 Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you are welcome to fix my MIX episode 22. So glad to have you here so that we can listen to some mixes from the community and help our fellow music makers along by giving them a different perspective on their MIX so that they can hopefully get to the stage where they're going to release their music to the world. And if they do release their music to the world, I really hope that they follow this link which is in the description and use DistroKid who are our sponsors for today's show. A huge thank you again to the people who are joining us live in the chat. You make this a show, a live show, it's so good to have you here and of course I will be absolutely welcoming your input today as we listen to some of the mixes. Now if you have sent your MIX in and you haven't heard it on the show yet, I promise you I am getting through them and even if you sent it in many weeks ago, sometimes those mixes are still coming through. And if you would like to send a MIX in for the show, please do make sure you follow the instructions down below in the description. Whether that is what you regard as a pretty good MIX or whether you're just starting out and you're not very confident about it, you want some guidance, it doesn't matter what level you're at, it doesn't matter what kind of genre of music you play, none of that matters. We are here to listen to mixes of all kinds so I do encourage you to follow the instructions in the link down below and pop me an email about the MIX that you're working on and want some advice on. I almost didn't make the show on time, I guess I was a little bit late wasn't I? And that's because I was having a tremendously interesting chat with my guest and we were getting a bit carried away and you know what I might even bring some of the contents of that chat into the show today because it's always, my guest always, we always have great conversations before and after the show, I'm not so much in the show sometimes, I shouldn't say that. But I am absolutely pleased and delighted to have my guest for today's show, he wasn't in the title actually, I didn't get it that far, it was a little bit last minute but he is one of my favourite guests and his name is Ricky T Brown and there he is, hey Ricky. Evening all. Evening for you that's right. Evening. Ricky let's just say hi to some of the folks in the chat, she can hate me for this. Hello to the produce aisle, yes I'm here ready to do some crass commercialism for you, she's never going to live it down, she was on my show Ricky and she, yes I had a little comment about my district in Adverse, all in the best place. We of course do have Doug in here, thanks Doug, just faithfully here every single week and all around the community, he's a top boy, Dan's channel, he's on Pete's channel, I like to think I was the originator of the Doug phenomena and then I allowed him to spread out through the community like a virus, sorry Doug. Now we have also Mimo Japan who is a rock solid member of this community, thank you for being here again Mimo doing the moderation, all the amazing things that Mimo does. We have Eshort Sax who had a song on here last week or the week before, can't remember it was pretty recently, we have Danny Gable here as well who may or may not have one of his songs on this show today, just a little heads up. Top sausage. Hello to House Malo from New Jersey, which sounds wonderful, I don't know about you Ricky, you're in, are you like in Croydon or something like this or, I don't know. No that's where I'm from originally, yeah, I live in West Sussex now. West Sussex, I'm in Little Old Perth in Western Australia, when I see places like New Jersey, it just sounds so cool and exotic, doesn't it? It does for the, it does hey, but anyway, thank you all for being here and do not forget that your input is extraordinarily important in the chat while we are listening to the music today. I do want to say a little bit of a special thank you here at this moment in time. I'm going to be careful about how much I say. I did say in some of my social media stuff that there was an illness in the family or some family illness. I think some people may have misconstrued that. So I haven't been sick, but I do have a close family member who's really not well at the moment. And so a lot of my time is spent going to hospital and things like that. But I do want to say amongst that, and that's as much as I'm prepared to say about it. But I want to say amongst that that people have been tremendously supportive and specifically I want to say a big thank you to some of my mates who are in this community. Many, many of them are regular guests on this show, including Ricky here, who's been a massive support to me. I see Dan Lonie Rocker has also been a great support to me over the last couple of weeks, Pete Johns as well, a big support to me, Marlon, Ed. I just want to let people know behind the YouTube channels and behind things like Fix My Mix here, these are people like real rock solid people, great friends and incredible to me. And what we were discussing, Ricky, a little bit before this was how much this had in common with a musical collaboration. How I am only able to cope with life through the experiences I've already had and through through that. And then my friends can come along and give me insights and ideas that that I wouldn't have come up with myself. And in this case, you know, coping through a difficult part of life. But to draw the parallel, this is something that happens creatively as well. And but I do want to say thank you to you personally, Ricky, as well, for the time you give me the last person. Don't mention it. That's all for me. No, it's very, very grateful anyway. And anyway, let's go on with the show. We've had got some interesting pieces of music being sent in, as always. Ricky, and and I want to start off with a song. I want to say there's three quite different pieces of music today. And and I'm going to say and I say this sometimes at the beginning of a show because we get a range of music that the sometimes things seem almost complete and our job is just to go, yeah, keep going in that direction. I'm going to stick my neck out a little bit here today. Haven't had a quick listen to these three mixes and say these three are in need of a little bit more help than some things I have on the show. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. And that's I like I like this part of the show. And when things are, in my opinion, at least really do need some input and help. Anyway, the first one is from Stephen. I should let you read this out, shouldn't I, Ricky? Of course, it's your it's your duty. That's my job. That's your job. So here we go. An easy one for you. OK, the artist is Steve, Stephen Basu. And the song always in my heart. There you go. So here we go. He sent me an email and said, hi, Mike. A couple of months ago, I sent a song which you and the Lonely Rocker didn't like because it was too because it was too synth and eighties based. So I've decided to send you another one, which is a lot more organic just to show that there are more strings to my virtual bow. The song started out in my head as a Bon Jovi style ballad. But somewhere along the line, when it's a little more country, it's a way of me saying to my ex-wife that I've forgiven her for the hurt that she caused me and that she all she'll always have a place in my heart, please. I would like love to hear how I can improve the song, the mix. I'm 56 and I've been doing this for only the last two years since COVID lockdown. So let's have a listen to this song from Stephen Basu. The second one on the show. There we go. OK. Thanks so much for that, Stephen Basu, Ricky. Yeah, I think I'm going to ask you for your opinion, don't you? But I'm going to mix things up and I'm going to go first. OK, you go first. I'll go first. I know it'll be like, remember when we used to have the the the three Amigos, me, you and and Dan here. Oh, yeah, Dan always used to take all your talking points. Didn't he? Yeah, it did it the best, didn't it? He's there in the chat as well. Hi to Marlon, nice to see White Noise Studio in here. Those guys, those guys are kicking goals, actually. White Noise Studio and The Lonely Rocker. They did pretty well at the moment, very proud of them. They're going great. Yeah. Now, listen, this is what I want to sort of say about this this song here. I hope I don't cover too many of your talking points tricky. And so first of all, I mean, songs are a bit of a matter of opinion in some ways with the actual song content. Not all songs are going to resonate with everyone. You know, and some are going to resonate strongly with some people. But I will say just on a basic level, like it or not, this was a song. It sounded like a song. It had I didn't listen to the lyrics intently, but I got a sense of that there was some real meaning in there to the song. There's some emotional content and it had a hook to it. So, you know, that kept you there. The hook was repetitive, but not too repetitive. So there were some variations in there. So overall, I think good songwriting, regardless of whether you enjoy the style or not, you know, so I'll commend Stephen on that. You've got you've got an ability there, which probably natural, which some people struggle with. So you keep going there. I also don't mind. I think you actually got quite a nice tone to your voice, actually, as well. Again, it would be a matter of opinion. But it's nice that someone said it sounded like my voice. Yeah, it did, actually. That was a surprise to me. I didn't think because I didn't think it sounded like me. But, you know, you you. The similarities, yeah, I could sort of judge it, but you'd never hear your own voice properly. Anyway, now, so that's good. And some pretty decent guitar work in there and all that sort of stuff. So there's lots of good stuff going on there. But I'm going to go for the kind of low hanging fruit, in my opinion. I'm sorry, I also forgot to mention just one more thing on the good side that there was some good dynamics in there as well. There was some there was some not a couple of bits to just drop down nicely and that gave a chance to lift. So the low hanging fruit, the very low hanging fruit for me is timing issues, which are in there. And I know this is a mixed show, but we can't ignore these things. There were just some timing issues in there, which it seemed to be between the rhythm guitar and the drums. I'm pretty sure these were programmed. This is something we were talking about before the show, actually, Ricky, about virtual instruments and things. And recently, when it's been when we've been critiquing things here and there, I've thought I've almost said to people, oh, the drums were programmed pretty well or not very well. And afterwards, I thought, were they programmed drums? You know what I mean? It's getting it's getting like that a little bit now, isn't it? But anyway, yeah, I thought that there was a little bit of looseness in there as well, which I like looseness in drums. But there was a couple of bits where it got a little bit too loose for me. You know, that's playing stuff. So I know people have said things about reverb and some things like that in there. Ricky might talk on that. There was just one more thing, just in terms of a detail. There was a very hard panned rhythm guitar, electric guitar on the right side. It threw the mix out of balance for me. I don't mind it being so hard panned, but I felt like the whole thing became a little bit weighted towards that side. I believe, personally, it needed to be balanced out with something on the other. Not always another guitar. You don't have to do that double guitar thing, but it could have been a keyboard on the other side or something that, yeah, just helped the whole thing feel a bit balanced. So I don't know, Ricky, you might have an opinion on that. But the final thing I want to say is. I don't know if any of you's any of you are familiar with the smiley face EQ years ago when I was gigging. It was a real big temptation on your PA when you were setting up to do an overall smiley face, you know, boost on the low end. Hey, yeah, the scoop, the scoop, the mid scoop. And, you know, the low end is a bit up. The high ends are really up. And the thing about that is the reason that people do that is because it's a kind of a pleasant feel to that. It makes it feel a bit nice. But the issue with it is you lose so much definition. You've taken all this information out of the middle. And it and it had a little bit of feeling. I maybe people can agree or disagree with me. But I had this feeling of this smiley face EQ across this whole track. And it felt like it lost quite a lot of definition in the mid range from me. I don't know quite what's causing that. Ricky, I'm going to hand over to you and see what you feel about. OK, well, first and foremost, you know, I. Yeah, it was a really nice song. I mean, I guess it helped, you know, then when from the biog info about what motivated him to do that. And yeah, it's it's a nice, meaningful song. And to, you know, to be blunt, I guess, if I were the gentleman, I think, right, OK, then, well, where the song's at right now. To me, it sounds like you may need another run at it because, yes, there are the issues that were pointed out, you know, maybe a couple of timing issues on the guitar. But I felt that there was more fundamental than that. The the arrangement in terms of what happens in the verses and what happens in the choruses, they needed to be more to differentiate it apart from the guitars, which were quite full during the choruses. Because I think there's this song lent itself quite well to like a nice little grand piano in the background kind of just holding, holding a pad down for the vocal to sit on, you know. And the reason why you you hear that a lot is because magical things happen when you've got a vocal melody sitting on a set of chords in the arrangement, you know, because you you get nuances that you won't get, you know, in the absence of it kind of thing. So maybe you have some, you know, have something that's holding like a pad sound, it could be a piano. I mean, that's what came to me. And and also it would be good for me, it would be good choruses, especially if it's a second chorus, maybe add some strings in there because strings help to raise the the emotion of the track, you know, because that's why strings usually me. So just to sort of recap, because I did have a little bit of a thought the same as you. Like this might be again, I don't really too harsh. This is almost like a demo of the song to me. Yeah. And you could go right. Yeah, this is sort of proved a bit of a proof of concept. This song work, but we kind of need to start from the ground up again. And you're painting a picture of a quite traditional arrangement, actually, like a piano, drums, some strings. You know, I think I'm thinking like the verb or something here. Yeah. Well, you know, and I can hear that in my head, Ricky, and it works really well. Yes. So what you've got so far, you know, I'm sorry, what's the gentleman's name again? His name's Stephen. Stephen, Stephen, Stephen, if you're watching, yeah, you it's all there. It's really for to embellish it in the right places and maybe tidy up some of the bits where, you know, you might have been slightly out of time. You know, tidy those things up. And then I think from a from a vocal point of view, you've got a nice tone. But I think you'd do it better if you did it again, because you know the song better. Right. And that would definitely help, you know, with your timing, because I felt in places that, OK, you're getting you're getting the words out, you're getting the melody out, but you're not 100 percent with the timing when you're doing that. So I think, you know, look, it's, you know, we've got an interesting role here is that, you know, it's not to bring anybody down and, you know, feel good about, you know, maybe not saying, you know, maybe saying less positive things about the work that you've put in. I mean, clearly I can hear that. But just to help you get it over that, you know, those final 50 yards are saying, yeah, this is ready for people to hear. And when it is ready, it's something that I can be proud of. Yeah. It's just tidy up those little bits that that, you know, our viewers have mentioned and maybe some of the points that I've made there, it will help to make what is already a good song even better. Yeah. You know, so, you know, have another go at this. Yeah, it's worth it. Have another go at this. It's definitely worth it. The only thing I have to disagree with with Stephen in there is just looking at your email again. I'm not hearing any Bon Jovi or country in there, Stephen. So that goes to show you different perspectives, different perspectives, we hear different things, but there you go. I think there was a little bit of Bon Jovi in the in the chord progression, you know, because if you if you if you put his voice on on that chord progression, yeah, you could kind of hear, you know, there is some level of symmetry there. But no, you don't sound like him. You sound like you. And I think maybe that's a thing to focus on, you know, I mean, we all have an opinion about how we sound. But yeah, exactly. Well, if you do sound like anybody, it's Mike. Comfort about that. I'm just going to grab my guitar. Pete Johnson. Oh, no, not again. It's not the introduction I was hoping for, Ricky. Oh, no, not again. That's a nice segue, wasn't it? I guess after I watched the replay last time, I thought you can hardly hear my guitar. It's not ideal. I should really prepare for these things as much as anything. People should know I actually have a gate on this microphone as well, right? So unless I get the guitar really close, it's not. It's not really going to work. But there you go. Pete Johnson was here and he was talking about you. Have you got your keyboard plugged in, Ricky? Have you got a keyboard plugged in? Oh, you can see it, can't you? You just see it. It's not plugged in. So we'll have to arrange that for next time, Pete Johnson. Do you want to give me a key, Ricky? OK, we'll go for G this time. Oh, God, the people's key of G. OK. And let's have a second chord. Let's just give him a second chord, any chord. G. B. Danny Gable said E flat in there. What are you trying to do to me, Danny? I'm on the acoustic guitar. I'm just, you want B, do you? Oh, my God. Yeah, B major. B major. Can I do B major 7 at least? Yeah. I feel like I'm going to play Creep now by Radiohead. Look you in the eye. That's it. You know, that's the chords you gave me. I feel like I'm on Pete Johnson's show now. All right, let's do that then. We'll do a parody. We'll do that. We'll go for. Where would you go after that? Well, that's the wrong chord. All right, we'll use the chords of Creep and the melody of Creep spontaneously to to make a distro kid jingle. We should get in trouble for this, really, shouldn't we? Let's I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to use Steve Basu's song Always in My Heart, which is the one we just heard. OK. Yeah. We'll mix up something to do with distro kid. This is a distro kid jingle, folks. You should use distro kid. They're awesome. And we'll also then get into it. The title of the next song, which we're going to look at, which is getting clever now. I don't know how I'm going to do this. I'm setting myself up for a catastrophe here. The next song, which is going to be after this, a song called The Motorcycle Song. How am I going to get that in? Oh, what have I done to myself? What have I done to myself? I should get you to sing this, really, shouldn't I, Ricky? No, I'm not a singer. I'll say that up front, mate. Really? No. No. A harmony singer. I can hear them, but I can't sing them. When you were here before ripping Stephen's songs apart just like the lonely rocker that old Canadian tart. We're trying to be helpful. Like the Motorcycle Song, which is just about to come up. We're trying to make it special. They're so flippin' special. Special, special. Then release on DistroKid. Well, you're going to get so famous. Extended. Spade. Hang on, I have to hang while I think of a lyric. This is all Pete John's fault. Stop watching his channel as a way of punishing him for making me sing this jingle. That was really, honestly, quite terrible. That was really good, man. Well done. Well done. Yeah, you held it down. Yeah. Great stuff. Great stuff. As somebody said, this is creepy. Thanks, Mark. White noise studio. Give me a minute. We've got a laugh, haven't we? We've got a laugh. I do feel sometimes, Ricky, you can tell me to get on a bit of a rant here. I do feel sometimes that music producers are a little bit serious about what they do. Yeah, can be. Can be. Can be. One of my favorite movies of all time is It's Got. I've forgotten the bloody. I've forgotten the title of the movie. It's one of my favorite movies of all time. A guy called Glenn Hansard. Oh, let me look up. No, I'm going to do this now. I'm going to do this. Glenn Hansard. I want to complete this reference. Glenn Hansard was in a music, made a movie. He's an Irish musician, Glenn Hansard, a brilliant musician, really, really one of my favorites. And he was in a movie. Oh, somebody helped me out here. I can't remember it. But anyway, watch that movie. There's a senior where they once the movies called once. They go into a studio. They they as a band, they're recording their first demo. And there is a engineer, sound engineer in a local studio in there. And he is so stereotypical of local sound engineer, studio engineer guys. Yep. Of course, he's wearing black jeans and a black t-shirt. And, you know, while they're recording their track, he's going, yeah, great guys. And he's on his phone while he's while they're recording. And he sits. Yeah. Anyway, he's suitably patronizing and very jaded from recording people. Don't become jaded. If you get jaded, get out. Anyway, that was a bit of a funny old rant, wasn't it? Let's listen to the next piece of music. I haven't even got it teed up. I've been so busy chatting away here. This is what we did sort of announce a little bit, didn't we, Rekki? Yeah. You read it out, go ahead and read it out. Right. This next one is by the Hoots, and the song is the motorcycle song. The motorcycle song. Now, what I want to just mention here for you is that while this is by the Hoots, it is produced by someone who's in the audience now and a regular on this show, that person is Danny Gable. So Danny sent this into me, said, hi, Mike, this is song is recorded by a band called the Hoots from Ravina, Ohio, and it's recorded in Reaper through a Tascam 1608 interface. You know, I've never used the Tascam interface. They have great specs. I've just never happened to have used them. Oh, they're rock solid, you know. Yeah. I've heard good things, heard good things. Now, just a little bit of information so we give people due credit, because it's from a band, obviously. So we have Donnie Root on guitar, Joe Hudak, play guitar and sang lead, Rockman, Johnny, Muck, Muck and Cheese on drums. These people have great names, don't they? It's a cool name, yeah. Konga T on percussion. And myself, with the very ordinary name, I guess, of Danny Gable on bass and keyboards. Do you have a stage name, Danny, in all of this? Everyone else seems to have a stage name, anyway. So he says, I also mixed this with Mr. Root on engineering duty. So I'm quite interested to hear this. It's nice to have a band sound, I guess, to listen to rather than the lonely rockers like the rest of us. Let's see how we go with the motorcycle song. Serious here, Ricky, like Serious Rock with Jesus. But it sounds like everyone wanted to get in a bar while they were listening to that. I was hearing talk of beer and bars and goodness. Many folks, calm down. We're in the serious business of music critique here. Ricky, I'll let you get going first, man. That track was big fun, man. I really like that, you know. It had an interesting mix of vibes going on there. I mean, yeah, there's a little bit of seven is. And then the vocal, especially on the chorus, it kind of reminded me of, yeah, there's a little bit of a punkiness in there, yeah. And I like the swing of it as well, because, you know, it wasn't like a straight, you know, a four four straight had like a nice dance, dance, dance, dance. Almost momentary jazz going on in there as well. So, but most importantly, do you know something that there are some things that are created here that, OK, dude, I really work, you know, from a, you know, a purely production point of view. And the way this sounded to me was like, you know, maybe it's the punkiness I'm picking up there is that, yeah, it kind of works like it is, you know, it works like it is. Now, the only, yeah, the only thing that I would say maybe the vocal could be a little bit more present than the backing vocals, I think, maybe push the lead vocal forward a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And the congas, you see, I've got a special thing about the congas, yeah, because that's where I started, you know, I started my journey of music by playing percussion congas. So really, I was like, oh, bring them on. We should bring them on for the next show, then. I want some percussion accompaniment with my with my jingles. So, yeah, yeah, if you mix this again, bring the congas up, mate, because it adds to the swing of it. I didn't notice the congas. I'm with the mix club here. You heard them right at the end, though, when it was. Oh, OK. But he done his role on it. But yeah, this is a great track. This is a great track, honestly. It just needs a little bit of tidying up. But the vibe, you know, I completely got that. As soon as that chorus kicked in, it was like, yeah, we're having fun and I close my eyes for a moment and, you know, think about the title of the song. And yeah, man, I felt the wind go through my hair. Since I haven't got any. Hey, Ricky. Ricky does a big reveal there on the shoulders. But anyway, a little bit of tidying up. I don't think anything really needs to be done again. I like the quirkiness of this one. And sometimes the creature is what it's meant to be. And I think this is one of them. OK, cool. I'm going to be ever slightly less complementary, although I did put in my notes that this did its job. And I had a little bit to say about the EQ again, overall, just as an overall kind of picture of it. This is almost like the opposite of the last track. The last track had that scooped middle feel to me. This had almost pronounced mid, midfield to it, you know, which is not this is not good or bad, actually. This is I'm just saying what I noticed. It's really up to Danny and his mates what they're going for. What they're like, it's just it's partly about intention with me for this track. Right. So it's interesting that you brought up punk because I was going to use a little couple of punk examples here to me. So initially, I was going to say that there's certain areas of this track which could be produced in a more contemporary way. Right, that this sounds a little bit lo-fi kind of thing. But I guess I'm going to talk more in terms of reference tracks. You know, reference tracks are really important. So, Danny, this is up to you, but I would say to yourself, as reference tracks, are you going to use the sex pistols or are you going to use Green Day? Yeah, because there's two things about those contrasts, right? Green Day are a much more produced version of modern punk. Arguably, some people might say they don't like Green Day because of that, because it's a little bit too contrived and nice. Whereas the sex pistols sound like a bunch of guys in a garage who could barely play their instruments, banging it out. And you could on different days, I would say I would much rather listen to the sex pistols than Green Day. And then again, down and down and down and down and down and on there, right? So, yeah, it's all a matter of intention. What do you want to get? You know, different listeners are going to want different things. You'll never please all people. So you've got to go with, you know. So if the intention of the production of this track was more on the sex pistols side of production, then you kicks gulls. You did it and it was all good. The only thing I will say was and some of you may have mentioned it in the chat. I'm not sure if it was to do with the stream or with the way that Danny made the MP3 that he sent me, but I'm particularly say the cymbals in this sounded a little bit crushed in not pleasant way. That kind of the thing that you can get on streams and when or when there's, you know, just with a low bit rate has been used for something. Yeah, is a little bit of an unpleasant thing going on with the high end, in my opinion, anyway. But as I say, Danny, that may just be to do with the file format that's been used and what's been sent to me. So you're you're the best judge of that if you go back and revisit it in terms of listening to your master and figuring out any other comments there. Ricky, what's your feedback for my feedback? Yeah, this this this one's one of those worms, man. Is there isn't it? It's in your head. Yes, yes. It's there, isn't it? I felt the same about the first song, actually. It had a good had a good hook to it as well, you know, it was half the better anyway. But yeah, I think that. I think that it was a very appropriately titled song as well. It's called The Motorcycle Song. It's brilliant. I love it. I love it. Yeah, they really captured a moment there, you know, yeah, the punky thing and then not everything being in perfect balance. You know, I just just got these images of like beer cans being thrown about stuff like that. It's just a fun track. It's a fun track. Carpets on the walls in a dark dingy, slightly smelly studio. Yeah, you don't need to be cool to appreciate this one. It's just it's just fun. And, you know, good job with that song, honestly. I already enjoyed that. All right. And well, you know, if you do want to improve this song at all, Danny, I hope that we helped. But if if another reason than just a, you know, I guess you may just feel convinced. Yeah, I was on the right track. I achieve what I want to achieve. And that's great. And if there's some slight variations you want to you want to make, then I hope we were at least somewhat helpful, even though we were a little bit vague in our critique here. But that's all right. That happens once in a while. Let's go. Let's relieve or relieve ourselves from any more in spontaneous jingles and actually have something prepared earlier. Meet your music to the Distro Kids spotlight feature. It gets entered into this competition where it gets played alongside other songs and people will vote for which of the two they see on the screen is their favourite. Now, the better you do in this process, the more likely you are to appear in one of Distro Kids playlist on Spotify. And that means your music's got a much better chance of being heard. So you simply go ahead and select one of your songs. And then you've just got to select a twenty nine second clip. The best part of the song, it would be the best way to go with this. And you've got this nice sort of interactive feature here to do that. You simply then select the connect with Spotify button and you're away. Oakley Doakley on to the final song for today's show. And I said everything was going to be a bit different. This is definitely a bit different. Now, one thing I have to remember. I've got my notes here that I have to turn this one down. I think this may have been mastered a little bit, which is why it's quite a lot. Now, so this song, Reggie, I'll let you read out the artist's name and song title here. OK, the artist is Malcolm Adams, and the song is flying. You have had some easy artist names to read out. I have, haven't I? When I pick the songs for the next show that you're on, I'm purposely going to find things from India and Saudi Arabia or something. I think to push push your limits of no tongue twisters. Anyway, this Malcolm was saying he's originally from the UK and now lives in Spain and enjoying life. That struck me right away, Ricky. It was like I used to live in the UK, but now I live in Spain. I'm enjoying life. Yeah, into that, what you will. I played my first gig at the age of 15 in the UK. A school friend knocked on my door and said they had a gig following night. I was interested in having to go. So we got down to work and got 12 songs together or so. That was the first gig we did. We had to repeat the songs a few times. Were you in that situation when you were younger, Ricky? Were you ever only had a few songs and you had to repeat them? Oh, yeah, the first one. Yeah, you'd wear the tape out. Yeah. Look what I've done. The first time I actually played in public, I was on the Isle of Wight in England. I was 10 years old and my brother was. Doing he was doing the Guinness Book of Records challenge and he was going to play Monopoly for break the record for playing it for the longest period of time. And him and his friends played Monopoly for 19 days nonstop in a hotel in the lobby of a hotel. And they'd written a song called Advanced to Go. And they gave me some lyrics and said, could you make a song out of this? And I was like, I was nine or 10 at the time. And I chucked a few chords on there. And I stood outside that hotel and played that song over and over and over again. No, I'll do this. Look, little nine, 10 year old Mike and made a bit of money for the charity at the time. That's good. That's good. That's good. Anyway, carrying on from my life story back to Malcolm's. This they did their gig, blah, blah, blah, blah. Sorry, Malcolm. There was a big gap in my playing. But in the year 2000, I moved to Spain and got some gear and start to do solo gigs. The money was OK. And I got free beer. I'm going to talk about this. Got some gear and started to do solo gigs. I'm going to come back to this later after we've listened to the song. In time, I got a band together and we called it the Soggy Bottom Band. Love, love the band name. There was a few changes and we played in the Costa Blanca for 16 odd years. It became quite popular and we had a good following. I use Cakewalk and you, Mike, have been a great help for me to understand the Internet. Thank you very much, Malcolm. Let's have a listen to Malcolm's song, which is, of course, called Flying. Everybody's here that you could know. Don't be afraid, because I will catch you. Your time has come. Together we will go. We're expanding. Take your time. The best is yet to show. We love and understand it. Your time has come. Together we will go. Again, just a different song. Again, very nice variations in music we're getting here today, Ricky. So I'll let you go first. Let's do it sort of together. Let's have a conversation. Yeah, OK. I really like that. It's one of those that everything is kind of there. But, you know, in this case, I think it's there are a couple of things. I mean, certainly at the beginning of the song, I felt that there was too much of a level change from where the guitars, because it starts with a guitar, the rhythm track. And then when it comes to the verse, it goes. Yeah. It's like, where'd you go? Exactly that. It was a very distinct. Well, we could almost see the failure going. Yeah. Guitar going down. Yeah. Yeah. And I think maybe, maybe certainly on the intro, the first part of the song, the guitar was maybe a little bit too affected, I think. I think it would have been nicer if you had a bit more of the actual guitar tone coming through rather than the effects, you know, I think it felt a little bit. To me, it felt a little bit swamped. The guitar part is right. It's nice. But yeah, just a little bit less effect and less of a, you know, a level drop kind of thing. One other thing, though, this would have been so creamy. Yeah. If it had a bass line on there. Now, I know that he was like, there was a bass on there and it was kind of like noodling. But I think this definitely would have benefited from the bass, you know, holding the root notes of the chords. Yeah. It's funny because there was this sort of noodling bass, which in itself was more fun and interesting. It was nice. Yeah. So like if it was just like, don't, but don't don't don't, it would have right rooted that whole song. Yeah. Yeah. It would just hold it down. Yeah. But other than that, it's really nice track. Yeah. Kind of dreamy, you know, you instantly relaxed once you started listening to it. I think you've captured the sentiment of a title definitely with with this song as in, you know, almost, well, it doesn't sound like it, but almost like an Albatross kind of vibe going on. Yeah. You can imagine yourself flying with this. So well done. Just a couple of tweaks, buddy. Yeah. Get that bass line on there because that'll just like warm it up. Especially when you get to the choruses. Yeah. I feel really bad now that you've said all that. Because the stuff I'm going to say is a little less complimentary. Well, I'll start. I know. And I'm not like, I don't dig this idea of or someone's got to say something good. Someone's got to say something bad, but I guess at the end of the day, I've got to be say something honest. First of all, to Malcolm, you're blessed with a really nice sounding voice. So that that's a good thing, like really nice voice tone. And so enjoyed the voice, enjoyed the overall track, like this dreamy kind of feel to it. And again, different type of songwriting, but basically good songwriting there. Not that sort of swap, not that very commercial hook based songwriting. Most of the guitars I really liked. I didn't personally enjoy the tone of the league tire, which sounded very sort of DI to me. Lots of us use guitar amp sims. But you'll notice if you ever put a guitar into an amp sim, but don't use a cabinet sim. So some of them that separate here. You get this really, yeah, very DI fuzzy guitar sound. It's a bit too direct sounding for me. I just think it could have sounded would have been nicer with like the other guitar tones really nice. But I didn't really appreciate it. Could be just my opinion, because I think some people said in the comments that they really liked the guitar tone as well. So a bit of a narrow opinion, but I might give it a bit of that. A couple of people said that the league guitar seemed a little bit out of tune. I've got to say if it is, it's a little bit because I may notice on a second listen, but I didn't kind of notice it. Sometimes maybe the bends or things like that could have not been as accurate. But yeah, I'll take them on their way for that. The thing that bothered me about the song that I would change above everything else if I could just change one thing in there. It would be what I'm going to call the drum machine. Right, because it didn't sound like a drum kit. It sounded to me like a drum machine. This is why I said earlier when we're talking about the email that was sent to me from Malcolm because he mentioned that he was a solo player at something. A lot of my mates, or not a lot of them, but a few mates over the years have got into solo playing. And it's very economical to go there with like some sort of backing track or drum machine or something like that. And I'm talking drum machine, right? I'm not talking 808s, which are intentionally don't sound like a real thing. But there were some which mimicked a real thing and they were trying to sound like a real thing. But on reflection, they don't. And I think you can get desensitized to that. If you're one of those guys that go out and play and you do this out of necessity in economics and you have this. And after a while, after a few years of doing that, you get a little bit desensitized to how unrealistic these things can sound in my opinion. This is all my opinion, I'm afraid, Malcolm. But what I would encourage you to do is I would redo the drums on this and I'd use like addictive drums or one of those kind of things. Even some of the free ones that I've reviewed on the channel as well. Some of the drums, there's a free version of Stephen Slate, which is really good. Yeah, personally, I would have thought that this song for me would be more authentic to what I think it's trying to be if it had some. And even if you didn't do that, even if you didn't use, yeah, someone's mentioned an easy drummer in there as well. That might be a good way to go. But there was, I felt that these drums are on a loop. There was four bars written and they just looped all the way through. And I think this song could be so much more than that dynamically. I really do. So, yeah, that would be my thing. Now, again, I have to come back to this is supposed to be fix my mix, not fix my arrangement or fix my composition. I can't ignore these things. But, um, yeah, there was there were some parts as Ricky said, the most in most in terms of balance. The most noticeable thing was this change in volume with the rhythm guitar from the intro. So just after the vocals came in, it didn't feel like a natural change Malcolm. It was it was too much over too short of a period of time. It also just felt here and there that lead guitar came in a little bit too loud in some parts as well in some parts of the song. So again, those are the things I think need to be addressed. Ricky, you're looking at me as if I'm being a meanie here. Yeah, yeah, you're being a Dan this week. Yeah. Yeah. I thought you were going to say I was being a dick. We've never had a Richard on this show. What are you talking about? No, no, I tell you what, I mean, this is an interesting point, you know, discussing this distract because you see, though there are traditional ways of approaching things like drums and that kind of thing, you know, but but sometimes it's really about the individual sense of taste. You know, it might not be that you couldn't get hold of, you know, a decent drummer or a decent plugin to do it. It might be deliberate. Because, you know, I mean, even, you know, even when I'm making my own stuff and there are times where I say, well, actually, yeah, I'm going to do something on Orthodox here. Yeah. And, you know, as you go with it, if you think it works kind of thing, but when I listen to it. Yes, it was a bit loopy, but the whole thing was a bit loopy, if you know what I mean. And can I put forward a different idea then because this did occur to me as well, that just I would have felt this was fun. I've got a few favorite tracks, actually. There's a track I really like by a whole group called Delamitri, right? And they were very much a band band. But there was one track I think they used like a Casio Vielton, you know, thing on there sounded really, really cool. So I'll get that. And if that's the intention, Malcolm, that's cool. But here's what I would say. That but then brought in some big full on real drums later on the track. The contrast of the two can also be very cool. This is a creative thing that's going to be down to taste. You know, I wouldn't have done that. I wouldn't do that with it. I really wouldn't do that because, you know, the vibe of the song is laid out fairly clearly from the beginning. And I wasn't expecting anything big drums wise to happen as it was going on. Because, you know, you're just swaying along with it kind of thing. But yeah, it sounded deliberate to me rather than he didn't maybe didn't have the ideas for a real sounding kit on there or the facilities for it. It was deliberate. You know, personally, you know, I was kind of happy with that because he was trying to do something different. Okay, I think I'm going to rename this show from Fix My Mix to confuse the hell out of me. No, no, this is all good. You see, this is all really, really good. And somebody just mentioned collaboration in there. I mean, this is what happens when collaborations happen. When one person says, no, no, I think it should do this. And no, no, no, no. And most of the time, what happens is you give some of these different ideas a go. And then I don't know if you've ever had that feeling in the studio with band members or what have you, Ricky, when you sit back and you listen to one of these versions of an idea, there's usually a point where everyone goes, yeah, yeah, that's the one that works. That happened in the past. Yeah, yeah, that's the money shot. Once in a while, you can't agree. And then it comes down to, you know, an executive decision, but Malcolm, you might try any of those ideas and you may end up with what you've already got and think Mike is indeed a complete Richard. I shouldn't be having a segment on the show, shouldn't we? Mike gets his Richard out. I hope that was helpful to the people who sent their songs in this week. And as I'm going to mention again, if you would like to send your mix in, I'll tell you what, the produce aisle is in here. Hey, produce aisle, you haven't sent a mix in yet, let's have a listen. Send it in, we'd like to have a listen. But yeah, anyone who's listening, and thank you so much for being here by the way, do send your music in, yeah? I just want to quickly mention over on my Facebook group, and I put a post up there quickly yesterday to ask people to give us some examples of what they think is like their best work, their pinnacle of their work so far. I thought it would be nice to celebrate, because hopefully along the way after you've done things, most of us don't feel great about our work when we listen to it years later. But once in a while, and in my opinion, I've maybe got one song, maybe two songs, where I'll think, yeah, I'm just really happy with that, right? It doesn't come too often. So I wanted people to give the opportunity to sort of sing their own praises a little bit. And so if you're not a member of my Facebook group, then join it. I haven't listened to any of them yet. I put up a weird time for me yesterday, but I noticed this morning when I opened it up, there was loads of submissions there. So I was really pleased to see. So I'm sort of thinking I might actually do a little bit of a featured artist segment within Fix My Mix next week, and perhaps pick one of those songs to play and just celebrate when we really hit the nail on the head and have a good result. Thanks for the link there. If you're on the music, I really appreciate you doing that. Thank you so much to Ricky T Brown. My goodness, man. It's always good to have you on the show. I'm one of my most requested guests, I have to say. Oh, you're going to make me blush now. Stop that. Again, thank you so much. I will try and get a video out on the channel this week. I'm torn between a free plug-in and doing some cakewalk tips. If I get time, it'll be out later than my normal schedule, folks, but it will get out at some point, I'm sure, this week, hopefully, fingers crossed. And I would like to say again, thank you to the people who've been in the live chat. If you're watching on the replay, also, I'm appreciating your comments there as well. Always really useful. I know people who've had their songs featured tend to go and look at the replay as well and look at the comments there. If you've got a specific comment to one of the artists today and you're watching on the replay, definitely make sure you leave it down there. Wonderful. Thank you so much to everyone who's been here. And we will be back at the same time next week. Take care of yourself.