 Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you are welcome to another episode of Fix My Mixer on number 10. We should celebrate. We have some great music lined up today, three interesting songs, which probably just a little rough around the edges and need our advice a little bit. I've got a guest with me today to help me work through that, but before we get into all that, I just want to say a thank you to my sponsor, DistroKid here. If you follow the link in the description or this one up here, then of course you get a little discount off of their already cheap price. And I just want to mention just on that, it's great that DistroKid do sponsor this show. It basically makes it possible. It means that I can spend some time on this, but you know, I wouldn't be endorsing them if I didn't think they were a great product. I really think they are and we'll be talking about them a little bit here and there during the show. Now I want to say hi to the people who are in the live chat. It's so good to have you here. We've got Vachi here from Recording Studio 9. Nice to see you in here, Vachi. We have the wonderful Doug Kidder in here. He's one of our mods. Nice to see you in here, Doug. We have Keonra, another one of our mods. Always nice to see you in here. Keonra and of course the famous Mimo Japan. Nice to see Andrew Webb in here as well and also Darren, I've missed you Darren. I'm just going to find you here. Darren Jones is in there as well. Lovely to see you all here. Don't forget that you are an important part of this show. I do have a guest here to help me out with critiquing the mixes that we're going to be looking at today, but it's always very, very valuable when you are giving us your comments in the chat while we're listening to this music. Big thanks to the people who have sent their music in. It's a very brave thing to send in an unfinished mix that we listen to in public. And if you want to send one of your mixes in, follow the instructions in the description down below to do that. I would love to see them coming through in my email. Now, as I mentioned, I have a guest in today. He's a new guest. Hasn't been on the show before. And I'm going to describe him as someone I've known about, but we've really just met for the first time in the last half an hour or so. And I have prepared a little something about his YouTube channel for you to check out. The GarageBand Guide is a resource for people making music using GarageBand, both on iOS and Mac. It's full of useful tips for beginners and experienced users, as well as plugin reviews and all other things GarageBand. The host of the channel is Patrick Baird, and he's been generous enough to give his time for us. Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, it's nice to have you here on the show, sir. Say hello. Oh, look at that. I was going to say say hello in that beautiful accent you have because I really, I love it. I love it. It's just so... I don't know what you mean. It's actually all an accent. All right, as the regular viewers will know that Patrick's already got into the swing of this show. Patrick, you are like a GarageBand expert. How long have you been, had that channel for now? How many years have you had that channel for? Nine, nine years. Yeah. Coming up for decades. Yeah. I think I should have worked harder to have got farther by this point, to be fair. Well, I'm sure you've had proper things to be doing along the way. You're a family man, I've noticed, by stalking you on Facebook today, which is, which is makes, means you've got to do things, proper things in life, apart from just make music. But, but you've recently become a full-time YouTuber, congratulations on that. And welcome to the club. And if you want to know what color my hair was before I went full-time, it was dark black, but now it's gray. Of course, I see you've lost your hair since you went full-time as well. Well, this is long before, like you said, I'm a family man. This is what children will do to your lovely, long flowing locks. Indeed. Indeed. Look, I reckon we've kind of got something in common a little bit. Well, we've got more than one or two things in common. First of all, obviously, I'm Scottish. No. Well, one of the things we've got in common, we both use doors, DAWs, which are free. So people could just get out of GarageBand, do they even have to download it? It used to be just by default when I used to buy my iPads years ago, but now do they have to install it on there, was it? I think it comes as standard, Jay, on a Mac or an iPad, Jay, Tim Cook rams it down when your throat is the first thing you see when you boot up your new device, I think, yeah. Now, the other thing I think we have in common, and this is a little bit more contentious, is a certain amount of snobbery, which is around from other door users, because I don't know if you're familiar with cakewalk. Well, cakewalk has been around for probably 35, probably 40 years, I don't know. But it's always had that little thing of, oh, yeah, you're a cakewalk user. Oh, yeah. I use Pro Tools. I'm a Cubase, whatever they say, you know, there's I don't know why, because it's always been an incredible tool, you know, it's always been and often it's been ahead. Don't know, don't care. But do you get that kind of crap as you're a GarageBand guy? GarageBand, absolutely. Yeah, of course, very much so. People still now consider it to be a toy and not a proper digital audio workstation, you can't possibly create good music using this toy, which is nonsense. I mean, you can create good music with a four track and a cassette. But yeah, obviously, I mean, there's always going to be those kind of those kind of people out there. Just let them go on with it and then just focus on making decent music with what you've got. Isn't that right? Isn't that right? Just don't even think about what's the most popular one or what everyone else is just whatever tool you're using, use that. If you're happy with it, use it. If you're not happy with it, go there's plenty of other tools to use as well. You can do that. Do you get it from do you have this question like the people say to you? So why don't you use logic? Do they do they do that with you? I do use logic. I'm not like an anti logic down with logic. No, no, of course. I mean, especially on Mac, the two programs kind of go hand in hand. GarageBand GarageBand is very much a kind of logic light as it were, which is great marketing by Apple, you know. But yeah, I mean, yeah, like I say, you do get people who kind of look at you kind of confused like, well, why, why wouldn't you? I mean, the good thing about a free doll like GarageBand is if you know nothing about music production at all, you're learning how to use a digital audio workstation at the same time as getting kind of the principles of audio production on its own as well. So the interesting conversation I've had with it and I'm not really I'm torn between GarageBand and GarageBand today, by the way. But I'm not really user of it. I mean, I've got it on my iPad and I've recorded some songs on it. But but the thing about it is what I don't like is when people are you can't really record a song and I go, well, of course you can, because I know you're thinking it's an iPad, but it's actually a computer. It's a computer. You know, it's just an all in one computer with a touchscreen. So yeah, it's got this. Yeah, and particularly now, of course, with the process is being so much more powerful then. I think yeah, you're going to see in the next couple of years, iPads specifically are going to kind of have a larger role in and kind of recording even at a professional level. I think a lot of producers and artists are using them already, but there's still a little bit of stigma around it, I think. Not even just specifically GarageBand, but just other iOS doors. And I think the next couple of years, you're going to see a big explosion in people coming out as iPad and iOS users in professional recording situations. I think that one of the things that I think for people, most of the people who are watching here are going to be from my community and will be cakewalk users. There's some other people that use different doors. But what I would say to you guys is there's something about when you record a song mobile, the fact that you can take the device and the door to any room in your house or outside, which can put you in a different mental space when you're recording music. And I think it's really valuable and worth trying. You know, if for no other reason, then you can go to the best the best room acoustically in the house, not necessarily the room where you've got your computer and everything. So definitely worth trying out. Look, follow the link in the description, folks, for Patrick's YouTube channel, the GarageBand guide. Somebody was already saying here in the comments here, we have the product detective I subscribed to Patrick's channel recently. It's a wealth of great information. So I'm glad to see you've already got. Appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, nice. Nice stuff. I've been sort of binge watching you a little bit over the last week or so, and I love. Oh, thanks. You know, you've got those few extra views out of me. Was that where they came from? Was it all you? That little blip, that little boost you saw in your stats was all me. Makenjo effect. It was indeed. But anyway, I'm glad you're here because because I'm going to struggle with today's show. I'm probably going to waffle because I have my booster shot. I told you this before, I had my booster shot. It's a little bit sore, my army, my arms a little bit sore. Had it yesterday and I've been all day. I've been in bed watching Netflix and I've I've been sweating and I've got fever and I've got body aches and all that. So I'm so glad you're here. And if anyone does play the violin, please do play it now for me. I appreciate that. I'm all for sympathy. Listen, so just so you know, Patrick, and you probably do know because I'm sure you've researched my channel studiously. Of course, we came on the show. The the idea of the show is we're going to listen to some mixes, not because we're experts, we're not experts. You are. I can call you an expert, but we're not really like experts in the way in the way that we can say, oh, we've we've got Grammys for our production or something, but what we are useful as is a slightly educated, fresh ear. And so these mixes that we're going to listen to, I generally, when they get emailed to me, I don't listen to the whole song normally. So they're going to be kind of fresh to me. I listen to the first few bars or what have you. But I'm not really familiar with them all the way through. So the idea is that we can give these people a perspective, which is not as biased as their mom or their girlfriend. And not as I mean, I think you've got to be careful who you ask your opinion of sometimes, because some people probably, yeah, probably not educated enough to really tell you how you fix it. So hopefully we can if there's anything that needs fixing with these mixes, hopefully we can give them some initial guidance to help them move forward with that. Now, I'm waffling a little bit as I do the controls here in the background. The first artist that we have up today, the first artist is someone who we've actually had on the show before. She's a prominent member of my community, Patrick. And it's a little bit of a tradition that I will allow my guests to read out the names and the song titles for people. So I'm going to pop that up on the screen now for you. And I'll let you read out this name, Patrick. So Marie Levesque, save me. I don't like it. Isn't a tradition at all? Sorry, if I've butchered that. I have to be good. It's not actually a tradition at all. Actually, whenever I think a name isn't whenever I think a name is a little bit difficult to pronounce, then I just pass it over to my guests to read out so that I don't look like an asshole. But of course, people may think I look like an asshole, regardless, I guess. So what Marie said to me about this and I know that Marie's in a little bit of an interesting situation, I know she's been getting into music production in terms of recording herself and all that for the last few months, but she is also making use of a studio for some of the recordings she's putting together for her album, I think, EP or album. So this is going to be for feedback for her audio engineer, she's going to pass on whatever we say. And he's going to think we're non-professional people telling me, oh, she's got a couple of friends. Thank you. Anyway, nice. The song is a combination of this is Marie's quote, by the way. The song is a combination of my very deep rogue voice, but also we have by high voice towards the end. It's also a cry for help that personally changed how I think and helped me to move on when I was dealing with health issues. So also, she hopes that everyone can relate to that. Let's have a listen to the first song on the show today. As we say, as Patrick says, Marie Lavesque. I think that's probably the right way to say it. It's called Save Me. And then what I don't let out, it's poisoning me. Every time that I strays, I say a battle that I wish I just. Does he know that nobody can hear what you're saying? Oh, I did it again. I did it again. I thought you were doing it on purpose. I thought I saw you do that to Pete. And I thought, oh, yeah, he's doing it now. No, I didn't. I don't want to go into why. But anyway, you know, when I'm music myself, I thought I must remember to switch mute off. I keep forgetting all that I didn't. Let's not get into that. Sorry, I've got an excuse. I got my booster yesterday. So what were you thinking, Patrick, about this song from Marie? What a voice and what a vocal performance that is. That's pretty good. You've really started with a really difficult one. It's quite hard to pick apart. I mean, there's little bits, but like overall, that's a really good sound. Her vocal absolutely carries that. What do you think? Well, I mean, the vocals specifically, I would say the vocals. Look, I think last time when Marie was on this show with with a song a few weeks ago, it was said that she has a great vocal. And and my partner, Susie, kept saying it to me as I was listening to it over and over again last time as well. Yeah, she's got a great vocal, definitely. And that's, you know, that's so key, isn't it? You know, if you I think more than anything for me character, you know, it's just there's some character in the voice. It's not about a great vocal because, you know, it's in tune or in time or anything like that. It's just because there's some character there. There's a little in terms of what I thought. This sort of interested me, this mix, because I felt that it's like almost there. Definitely you could kind of just about release this now and it wouldn't really matter. But I felt it was one of those mixes where at times it was everything was in balance. And then other times it wasn't quite in balance. Yeah. So there was times I was going that rhythm guitar, just the distorted rhythm guitar at some point I was going, oh, that's about the right level. And other points I was going, oh, it's not supporting like when the lead guitar was going, it wasn't supporting it. You know, it was like they were in separate spaces and things like that because of that. Yeah. You're nodding. So I think you felt the same. Yeah. I mean, balance. I mean, it's a great vocal performance, but I don't know if it just needs a little bit of automation or something on it. The vocal was great, but it was the same. It seemed quite loud in the verse where it could have been a little bit softer and it suited the chorus really well with the harmonies and things. It was exactly the right volume I felt, but in the verse it was maybe a little bit, a little bit too much. Maybe. I agree. I agree. Maybe a little bit dry. I don't know. I like to fiddle with things. I would have stuck a bit more of something on there, whether that's reverb, a little bit more delay or something on it, just to give it. Obviously, it has a lot of natural character, as you said, but to give it a little bit extra, a little bit extra spice, you know, and help to kind of glue the mix together a bit as well. I think it's very valid and definitely worth trying. We should, you know, when she's speaking with a sound engineer and passing on all that stuff. I also like really dry vocals sometimes. I think really dry vocals can have a really nice character to them, but I definitely think it'll be worth trying on this. There was a little, what I liked about this song was something which is missing quite often. That's dynamics. And I'm not really talking about, I mean, I guess we're talking about dynamics in terms of volumes, but in the arrangement, there was some nice dynamics here, you know, so there were some parts where everything just kind of sunk down. It was just the vocal, the drums and I mean, maybe it's a personal preference, but I just really like it when songs do that. And there was space in it. There was some nice space in the song, which was good. But as I say, I felt at times both the same as you, the vocals in the verses. It had the effect of making the band feel like they were kind of in the next room. Yeah, they weren't in the same space because there was a little bit of volume disparity there. The choruses as well, the vocal harmonies were great, but they were right there. And I think they maybe need to be kind of pushed a bit further back, possibly. I mean, I can understand why if you're recording an engineer and you have someone with a voice as good as that, you're going to want to have showcase that, but maybe kind of pull back the backing vocals. They were great. The harmonies were fantastic. And some interesting harmonies in there as well, not just like the obvious ones. Yeah, no, there was some really interesting ones, yeah. Just push back the harmony vocals a little bit, maybe. Yeah, and I felt the same with I think there was two kind of two solos in their guitar solos that again, it felt like a great performance, great playing. All the playing in this, by the way, from every instrument was spot on fine. No issues with that really good. But it felt like to me anyway, it felt like this lead guitar part isn't being supported by a band, which is really going to, you know, really happy. Obviously, we don't want the band to overpower the lead guitar, but at the same time, they need to support it. And I think somebody mentioned and I think they may be on to something. There's a little bit to do with drums there. The drums didn't quite. But probably if I could say, oh, if we're going to get basing a watch, we turn up and say drums need to come up. And then there was a mention of the the distorted guitar lacking a little bit of presence as well, which I also tend to agree with, because I don't know if you find the same as me, Patrick, but it's not always about volume. I mean, often it's about EQ, you know, presence can just really help something to cut through without touching a fade or whatsoever. It's tough when it's certainly sounded like everything there was DI. And it's sometimes tough to kind of get that kind of like that presence you're talking about when it's all completely virtual instruments or not virtual instruments, but if it's all plugins and stuff, I might be completely wrong, but it does what it sounded like to me, especially with the guitars. It's not a bad thing. But yeah, you maybe just need to do a bit more, bit more of a tweak to kind of bring it to life a bit more. Interesting. How long was that whole track, Mike? Do you know? Why would you ask me a difficult question? I prepared for the show. I prepared for the show. But let me have a look. Hang on, Patrick. You're really good at talking when you do stuff. So you cover that you're learning the skill. I'll tell you how long it is. About four and a half minutes, wasn't it? I'm guessing that's going to be my guess. So for me personally, that's a bit too long. I think it was actually four minutes at forty four. Yeah, I've just checked. Right. I think you could cut some of that out and perhaps have a more engaging overall product, maybe that's just me personally. I'm not sure if you agree with that or not. But no, I think track length is really important. I mean, sometimes you get songs that are four and a half minutes long, which are really, really bad in the sense nothing new happens in the master of the second minute. So it's not too bad, in my opinion. However, I think that maybe one of those guitar solos could go for sure. Yes, yes, you get another 30 seconds. You'd be just over four minutes then. And I think for rock music, that's OK. You know, it's not too bad. Two guitar solos is two guitar solos. Too many for me, usually. Yeah. But I think that people talk about length of time. And interestingly, I'm going to say people say this about YouTube. We're both YouTubers. You know, I've seen people when they're starting out say, oh, how long should my YouTube videos be? And for me, it's like I've said to people, well, I've not to pat myself on the back too much, but I've actually made some 40 minute videos, which have been some of my more successful videos. It's not about length of time. It's about whether there's something new happening in that video, whether you're maintaining engagement and music's no different to that. It's not you can have a really boring song, which is only two minutes long. You know, so it's about the does the music evolve? Does it stimulate you? Stimulate your ears? You know, in different ways you go through, in my opinion, anyway, for what it's worth. I would like to say again, thank you for to get my merge bottle, Patrick. Thank you to Marie for sending that in. And I hope hopefully I think Marie actually uses distro kids and she should. She should. Let's find out why. 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 off 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 years 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. Just a big thank you to Mason's Masons multi projects who's just made a super chat donation there. Thank you for that. Just a quick hi in there. We have someone coming from Portugal. I always find it amazing. Hello to Nuno there. I always find it amazing, Patrick, that there's people watching me from around the world, from these exotic locations like Portugal. Yeah, absolutely. I know not why they're watching you. I mean, I mean, I feel the same way when people from Portugal watch me. I know, Portugal. There was someone from Mexico the other day who says they watched people in Mexico, they're getting the creative source on nice. Now, our next song is really quite different. I think quite interesting from from what I remember for the first 30 seconds. I listened to yesterday when I was preparing. This is from, I'm going to say a gentleman, but I could be completely wrong. And that would be silly of me, but I think if I'm not sure. But Jay Pilkin is and this track is called Swampman, which is, I mean, an interesting name for a track right off the bat, isn't it? So I apologize because I don't know the artist's first name or anything like that. But but they were saying that I am they're a composer, a producer from Atlanta, Georgia in the USA, a place I've actually been to. Patrick, have you been to the USA at all? I've been to Florida. I've done that very British thing of the Disney lands. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's as far into America as I got. That's not so far away from Georgia, I don't think, to be honest with you. As much as I know about USA geography, that is anyway, he's been recording for more years than he cares to admit. He started off bouncing between two stereo cassette machines. I think I remember doing that myself. Became a cakewalk user more than a decade ago. And I hope he wasn't bouncing between two cassette decks for all of those years until 10 years ago. But anyway, that would be persistence, wouldn't it? Currently loves working in Katewalk by Bandab. The attached song is called Swampman and came initially out of my efforts to teach myself to play lap steel guitar. I'm progressing very slowly with the instrument. But as a composer, that kind of helps because I don't have any habits or go tos to fall back on. Very true. I love dense, complex mixes, but I'm afraid that this song falls victim to a serious case of, hey, what if I do this syndrome? I've been guilty of that. And in the end, turned out to be very, very hard thing to mix. The end results seem well, appropriately muddy to me. Maybe you and your insightful friend can set me right. Can you see into the future? I know this man, a wizard. I know he got it right. Maybe he can. Now, so let's have a listen. This is an onion. I will say, I think it is quite dense, a little bit like me. If I forget to unmute myself at the end of the trip. Let's try and do this again. That was great. It's going to be tough, isn't it? It's going to be tough. I tell you what, Patrick, if what I say to people now is, if you find it difficult to criticise something, then we can still help our viewers by telling them what was good about it. So inspire them if you like. So what did I mean, I could tell you loved it. But what did you love about it? What was happening? Sorry, I was just sitting here driving away myself. Everything was great. Yeah, talking about dynamics, talking about you can tell he's kind of thrown everything at the wall and seem what stick and most of it has stuck like there's not really much there. The only kind of things that jumped out of me is maybe being a little bit unbalanced was maybe that kind of that base at the start and the kind of drove through the through the verses. I don't want to say I know what he was going for, but didn't quite get it because that's quite unkind because it's like almost there, but maybe just a bit of tweak on that. It was perhaps a little bit overpowering, especially kind of on the low end, maybe. I don't know if that would just be an EQ thing or just turning it down. But it's for impact and it does make an impact. The choruses, drums, maybe a little bit loud. And then it kind of felt the choruses were I don't want to say it sounded over compressed. I'd love to see the waveform because it sounded very kind of like everything had been kind of limited. So everything was very up there. There wasn't a lot of kind of depth only in the chorus to me is what it kind of sounded like, the verses sounded good. So I don't know if that's just again, because there's quite a lot going on in the chorus, maybe. And then, yeah, the drums were maybe a little bit too much shine in the top end of the drums, but there's not a lot wrong with that. That was and yeah, definitely, definitely a toe tapper. I was trying not to dance in my chair. It was great. And there was a lot of guitar work in there for you to listen to as well. Yes, the lap steel stuff as well. It was great because I was out of anything that sounded spot on. They gave it its style and considering the track is called Swamp Man, it kind of fit into that whole thing really nicely, didn't as well. I agree on the the the bass that it was one of the best features of the song on one hand. And then just a little bit too much here and there for me. But the way I perceived it was that high end of the bass because it had a little bit of snap on the high end, but it was just maybe a tad too much here and there. But not much in it. What a courageous track, really. I think the composer here is probably giving himself giving himself a little bit too much of a hard time when he feels that he's overdone it in some way. I don't think you have because I felt like everything had a role at least. It wasn't like there was a lot of superfluous things in there. Superfluous is probably the longest word I've ever used on the show. By the way, I'm amazing. I'm on it. I'm on it. Thank you. Using it on the wrong person. Normally, it's all just crap, but it's superfluous. I'm sorry. But anyway, but yeah, I like that comment on the brass. I love to the brass. I don't know how many people like me were thinking, oh, my God, there's an 80s song which had that brass in it, which was like not addicted to Robert Palmer, maybe. Yeah, some of that. Yeah. Now, the only comment I make about it is nothing wrong with it, nothing wrong with it, but it dated it in that way. Now, if you if you want that, it may be that you're going, well, I want this to have the 80s brass sound cool. But just be aware of that. That's the only thing I'd say. It was quite 80s and I don't know. I think everybody listening to that probably thought exactly the same thing with those horns, which does mean makes you put your mind of a different song or a kind of 80s song. Yeah, you're right. So I love the rhythm section. It was very tight. It was just very, very tight in there. Now, there was a weird, a nicely weird bit of production towards the end. This kind of reverse sound. I don't know what it was. I'd be guessing, but it just had this reverse thing. My feeling was wonderful. Awesome. Love that. I love it when there's something in a song which is just kind of nowhere else in the song, and it takes you by surprise. But it kind of happened like three times and I thought I felt I probably once was enough. You know, it was cool. It was very, very cool, but maybe that's the part he was talking about, where he did something just for the sake of trying it, maybe. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Kelner music was saying here. No, it didn't date it. It's just our frame of reference. I really like that. Yeah, you could be right, Kelner. I guess stylistically, though, it's just it was sort of synth brass. And it's from that time. Nothing wrong with it, as I say. But yeah, cool, cool stuff. So I think this is one of those cases where I just we're saying to the composer, hey, look, you're really on the right track with this. And you should probably go ahead and release it, to be honest with you. Maybe a little couple of little tweaks, but I wouldn't be tweaking. Have you ever done that, Patrick, where you just tweaking a song forever and ever and ever and it never has dozens of projects sitting here that like, yeah, it's almost finished, almost. Let me just tweak that. Oh, no, no, this doesn't balance. Oh, no. And then, yeah, you're left with lots of unreleased stuff. What do you think the longest you've ever had a song on your computer or iPad for before? How long do I still have songs? Years, yeah, the stuff that I've like have came really close to releasing. And then haven't because I thought it's not quite right about four years ago. And I'm still like, you know, when you have a few beers and you think, I'll go back and listen to these ones and you're like, oh, I should really do something with this. I know I reckon just I reckon release them. Get them out. Get them out. It makes your mind move on to the. Yeah, you're probably right. You're probably right. Get it or send them in for the show and we'll we'll we'll evaluate. I'll be terrified to be too scared. I'll make sure we've got some nice guests. Anyway, like I say, if I was going to release this song, of course, it'll be through DistroKid. Do you like my segues? Nice, smooth. And this is how you do it. You want to release your music via DistroKid. There's just a couple of things you need. First of all, the music itself. Here's mine in my door cakewalk. And I'm exporting it to an uncompressed wave file for best results. Now, the other thing you'll need is some artwork. I just grabbed an old photo, which I'd taken on the beach, chucked on some text here, and that's what I call art. Then I went over to DistroKid and I just have to fill in this extra easy form. It's a no brainer form. You get helped all the way through little hints and things. You can't really do anything wrong. You just go ahead and confirm a few things about your music. And then you just have to actually upload the artwork and the song itself. And DistroKid takes care of the rest. It's going to send it out to all of the best platforms so that people can hear and buy your music. Or something I did last week with my guests, and I'm going to do it now, is just throw you in the spotlight for a random topic about mixing Patrick. And I'm just going to throw you in here. So I'm going to say to you, it's just so people can get some useful advice from somebody who's got a little bit of experience, if they're just starting out. Where do you start with a mix? You've tracked everything. This is just off the top of your head. You've tracked everything. You go right now, I'm going to start mixing your song. Where do you start, Patrick? I used to just so I used to it as a very bad way of doing things. We just dive in and kind of firefight and try and get a rough mix going and then go in and start to kind of tweak. Whereas now I try to kind of try and do one at a time. So there's a name for it, I can't remember what it's called, but you turn everything down and then have a specific. So a vocal up, mix the vocal to a kind of a starting point, I would say. And then your next vocal and then your other sections, your drums, your drums, your bass, your guitars and whatnot. Because I generally, I mean, for my own music, I don't really do a lot of electronic stuff, it's mostly kind of guitars and indie rock kind of stuff. So kind of one at a time and then see how it sounds together and then have a massive existential crisis and realize how dreadful you are at it. Start again and then kind of kind of chip away, chisel away at it until you're kind of at a point where it kind of sounds OK. And then leave it for a week. So I only started doing this a couple of years ago. And then go back to it's really, really hard because you know yourself when you're recording and mixing your own music, you're really into it. You want to get this done, leave it and then come back to it with kind of fresh years a week later and then kind of fix all the stuff that's fixed. And then you're kind of in a better in a better kind of place. Leaving it is the hardest part, I would say. It's quite handy to have a couple of projects on the go at the same time. So then you have something to kind of jump to to try and help you forget the one that's sitting, waiting. So. Right, exactly. Does that make sense? Absolutely does make sense. Yeah, I used to do this thing when I started out because a lot of my vocals, sorry, my productions are very typical in the sense that I'll start off with, say a vocal and acoustic guitar, a few instruments and then, you know, kind of the rest of the band will come and go. And what I used to do was just start the beginning. I'd start the beginning of the song and I'd kind of listen to it. And I always wondered for years, why does it kind of get out of control? You know, because it's like I get a balance between that vocal and the acoustic guitar and then of course the band comes in, I put all that in. But it always seemed like I was pushing the faders upwards all the time to the point where everything was always competing. So I did that for a long time. And yeah, a bit of a light bulb moment was to start for me. Anyway, the way I do it is to start in the loudest part of the song or kind of the loudest part of the song. It's usually going to be a chorus. But yeah, I start there and I usually like to get a mix, a static mix for that point. And that's why I often talk in the video is about how important automation is, because if you've got that balance, say, in the chorus and you start in the middle of the song and it can sound great. But of course, the beginning of the song, where there's less interest, doesn't need the same balance between, say, the guitar and the vocal. It needs a different balance. So that's where automation is absolutely key so that you're getting balance during all different sections of the song, you know? And so yeah, if you what do you do first to your dry tracks? Do you kind of get them all volume equal or do you jump on the queue or what do you? No, I usually go dry tracks unless there's a stylistic reason to have some effects on there. And my technique, which I've touched upon in some of my videos, is to do as much preparation as possible before I do the mix in terms of, you know, sometimes it will be preparation, just like labelling things, coloring things, creating buses, blah, blah, blah, all of all the kind of that functional stuff. So that when I actually mix, say that chorus, I want to do it in about two minutes. Right. I move really, really quickly on instinct, you know, so I actually a lot of people start off with bass and drums. I'm glad you kind of mentioned this to I actually start off with vocal. And then I get the vocal kind of at the level. It's usually going to be zero on the fader. And then I bring things up underneath that so that they're supporting the vocal. Excellent. And yeah, I just work as quick as I can if I like to go in terms of just balance and then the other things coming afterwards. But that's the way I like to do it. It sounds like I'm a little bit similar to you in that way. But I don't. If I find myself doing that grind, that grind of sitting there for hours, tweaking, then I think it's best to walk away and definitely leave it a week or what have you. And as you say, if you've got other tracks to stimulate your ears in the meantime and keep you busy, it'll almost certainly work. And then as we do on this show, getting some other people's opinions can be handy times. Do you still do the car check? Is that still a thing you don't do the car check anymore? But on a YouTube, I've got a really old crappy car. I spent a lot of money on my car. You wouldn't believe how terrible my car is. And it's got the worst stereo system in it. It's got a good thing. That's a good thing. If it can sound good enough, it can sound good anyway. It's true. But no, I used to do the car test years ago. I find that since I this is not a product placement thing at all. But these monitors that I use, I've got these Adam audio monitors, which I got about a year and a half ago. I love them because I find that I can get my mix in the studio pretty much right. I'm not having to play on so many different systems. I do a little bit, but not as much. Whereas before with my other monitors, I won't mention them. OK, but I I I always found myself having to go to play on this stereo system, that stereo system, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, that's I think. I'm not going to say expensive monitors, but good monitors can help you out in that one. TV7s or TV5s you've got, is it? TV8s, TV8s, yeah. I make music in a cupboard, so I'm looking at the TV5s at the minute. So it's good that they can recommend them. I can. One good thing about them is the tweeters on them. They have these ribbon tweeters. Yeah, which I found. I thought it was marketing stuff when I was reading about, but you definitely find that the fatigue levels are much, much better to know. You don't get tired listening. I shouldn't have TV8s in my cupboard. We live with what we've got. But yeah, yeah, I'd probably I should probably have. What do you do you ever use a subwoofer at all? No, I get myself doesn't would be. There'd be no sense me having a subwoofer and it would be probably make more harm than good, really, to be honest. So I thought the same because I'm not I'm in a reasonably small room. And I'm sure there'd be people would tell me in the comments. I've got no business having a subwoofer in this room for all kinds of reasons. I do have some some bass traps and things in the corners. So it's a bit treated. But what I found with the subwoofer, because they sent it to me. And on loan, not your YouTuber, we're going to give you this subwoofer. None of that was happening. And they said and I made the video about it. And I just didn't want to give them back. So I bought them. Right, well, I should say not them. I bought it because what I found was it wasn't so much about. Oh, it's given that that sub bass kind of kick. You know, it wasn't like you're having your theater room when you want to when you're with a Hollywood movie. It was just the more the fact that it extended the bass. It wasn't louder, but it extended it down to frequencies, which I. I wouldn't have been able to hear otherwise. But I will say that this exact position that I'm sitting in is where I have to mix from and if I move back this far. The mix is terrible and it's like a very I've got it set up in a very specific way. And yes, that's that's a little bit because of the sub, I would say. Are they good? Very good. That's all that waffle. Not so our final song, our final song. And thanks for that input, by the way, there about where to start and mix there, Patrick, it was good. Our final song is from David M. Again, I don't have people's full names for some reason for this show. And they didn't supply them to me. But David M. Darkness Days Final. I don't think Final actually is a part of the song title. I think that was I think that was a file name thing. So I've accidentally put that in there. Probably Darkness Days, the name of the final 17. Honest this time, maybe. Yeah, mine look like that. Anyway, David was saying to me in the email, he says there's a lot, there's a lot of problems with this song. I won't leave that to us. There's a side, David, but anyway, and it's mostly just a demo of a song I was writing and it never really hit home the way I expected it to have had that feeling so many times. I felt a little bit, it felt a little bit wordy. And so I just never actually finished it. Drum, working guitar, solo, etc. Because I don't feel like it was worth the trouble. By the way, if this is not making much sense, it's not because of David's writing, it's because of my inability to read English. But it also must just be me and maybe I should finish it. Question mark, what do you think question mark about David? He's just a hobby producer, located in central Kansas in the USA. I played he says I played with recording for a few years back. But but my house burned down. I hadn't read this part, but his house burnt down. And since it was way before cloud storage, he lost all of his music. Oh, my God, that's 10 years later, he finally started working on it again. And this is his first track. OK, no pressure at all. Let's have a listen to this. I think it is called Darkness Days from David. Thank you. I feel like we've been a bit blessed tonight, not I want to preempt what you're saying there. But can I just say before you sing, Patrick, great vocals. God, I was going to say that. Have you got anything else to say? I really like that it did exactly what I needed to do. And then finished, which is great. Didn't kind of go on too long or anything. Yeah, good dynamics in there. Just when I was thinking, oh, we could do with maybe a bit of a drop and a little bit of space like that exactly happened. Yeah, hard to know what to I mean, in terms of criticism, there's not much in terms of little tweaks. Maybe the vocal was great. I don't know if it was again, it was perhaps needs a little bit of balancing balancing in the verse and the chorus was great in the chorus. Maybe a touch loud in the verse. Maybe that might just be the mix. Drums again, a couple of people said in the chat, drums, I don't know if they needed to be brought further up in the mix. Maybe it was just the snare needed brought up further in the mix. And the bass at the start, I thought might have been an issue, but it actually ended up being OK. You can maybe roll a tiny bit of that off, but it wasn't overpowering or anything. Yeah, guitars were good. Guitar sounded great. I mean, again, I'm assuming he's here in the chat. Can I ask him, were they all in the box guitars or did you record in front of an amp that sounded good? Maybe maybe could use a little bit of a tweak, maybe to sound a little bit better. But I mean, there's not much really that you can do with that really. They sounded like they sounded like they were in the box to me. That was one of the first things that struck me about the guitars. But I was kind of thinking, oh, these are very obviously in the box, but I like it. It's almost it's kind of an effect almost a bit like, you know, shares, auto tune sort of thing, you know, like we go, I hate auto tune, but that was on purpose and yeah, it's almost like this could be a bit like that with these guitars, like it doesn't sound like guitars where they had the amps where the cabinets were mic'd up. It sounded like a guitar sim, but I could dig it. It sounded all right. You know, I like the song wasn't less for it. You're right. Absolutely. Yes, it's a funny thing, isn't it? Like, do we say the guitars were too quiet or was everything else too loud? I mean, but it's an interesting way to think when you're mixing, isn't it? Because it's tempting to always go start pushing everything up. Drums are too quiet, push them up. And then you suddenly start to go, you know, first of all, your master bus could be clipping, which is a pain because you're going to find a way to bring everything down. But yeah, sometimes it's worth thinking, do I bring those drums up or are there elements of this that could come down a bit so the drums are going to be exposed, you know? So I think when you're mixing, it's it's a different perspective. But yeah, could make a difference. Yeah, I did think the drums were too loud or too quiet and I felt the snare again. It may be helped by not just so much pushing that snare up again as giving it more presence, EQing it in such a way so it cuts through. It's a bit snappier, maybe, but I'm not sure. It could just be a volume thing. I thought I began to think that perhaps there's been a little bit of rudimentary mastering done on this track because I was starting to feel at times like everything was a bit compressed, like obviously compressed. So I'm not, you know, I know for some styles of music that can work. I'm not sure with this. I'd have to listen again, but I felt in the chorus, I'm feeling things pumping a little bit. Yes, yeah, that makes sense. I didn't know that is the best thing. But anyway, if it was a bad thing to go for, but when you notice it, that's when you know that maybe it needs a little bit of a. Is I like that. Look. I'm not going to go into detail about what I mean by that, but it needs. I want you to make a video. No, I want you to make one of your videos. How to do how to do such and such in GarageBand. Just open up GarageBand and do a little. Hello. We should go on the list. It's a new approach. Man, thank you so much for being here. I forgot that I was feeling poorly. Such a good mission accomplished. Excellent. Listen, thank you so much for having me. This has been great fun. I hope you will allow me to grace you with my presence again. I'd love you to come back here. Do you do many live shows on your or any live shows? Not a single one. No, so this is it. So I'm kind of trying to get all my ducks in the row in terms of content at the moment, so using the bank and stuff and then kind of see what the options are there. I don't know. There's already another kind of middle aged, balding, bearded person who does a lot of live streams around GarageBand. I know, I think he may have entered into the chat because him and Jay to finish their show over there. I have been watching. And as I say, I'm not competitive or anything, but we had more years. But I mean, but, you know, good day, Pete. Nice to see you here. Superb. That was a good show. I hope everyone, I think Al Kynes, having said that, that just to remind people, me and Pete managed to schedule our show at the same time today. So if you've been here in the live chat, head over to Pete Johns at Studio Life today and have and watch the show that he's just put out with Jade Star over there as well, which I think was a creator town hall show, which is always very, very interesting. So check that out over on Studio Life today. Again, of course, I would love you to come back again. Thank you, Patrick. And I thank you so much for your input today. And I want to urge people, even if you're a diehard cakewalk user, I'm sure that you do have an iPad or something kicking around and just give it a go. It's really interesting. I personally think that GarageBand is quite easy to use. In fact, it surprises me. You've got a channel, really, that takes a bit of how to use it. It's because Apple are so dreadful at creating manuals and how tos. It makes my job easy. It's literally just converting what they have into things that aren't boring. It's interesting thing. I did mention this in the pre-show that that, yeah, if if companies made software which was really easy to use, then we wouldn't have a job, would we? So exactly. So they might keep. Thank you for your incompetence, Apple. Thank you. Anyway, I think we'll say goodbye. I want to say thank you so much to the people who have been in the chat and made a contribution today. It's always very valuable, you guys say as well, because I know there's a wealth of experience also there in the chat. And that reminds me, actually, I just want to promote a little bit. Next week's show, folks, is what I'm going to call a fix my mix special. Because I've actually got some artists on the show next week who have previously had their mixes on the show, and we're going to be chatting about their process in particular. These artists have worked remotely from with each other. So they're sharing files and different parts of the world. And they've created songs together. They've been on the show before and we are going to be having a chat with them. So that's a special show next week. Just doing that, which I think is going to be fascinating. I personally have not really done that. You know, collaborated with someone on the song. And I know everyone seems to have done that over the last couple of years. I don't have done much of that. So I'm fascinated and I know a lot of other people are. What about yourself, Patrick? Have you done that at all? I don't have any friends. Two years of staying in the house. Yeah, I don't have any. My son, maybe we should maybe we should do it, Patrick. But, you know, we can have we can do the complete guide of recording a song in cakewalk and garage band and try, you know, malt, just sending our stems to each other. I don't know. Sounds good. Such a small audience for that. I'm definitely not doing the drums after just to have them critiqued by you. So as I say, thanks very much. Thank you so much to everyone in the chat. If you want to send your song in to fix my mix, you can follow the instructions down below in the description. And I will see you.