at say the fundamental of your kick and emphasizing that is one way you can go sidechain compression is something which I've talked about a lot recently and is very very useful so this is a way of using one source to lower the volume of the other and often and typically not always we are ducking the bass so that we can expose the kick which is playing just momentarily okay you can always also use dynamic EQ for this as well and probably not but pinch maybe automation maybe the other thing is to consider or other masking we talked about this in the first song I felt that the harmony vocals were sitting in the same space as a lot of the synth there what happens is is rather than getting a sense of more when we have lots of things in the same frequency space it doesn't just make everything better and there's just more it just things cancel things out okay and we end up with the kind of a mushiness there so mostly I would be using EQ to carve out some little spaces for places to live just think of it like that I just want to this frequency range I'd like the piano to live there or this part of the piano but I want the I want the acoustic guitar to be able to live here in a slightly different place you're going to get more clarity more separation in your mixes if you do that now you most of this could be done with EQ you could potentially also use parallel compression to do this and certainly automation okay but masking is a really important part of mixing it takes a bit of practice to sort of start to identify you know what Doug's just mentioned something in here and this is the second thing that I sort of probably should have mentioned in the checklist more specifically but low high pass and low pass filters are really really key as well and if we go back a little bit to that low in you know that amongst the several topics of controversy in our community where people have very aggressive arguments in forums about certain things one is the good old high pass okay or low cut not so much the low pass but but that low end I may have made a video here and there where I've suggested that I do it on a lot of my tracks I might have overstated that but certainly quite a few of my tracks I will put a high pass filter on them you know as I've mentioned already typically things like acoustic guitars for example where there has been quite a bit of down there which just isn't needed for that instrument especially when it's a mix with other things it can happen across the across the board and it can also be there but not particularly noticeable to you okay so you end up with the situation towards the end of the mix where everything down the low end is very very mushy and you can't figure out why but it's because of quite a few elements where there's a lot of information going on the low end down there where you just don't need it and as Mimo rightly says um depends on the mix a lot of this is it depends on there's a lot of things which depend if you get into um you know recording your own music at home um and uh and mixing as well I know it's you you'll tend to look for definite okay like definite numbers that things that should be at definite things you should do every time but I'm afraid the truth is that there's a lot of um answers to questions in our community that really start with it depends okay it's okay just follow some rules to begin with and follow some specific numbers to begin with and you'll slowly learn where the exceptions are okay this takes time and then um the last thing this is the fun bit for me this is where uh everything up until now is sort of going okay it's sounding okay you know it's fun it's balanced it's nice and then you can start to add in thing for me and then uh reverb and other effects and this is very oh it starts to sound a bit nice this is a fun part for me enjoy it as well um so space effects for me um there's there's two parts two types of space effects and let's just say reverb promote there's reverb which is a stylized effect um I would say for example um if you uh I don't know think of Elvis Presley's voice on heartbreak hotel or something like that that massive echo they used to have they weren't really trying to say oh Elvis lives in the cathedral uh that well they were saying there was just a stylized sound at the time which made things sound cool so there's that type of thing we often have stylized reverbs on on things like um uh sort of guitar and um and what have you um but then there's the other type of delay and reverb which is attempting to put things in a space to make something sound like it's in a room or it's in a hall or you know or what have you okay so um those are what we're talking about there mostly for me I'm not using stylized effects here for this type of thing I'm putting things just in a nice space um what have I got here on my notes okay so I almost I think always use my reverbs and delays on buses first of all wrong about too much but remember that reverb reverb tends to make things sound further away the more you add with it okay so it can be a little bit dangerous in a mix if you put lots of reverb in there but now you're losing clarity so often as I mentioned before a good place to start with a little delay or sort of almost a slap back delay or something like just to make things sound less intimate and then you know give them a better space a bit of reflections and then use some light reverb okay but I almost always put them on buses you get more control there you can do things like use separate uh processes like compressing or EQing reverbs and you can do them on the buses okay without affecting your main sound um no no no no what have I got now don't forget to EQ yeah reverb and delay it's almost always required okay it took me a long long time I think to realize this early on that I was getting that sound I wanted with things like reverb and making it sound great but it was also making it sound muddy and mushy and made my mix sound like it's lacking clarity um so I would say um that you you're always going to be doing now also uh as well as the low end I think when Ed was on the show a couple of weeks ago he rightly pointed this out to me he is quite right I don't often talk about so with reverb I'll often get rid of that low to mids can make things really mushy when you get a build up in the reverb but also you may want to EQ the uh the high end of things like reverb and delay because they can tend to over accentuate this stuff up here and particularly sibilance and things like that they're really over accentuate it so uh EQing those things is pretty important it can make a big difference to the sound of the mix I'm you may also I don't always do this but you may also consider using compression to duck reverb or so this is a kind of an idea where while I'm singing da da da da da da da da there's not so much reverb so uh it's being ducked by a compressor but then when I've stopped singing it's it's revealed so you get that tail after I've stopped singing um and it's kind of released and then we can hear that reverb so that's another thing you can do um which a lot of people do with their reverb and I have put in here again remember reverb can make things seem further away unless present that may or may not be what you want to do okay and then finally I'll do other effects um I've actually kind of lied a little bit here um I had to put this in somewhere in the sequence didn't I um things like saturation modulation I don't use much modulation effects meant many modulation effects um the saturation you yeah look not necessarily this step I may be doing this much further up here you know I'm doing my vocals and EQing them I'll probably be adding some saturation in there at that stage okay but yeah just something to remember um also saturation can be useful um as a tool to make things sound louder um which I I get to make a video about actually but um yeah so adding saturation can make things sound louder even though they're not technically louder okay so you you don't really see the meters move but you'll feel that things got louder so saturation uh can be quite useful for that and then finally and I'm going to go through these last things a little bit quickly automation automation is so so so so so so important folks why because up until this point you have been working on that part of your song remember we say let's start on the loudest part of the song and you've got it all level it's sounding great everything's sounding perfect except when you go to the verse there's a different need for the song okay you don't need that instrument to be that loud in that part or that vocal to be that loud in that part of the song so this is why automation is so so important if you've got a dynamic song where there are actually differences between different parts of the song then you've got different mix needs for those different parts of the song okay I'll let you to a little secret if you're like here um automation for me although we've got these features indoors where we can sort of record movements on the fader um you know you can set it up to write automation and then you can in theory move the fader around and then you know put it back to read and it will replay that movement on the fader um I don't do it like that often I normally actually draw in my automation I may do some test runs on the fader but generally I draw it in um on that you know on the track lanes for my automation that's just me um but that's why I just yeah it's just a more logical way to do it for me but anyway you should be now going to different parts of the song and looking for where the balance needs to change for that part of the song in terms of levels okay now some of the other things that you can automate is I've put on here um let me just bring up my notes again um width is something that you can automate okay so we're talking about panning now okay and this can be really really useful when you get to things like sort of verses um um sorry choruses I should say when you go into a chorus to make things wider to pan things out wider then bring them in more narrow and verses just a little technique you can use to create well it can make things sound a bit larger and wider but it sort of stimulates the ears as well keeps the ears hearing different changes in the mix as well so that's a useful thing to be able to do space automation as well so we talked about reverb and delay um remember you can really um create a big difference if you say for example in the chorus you add some more space in there you make things sound a bit larger just have that moving around a little bit that can be a fun thing to do and um also with effects I do quite often um not in detail but I do automate EQ for different um parts of the song typically um anyone who's heard my music will know how often my songs start off with a vocal and acoustic guitar or a single instrument and then gradually more instruments are um added in there so for example the role of the acoustic guitar is changing in that example at the beginning it may be the only instrument that's there so it's it needs to occupy a larger part of the frequency range and then as we get into the song and the bass is coming in and the piano has come in that guitar doesn't need to occupy that same range so I do automate EQ you could go into separate tracks and then just you know have EQ applied to one not the other but my preference is to automate it I find that quite reasonably easy to do um and I've also um put in there as well just as a bit of a note consider automation for effects add spice just anything you know you could um you could be uh use pan automation you know just move things around to create some spice you could be adding more you could be adding some chorus or flanger in some part I don't know but just consider the idea that you could be automating some of your effects okay just to create interest um for people and then oh finally and we're getting there it's almost time for all of us to take a break but finally um post mix so once you've done all of this stuff you need to take a break and in reality as you need to then uh come back and have a listen again maybe the next day a couple of days later a week later this is going to be the most valuable thing you'll do is to take this break go away come back but what I what I don't want you to do is take that break and come back and then listen for another hour kind of and toy overwatch what I want you to do when you take that break is come back load it up and then play it and within the first like 30 seconds see what hits you see what hits you right and it will be something like I hadn't noticed before the vocals a little bit too quiet on that verse there so you'll do your adjustment okay take another break come back gradually you're just going to be ticking off things okay there's going to be and gradually you'll just you'll just hone in and you'll get to a point where you'll feel like yeah I've really done the main things at this point you'll send it into me it fix my mix and we'll tell you what's wrong with it but it'd be a good time at this point to also be listening on different systems I don't overlisten to me to me these days depends how good your monitoring is and how much your monitors your headphones reveal to you but I sort of feel like for me little secrets I've got some you'll notice in my videos I've got some computer speakers up on my walls you know they're Logitech computer speakers I'd never recommend them for mixing but they're kind of like a go-to for me of some very ordinary speakers that they're nothing special at all that people might listen to so I run and mix through those I also in the bedroom I have a Bose speaker kind of one of the big ones you know it's and you know Bose just like beats are renowned for being overemphasized in the lower end as well so I like to have a listen there because I know if I kind of listen there I yeah it might be a little bit bassy that's okay for the Bose but if it's really over the top then I know that I haven't listened to the low end enough there again and this would be another good time to compare your mix to reference material as well and as rocker's saying in the car I don't often do the car run anymore I don't know why I used to do it a lot I used to go for a drive in the car maybe it's the hassle factor mind you it's easier now isn't it really with our we just you know just transfer it to your phone connect up to bluetooth my car let me let me tell you folks in terms of money where does my money go my money goes on guitars and things like this I've got my car my car has been going on way too long it's an old Kia Sportage not the best brand in the world it's got 330 000 kilometers on it and I bought it for just over a thousand dollars about three years ago so just think if you look in my studio think he's got some fancy stuff I've sacrificed the car one of these days it's just gonna die but it keeps going for some reason anyway so he hasn't got the best car stereo I can tell you that for sure so yeah but we could listen in the car as another play it to other people now I say this with caution I always use my mum as an example but I'm not really going to test my mix on my mum because my mum always says everything I do is great okay so she's not really truthful my mum about my music so she's not the most useful person to to to have in terms of checking a mix so find people that you know will you don't you know that person who's always negative about everything they're not the most useful people as well find the people that sit somewhere in between who are just going to be truthful when they think it sounds good they're going to tell you if they think there's some problems they're going to tell you okay they're very special people those ones in life in general for all kinds of advice but um yeah you definitely want to be finding the right people there's sort of I'm I'm mixed on the idea of how well educated they should be so if I go to um Ed Thorn for example he's going to say to me hi I think you've got a problem in you know in that 400k range you know that can be useful that's okay um but I also like to have those uneducated ears those people I know who just listen to music um and who who are going to go oh you're just basic things usually like oh vocals are a bit too loud or or um oh that hi hat was annoying me that's poking it so you know some some educated uneducated ears don't get too many opinions as well you know like having 20 opinions is not always useful and do remember that people um are listening on different systems as well so they're going to give you opinions based upon the systems they're listening to as well you need to repeat this process as required and then eventually not too long don't don't look at certain stage you've got to accept that you will never ever produce anything ever ever that to your ears is perfect and everything you ever produce um will always sound wrong to you six months later maybe not actually some things you realize they were actually okay six months later but it's often the case I've got music certainly released which I think what was I thinking I don't not happy with that mix at all that's just a part of this this thing folks accept it uh accept that not all of your work will be perfect but do get it out there there's a there's a certain um uh you know there's a certain amount of liberation in actually saying you know this is the best I can do at the moment um I'm going to put this out there to the world and now it's done I'm not going to tweak it anymore it frees you up to work on your next song okay it gives you space in your mind to go right I'm ready for inspiration to come back in again and to start making my next piece of music okay so please please try and understand that even the best artists in the world have had music out there that didn't have the perfect mix okay um please understand that you know some people sometimes won't like your things some people will like your things okay this is a part of this whole being whether it's being a musician or mixing your work so so you know live with um the fact that you are at a certain stage right now you can only be the best of where you are right now yeah in terms of your abilities your listening skills which have these listening skills happen over time okay they're not something you can get instantly they come through practice um and just do the best that you can do at the moment and then you know as people are saying in the comments at the moment um and I think it's really worth uh pointing out here um taking criticism is a skill I will say as well that I don't know how many artists I have no idea how many artists we've now played on these shows between fix my mix and featured artists hundreds I can only think of one in my experience in that whole time that I thought took the criticism badly okay and not in the spirit it was meant everybody else we've had on the show has taken it so well I'm so proud of the people that do send their music in um it can get a little harsh at times depending on what guest I've got on um but I really feel that this is a great community in that way so I want to say thank you to the community especially those who have hung in there for this whole one hour and 22 minutes and gone through this checklist I'll try to update this checklist soon with a couple of things um that I may have missed on there I have to tell you folks that it's been an incredibly busy time recently um on creative source because I have been uh you know focusing on getting out that absolute beginner's guide to cakewalk there's a link for that in the description did I mention that don't forget the code it's going to get you 15% off for about 24 hours but um that has been very very busy and I have to tell you as well that coming up in the next four weeks or so is another intensely I think it's going to be one of those busy times I've ever had firstly because I'm launching some different things which I'm not going to talk about at the moment I have some incredible hardware and very interesting hardware reviews not least of which is these headphones that I'm wearing right now right and I will be mentioning the elephant in the room which is how much these headphones cost I can't remember how much they cost I didn't pay I didn't pay for them okay let me just have a look in Australian dollars and I can only tell you what they are in Australian dollars these headphones cost $2,699 okay I don't know what that is in American dollars I wish I could find that out quickly somebody can work that out and talk about okay so have I frozen on it so um the thing is well on so I will be mentioning the elephant in the room with these headphones because they are super duper expensive but I have some really interesting things to say about them I know most of you are not going to afford things like this but do watch out for that video and take a look because I think it's I've got some interesting perspectives on this are they perfect you'll find out um I've also got some really interesting emulation microphones coming from uh from antelope audio some really interesting stuff I've never used any mic emulators at all thank you Conor $1,700 for these headphones that has to be a talking point the headphones I can't ignore that I can't pretend I always use headphones as expensive I don't okay so um these emulation microphones are coming up but also I have to tell you and I can't I can't tell you about it but there are some big there's some big software releases coming up some of which are all of which I have access to already before they're out and many of which are in depth so spare a thought for the poor old youtuber who has to read lots of manuals and figure these things out before I can show them to you so it's a super busy time I'm also recording oh yes I I've also uh been using a hardware compressor um the uh warm audio wa2a just like late last night me and Susie were recording a demo using that and I'm going to be sort of comparing um the use of uh I'm going to be comparing you know what it's like to use a hardware compressor as opposed to a plugin or using a compressor at all what the track sounds like without any compression what it sounds like with an la2a style octo compressor on there so I only got that a couple of weeks ago I've only just plugged it in used it for the first time to do this I haven't analyzed the results of it so I'm super super super super busy and this is my way of apologizing to you if you send me emails or messages or uh you know you know um you know mention me on Facebook and that sort of thing if I don't respond to you I'm so so sorry it's just a bit mental at the moment I'm very very time poor but um your comments and uh your support of the channel is very very very much appreciate it I'll leave it for there uh today I hope that this list is going to be useful to you it's going to be useful to me I can print it out now and make sure I don't forget all these things when I'm when I'm mixing I will be back we'll fix my mix uh around about this time next week and I look forward to hearing some more music from the community thanks