 Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. Welcome to episode 19 of Fix My Mix. I feel like 19, almost at 20. I feel like we should do a special soon or something like that. Sort of a best so far. Anything to be a bit different. Now welcome to the show. We are going to be listening to some songs in this show from the community if you don't know what it's all about. And we're going to be suggesting ways in which the mixes could be fixed before people release them. The purpose of this show is not only for the people who send their music in, but also for the people who are listening. So we can all practice using our ears together and listening to mixes and trying to figure out how they could improve. And we'll be discussing that from all kinds of different perspectives. And it is fantastic always to have some people here in the live chat. We do have Doug Kidder in here. He is a moderator extraordinaire. He's going to be making sure you all keep in line here today. Thank you, Doug, for being here as usual. We did have some apologies from Keonra, who was not going to take part in the moderation today. So thanks, Keonra, for letting us know about that. And we have someone from the UK, which is a bit unusual on this show these days since I started having a particular fixed time on Fridays here in Australia Friday morning. And that happens to be quite kind of late in the UK. So thanks so much, Dave, for being here. Always wonderful to have Kevin here. Lovely to see you, mate. Still thinking about the music you sent in yourself. Really enjoy that as well as Doug's, of course. Was it last week, Doug? We had your music on here. Time, time. I get confused. I'm an old man. We also have Mr. Pete Johnson here. I saw him a moment ago. Where was he? I don't know. There he is. I've just been over watching, just preparing for the show and watching his show over there. After he had a great interview with someone called April Keys, who was a songwriter, she had some great tips about songwriting, I've got to say. So after you've watched this show, go over to Pete Johnson's channel Studio Life Today and look at the replay of that. Really fun. You know when you see a person who just inspires you, even though you're already, I've been songwriting for probably 35 years or more and I thought, oh, I want to write a song now after I was watching the interviews. That was really good stuff. Great to see you. What do we have here? Dr. Son from the Ukraine. Nice to see you in here. And also, of course, Mimo Japan. Thank you for jumping out of bed Mimo for this early in the morning. The big thank you to the sponsors of the show DistroKid. You can see the link in the description, the one I'm pointing to here. And if you do sign up for DistroKid at the moment, you're going to get 7% off at no extra cost to you. I'm also going to get a little bit of a kickback, which is really, really nice and thank you so much for doing that. If you're a DistroKid, I think is the best place to release your music to the world, get you on all the main platforms and things. And we'll be talking about those in kind of an interesting way. Some of the points about DistroKid that is in kind of an interesting way later on in the show. And I'm going to be talking about those things with my guest. He is, I'm going to call him the Lonely Rocker. I know him as Dan though, but we can call him the Lonely Rocker. I know his YouTube channel and I've got to tell you, if you have one of your songs on the show today, raise yourself because this guy, he tells it like he is. He doesn't pull any punches. He's in there and God help you if you've got any virtual instruments on there. That's all I can say. Here he is. Mr. Dan. Can I start off with a question? Yeah. Go, go, go. What's got two thumbs and doesn't get a kickback? this guy. I'm here, Gratis. I'm loving every minute of it. Dan, I'm going to give you a minute to do some self promotion here. I'm going to give you a minute to do some self promotion about your YouTube channel, the link to Dan's YouTube channel is in the description down below, but tell us what's been happening over at the Lonely Rocker. The Lonely Rocker. I never know whether to add the door or just call Lonely Rocker. I mean, no, I was struggling with that. I was like, do I cool? Welcome to the creative sauce. I know, I know. Anyway, Kerry, what's been going on over there in your very Mack world? Very Mack world, yes. I wish it wasn't so, but it is so. Very un-Macky today. We're close to Macky. There was a pun right there. I did a door controller video and I did not feature a Mack. I wanted to. We couldn't get one. We actually couldn't get. Which door controllers are you being looking at? So I did a video. I've got six dog controllers. I have quite a collection of icons. Why? Why? Why? Why so many door controllers? I can't and I get along well. That's all I could say. So I feature a lot of products. I do some stuff with them behind the scenes. I'm not like I'm not an employee of icon or anything like that. I haven't done a couple of sponsored things with them for their channel, but they have become friendly with them. They send over some gear. They like my feedback on it. I love the gear. The first one I had, I bought it. I did a top five reasons of why you should get a dog controller for your home studio. I sent it to them. I was a new channel at the time. They loved it. The owner of Iconsot was in love with it. They had it playing at their head office on a loop. They had a guy shoot some video and sent it to me so I could see my video on the loop in Hong Kong or wherever their head office is. It was quite a buzz for a new channel at the time. I tell you what, I use an icon controller. I've got the Qcon Pro G2. It was one of those things. I'd been eyeing it up for a while. It was one of these weird sort of psychology things that we go through when we're purchasing. We're thinking about purchasing something. But I was going, it's quite cheap. And I was thinking, that must mean it's really crap. I don't know why we do that in the music gear world. I was thinking, is it just going to be naff? Am I just going to be really disappointed? It looks good in the pictures. The specs look good. But the price is really, really good like compared to some other controllers. And I had a Mackey controller at the time. And I wasn't happy with it at all. But Mackey's like, you know, it's what everything has copied in the sense of its protocol. But I'm absolutely and utterly pleased with it. You know, just, it's been rock solid as well. Now, I know there's lots of cake. I have to answer this question down. Sorry, there's lots of cakewalk viewers on this channel. So it does work with cakewalk. It doesn't work perfectly with cakewalk. But you will find this honestly with all door controllers, with all doors. There's always one bit of the protocol, especially if it's a Huey protocol, which didn't seem to get through to that door. I don't know why that is. So I don't think it's a very specifically a cakewalk thing, but it generally works over the board. I think it's like the metering doesn't work so well with cakewalk. But it all works really wonderfully. So anyway, shout out to Icon there. Well, I learned I'm going to say I learned a lot doing this video because I had for the first time other brands here because I did a buyer's guide. It was just because I have a lot of icon gear and I had a lot of requests to do what's the difference between the G2 and the pro acts and the platform. So I did, but people are like, well, what about other brands? So I said, OK, so I have a friendship with the biggest retailer here in Canada. So they hooked me up with some of them. We've got SSL, Behringer and personas. And one thing which I didn't talk about in the video and since we have a very exclusive club here, I made an observation looking at all of these dog controllers. All the faders look like even the shapes of the faders were the same. What is that? I think there's one company making faders for everybody. Is it called Alps? I don't know. Maybe. I think they're one. I will say about dog controllers for people though watching and I probably shouldn't say this, but it's true. They're not for everyone. I think some people, if you're just into that whole tactile experience and you're not a big fan of using the mouse or everything, they're not for everyone. But I just want to say to people, say you don't have to have one. It doesn't change the sound of your music whatsoever. It maybe makes it a little bit more convenient to manipulate what you're doing in the studio. And that may or may not... It just looks cool. But it does look cool, doesn't it? Honestly, I have a desk full of those things and when you're in a hurry, sometimes nothing beats a mouse. It depends on what you're... If you're a pure mixing, like mixing music all the time, us YouTubers, we joke about it. We have channels about making music. We spend more time making videos than we do making music. But when you're mixing, when you're actually mixing pure mixing, like you lay up your tracks for the first time, there's nothing like having them sitting in front of you. Even if it's one, if it's four, if it's eight, just having them in front of you, it's a whole different thing. And if you get good at it, I've said it a gazillion times before, I don't mind saying it. If you get good at it, then you can actually control your door and you can turn the screens off on your computer temporarily. And that is one of my mix tips. One of the things you can do is, if you switch those screens off, maybe you can just minimise your door, hey? But it just changes the way you hear your music when you're no longer looking at the metres and things. Just a little tip for your mixers. They're talking about mixers. We should probably get on with listening to one. Sometimes on this show, I'm going to say this up front, Dan, just so you've got a little bit of an idea of what's coming. Sometimes on the show, we have three songs which appear to be ready to go out to the world and we don't get to say too much other than, well done, keep going that direction. Just up front here, I'm going to say this is not one of those shows, right? I think all of the mixers here, and not to be in any way mean to the people who have sent their mixers in, not at all. And by the way, if you do want to send a mix in, do follow the instructions for that down in the description because we love it. But these definitely need some work and that's useful because we can all learn when we're listening to these sorts of things and we can talk about what can improve. So thanks to the people who have sent them in, but I think that we've got some work to do here for these mixes today, at least with two out of the three, I'm going to say. Anyway. So I should sharpen my tools? Sharpen your pencils. Someone was talking about pencils and things here when we were talking. I think it was the idea that I was talking about. Things must be rubbish because they're cheap. Well, to quote David Lee Roth, I've got my pencil. Give me something to write on, man. Okay. Okay. Souped up today, ladies and gentlemen. And I must say as well, it's super important. I can't emphasize this enough. People who are in the live chat. I'm talking to you, Nigel McLean. I'm talking to you, Doug Kidd. I'm talking to you, Kevin Perrin. I'm talking to Dino. I'm talking to Master Singleton. I'm talking to Dr. Son. We need your input while these songs are playing. Love to hear your opinion about how you think these mixes can be improved. Let's go for our first one. I'm going to put the name up on the screen here for you, Dan, to read out, of course. Here we go. Samjer? Unless that Jay is silent. Samir. Could be either or. Samry. Yeah. Go for it. And the title. Let me be me. Okay. Cool. I think it may be Sam Jr. I'm not really sure. Because there seems to be an indication. A little space there. That's not fair. All right. Let's go. Let's have a listen. Now, he's saying that I've been recording and producing my own songs for the last three to four years. Things about me to know. I do not know how to use auto tune yet. May not be about it. So I record my vocals take after take until I get it in the key. You kind of should have that approach, I think, anyway. Reads me to I believe. I'm new to mixing and mastering. So just learning to get the right volume and mix has been a challenge for me. I write, record and produce all my songs myself as well as play all the instruments on them. So let's have a listen to Samjer. Sam Jr. Sorry. Let me be me. I like to let my guests go first. Thanks to Sam Jr. or Samjer for sending this into us. Let me be me. Dan, I'll let you get stuck in there first. All right. So, well, you know what? First of all, a nice track. I mean, I like it, you know, I like the idea. I mean, he was worried that he had to do it over and over again to get it right. But the fact that he went for it for real means a lot to me. We've talked about it a lot. I mean, I went when I feel there's a genuineness in the music. It resonates with me. I could be wrong. Sometimes it could be lying through their teeth. But if I feel some sense of genuineness, I feel good listening to a piece of music. And I definitely felt that with this track. So from there, I mean, I want to be sort of tender because he admittedly is new to mixing. So I think my advice here is going to be more of a guidance on how to go about learning this crazy game of mixing because it's layer upon layer upon layer. I mean, it's so many different things. And it's like you have to pick the things that you want to learn and then branch from there because really the way I look at it, we're mixing a song in stereo. It's like a fan. It's a 180 degree spectrum of frequencies and placement and understanding frequencies, understanding the stereo spectrum. And it's like filling that spectrum up with different sounds. And it's really learning from the bottom up of what fits where things need to be. And I can't really obviously teach that lesson in the feedback, but I would highly, if it's something that he wants to do, there's a great starting point here. I mean, there's surprisingly a nice bit of air. And it's one thing I often hear with people who don't know how to mix. It just sounds like a mess of frequencies where I actually didn't feel that with this. I felt like, oh, I could actually hear everything, which is a great start. Tune your guitars, please. First, like, you know, tuning, you know, tuning and timing, these are things you don't have to know how to mix to get right. So I definitely start there. And then from there, I would, there's a lot of charts you can download where it shows you the, you know, all the different frequencies where different instruments should be, like where a kick drum should be, where the bass and guitar. And start to learn about where things need to be. And then you're talking about EQ, you know, I mean, learning how to use a compressor, I could spend hours and hours. So I don't want to do that. But I would really sort of start off with the basics and understanding the basics of the puzzle, where different instruments need to go and, you know, even stereo placement by moving things around left and right. And learn that spectrum a little bit. I think it's a good place to start. Once I started to understand the frequencies and where things need to be in the spectrum, that was a really, really good sort of step up in learning how to mix. I mean, there's so much more to it than that, but that would be a great start. I would say that and even learning the stereo spectrum a little bit where it plays things. But, but from there, I think, like I said, the things that you can do now, make sure you do them, like, is better than, better than great tuning and timing. That's up to you. If you're a player, get that right the first time and then take, and then enjoy the ride because it's a lot to learn. But it's, it's a, it's a crazy scientific art form and it takes some time, but enjoy the ride if you get into it as we all did. Good. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm going to just going to quickly go through I've got a little bit of duplication we share. This is good, isn't it? When we're on the same page, because that means probably our advice is going to be good. Can I talk about the positives? First of all, he mentioned that he likes to sing until he gets it right and doesn't use auto-tune. Keep doing that because for me, the vocal was the best part of the song, for sure. You've got to, I love, I mean, this is all opinion, but I love the sound of your voice. I love the character of your voice. I like the delivery. And your song writing is good as well. That was a song. That was a real song. It had a hook. It had some different parts to it. It just felt right to me. Nothing astray there at all. Some nice harmonies in there from time to time. And so that's always a good start, isn't it? And also just to touch upon the mix. Unusually, the vocal sat really well in the mix. I'm talking about unusually for a beginner because it's something that people really struggle with. And it just sat really, really nicely in that mix. Now, of course, if you take some of our advice and start to change that mix, that balance can get out of balance pretty quickly. I thought it lacked a little bit of low end overall in the mix. Not too bad. You know, there's a little bit specific to genres of music. But yeah, I think that could be spiced up a little. But I will just reiterate what Dan said. The first thing that struck me was timing. I'll get back to that in a moment. There was some odd timing there where, especially on the snare, you know, when it's hitting on the two and the four, whether I think there was some guitar parts probably that were supposed to be in time with that. And they just weren't. And it was like that staggered feeling, you know, instead of all being together and tuning. Yeah, I did notice. I know I've been guilty of this myself. I have to say, hopefully not in my releases, but on my YouTube videos where I've had to do some guitar demos and things like that. And I've looked at it a couple of weeks and I'm thinking, how did I not hear that? You know, so guitars can be a pain because it's not an exact science with guitars either. It can look great on the tuner, but guitars have their own little thing going on quite often. So remember to tune to the key that you're playing in. I mean, let's talk guitars a little bit, Dan. Do you find that? And it's going to be different on different guitars and depending on how good their intonation is. But for example, for me, a big acoustic guitar player, if I'm in the key of G, I'm going to actually tune that chord, that G chord, if that's the dominant chord. Do you do the same thing? Well, maybe not quite like that, but you're right because certain strings are finicky, like the B string or the G string, especially where sometimes I tune it a little bit flat. After some players tune them a little bit sharp. It also depends on your playing too, right? How hard you fret. So as a player, I've learned to compensate a little bit. I've been guilty of that too. I did a Gibson review where I had five guitars and I spent like a whole day shooting and playing at the same time. And then I went to edit and the damn guitar was out of tune. Like, you know, when we do things alone, it's hard, you know, but when I've gotten to the habit of tuning almost every time I do a take, just because even the properly set up guitar, you know, if you hit a hard chord or a note or something, you might put it out of tune. So it just is what it is. So tuning can be tricky. And I know I think Doug may have been saying this, I can't remember who, but also sometimes when you're recording and you're going to be there for a long time, check your tuning before every take almost or at least because obviously guitars go out of tune over time. And because if you then take that advice to have a nice fresh set of strings on your guitar for the recording, I mean, I don't advise that not too fresh, probably a week old or something is good. But of course you can have more tuning issues when strings are new than when, you know, so do be careful of it anyway. But as Dan says, that's something which is not quite anything to do with your mixing experience. You can get that right. Now, the other thing I would say about this track is the drums. Sam, they were programmed drums. They weren't interesting enough at the end of the day. Best way I can say it. We've had some really good examples of programmed drums in the last couple of weeks on the show. So going back, I think to episode 18, folks, there was a couple of songs which had programmed drums. Dan wasn't there last week to hear that, but they were really good. There was a lot of care went into them and a lot of care went into them. So I mean, this is not a mixing thing again. I'm afraid Sam, but just spend a bit of care on those drums. Lay down your basic beat and then start to put in some ghost notes and some fills that are not quite in time, more natural and things like that. Now, it may be the drums where you're having your timing issues. If you're normally a player who doesn't play with programmed drums and you're used to tempo drifting a little bit, as it naturally does in organic music, then when you suddenly have to play to drums which are perfectly on the grid, it can be quite difficult actually. Now, either just practice the song a lot more along with the drums before you record or I think I've got a couple of videos about how you can actually lay down, say, an acoustic guitar or rhythm guitar first and use that as a tempo map so that you actually, the virtual drums are playing in time with you rather than vice versa. You can get a more organic feel. And the other thing, just a quick thing, latency, of course. If you haven't got your audio interface set up correctly and you've got too much latency going on, that can cause havoc with timing as well. I won't go into that in detail, but it's worth looking into that. You know, get that as low as you can without your computer having a hit about it. So, yeah, very, very important, especially if you're doing virtual guitars. It's super, super, not virtual guitar. Sorry, if you're playing real guitars but through a virtual amp sim, you must have that latency down nice and low. That's going to throw you up. You know, that's all I have to say. But Dan, bit of fun. We're going to talk about the sponsor DistroKid. Oh, God, I'm trying to point to them and your heads in the way. Look, there you go. We've been having some fun on the show recently, Dan, making up some jingles on the spot to do with DistroKid. And I thought, why should Dan miss out on the fun even though he doesn't write lyrics and he doesn't sing? Not in public anyways. I just want to, what we're going to do is just to have, you're going to create the YouTube Jam, right? Folks, I know Dan is hating me for doing this. Just by the way. We're doing it now? Yeah, we're doing it now. Grab your guitar, Dan. I'll tell you why, folks, behind the scenes, Dan's been saying to me, Mike, we should rehearse this. We should really rehearse this. I mean, I look at that lovely guitar for a start there. Look at that. Look at that. I know this is your favorite instrument and I am not surprised. One of, one of. It's 1A. I was debating whether to bring this or the Howard tradition. It's like children. You say you love the Meekly, but we know that's not true. My kids always ask me because it goes, Dad, who do you like the best? I said, you like me the best. I said, you're tied for a second. I have two kids. So folks, last week when I did this with Pete and the week before we were dealing with Happy Rod, we had lyrics, but we're going instrumental because there's meaning in music with lyrics. But this has got to Dan, we've got to find the essence of DistroKid here. We've got to find the essence. So Dan, I'm going to ask you, what does DistroKid mean to you? And I can't use words. I can only use. Just tell me now because this is going to be the inspiration for your music. Oh, what does DistroKid mean for me? It means reach. Reach. Not as a. And not as an around. Just reach. Okay. The key word here as you, make this piece of music Dan. I'm going to give you a key signature to play in and it's not going to be B flat. E flat. Let's go for A. A minor. Let's make it a melancholy reach to the world. And now look, let's go for a bit of a tempo. Let's go for a bit. This is going to be I'm guessing that this is going to be around about 90 BPM. Let's get in there. And folks, this is just 30 seconds or so of Dan's ode to DistroKid. He's jamming this. Let's go. Jam. DistroKid. DistroKid. Yeah. I like it. Are we in time? I can't even hear you. You can't hear me? Hey. You want your riffs to reach an audience? Gotta have some guitar in it. That's all I got to say. And a bit of wah in there as well. I'm glad you went the wah. I went it. I had to. It's nice and even through this not very sort of well planned miking up of your guitar amp or anything like that the tone is really nice. Did you hear it? Yeah. It's a lovely tone. And I'm not used to you doing just such a bluesy kind of a thing as well. Normally in your videos you're just rocking it out and there's all kind of weird chord progressions and some clever little sort of little modes and things being used in there. But there you go. You're just doing a bit of a minor. Does anyone want to know the signal chain or should we just quickly give me that signal check? It sounds beautiful. We've got the Sir This is a classic T Deluxe limited edition. So in 20 or two years ago they made about 200 of these and that's it. Based on their T platform TaliCaster obviously. We are in the neck pickup of course for that more bluesy as opposed to that anyways. So we are on the neck pickup. We are going through we've got behind me you can see the blue light. Can you? I'm cropped. Oh you can. The Houston Kettner Grand Meister Deluxe 40. We are on the clean channel with a boost on it. And in the loop actually we have IK Multimedia's the Amplitude X-Base Reaver actually. I'm trying to figure out what I probably got to mention in the video. And that's it. It's a Joe Bonamassa Wawa. Love me some Joe. This is his signature Wawa It's such a throaty girthy Wawa. It's awesome. That's it. Nothing no other trickery going on here. And some callous fingers. Pete says oh Mike how you love torturing your guests. I think we did all right. I think you did really well actually that was really enjoyable. I like that. I want to get a back beat going on to that. That should be a track. I'm going to send it to DistroKid and say hey guys we got your new jam. It's all about the reach. It's all about the reach. Let's move on to our second song here. Now I'm going to put the again like torturing my guests. So Dan here is the artist and the song title Kudakwase Daly Duffy Doofy. Yeah right. I've got to tell you that it didn't get much information in this email. I don't know that this song is called Daly Duffy at all but it was a part of the file name a part of the MP3 file name that I got sent through so I was like I just ran with it and it sounds okay doesn't it? So Kudakwase he says I've been engineering for years moderate success but I've only been mixing for a while not enough progress I struggle with tonal control and balancing I mix this song for my friend and I think there are several issues please help me fix my mix well that's what we're here for and I'm going to say a different genre of music to what we're normally used to having on the show here so I'm pretty pleased about that because I like to have some things that are a little bit different on here so let's have a listen to this track Dan and see how we think we may be able to help with this but and and and and and and and and and okay Dan there's something a bit different there for us to have a listen to if refreshingly I think it's just nice to have something different to get our teeth stuck into to be honest with you so I'm going to let you go first again okay well I think I mean I in genres like this I know I can get into trouble sometimes because you know there's certain sounds that are more you know indicative of the style like for example that thing they call a snare that sound before and I guess that's just what people like to use personally at some parts of the song I would just like to feel it snap harder you know it just felt a little bit because it's it's a dirty song it's hard it's got an edge to it right and then it's it just feels like that that that thing after a while was just like oh man I want to feel that thing hit me in the face sometimes you know it just needs to be there but the biggest problem I think with this mix is the bottom end and that's really I know the probably most important part about this kind of music I mean vocally I was fine there was some interesting stereo things happening like his vocal was very middle but occasionally I feel these little stereo bleeds there I was actually wanting to feel more stereo but the problem that I feel with the mix is definitely the bottom end the bass and the kick are kind of melting into ones there's not a lot of definition between the two I'd love to feel more snap with the kick and sometimes that's finding a higher frequency up high that you can just hit almost sort of where the mallet hits the drum and then just offsetting that bass from where the kick is sitting and get them sitting side by side a little bit better tighten that up a little bit that would really create more energy because there's definitely we want to feel big bottom end with this track and there's elements of it there but it's not hitting as hard enough in the chest so definitely want to feel some more energy down there so I would definitely focus on that bottom end get that bass and that kick drum working better together and I think I think he'd be on his way from there and maybe give us some more stereo stuff fill up some of the space on the outside of that mix a little bit at times even though there are some cool things happening there that's that's what I got okay this is one of those awkward occasions where I appear to be in disagreement with both you and people in the chat and it's funny because it makes me feel like I must be wrong because everyone else I liked the low end of this track I like but maybe I should qualify that I can see though that I think the bass itself was what I really liked it was just going in there as it should do but yeah probably now that you say I can see that it could just add a little bit more thump with the kick and I think it's really interesting that you pointed out that the intuitive thing might be to go for the low end of the kick but sometimes it's that sort of snap that you get a little bit higher up which actually can have some impact so yeah maybe I want to feel a bit more thudding into my chest here and there with that and what I thought about the we'll call it the snare although you know not a traditional snare really important part of the track of course it's going to be in this genre music especially it's going to be a very constant thing this is not the genre music where you necessarily not saying you can't but where you necessarily have flams and ghost notes and things like that it's much more of a straightforward kind of a snare thing going on there and I know that as you say there's a little bit of an edgy track and I know that they wanted to be a little bit of coarseness is that the right word I guess to this snare I thought it was a little bit too much so you're running a little bit of a fine line where you want to have a little bit of an edge maybe like even if it's a little bit distorted sounding yeah I get that it became a little bit of an irritant to me personally as I was listening to it you know through the song so I would say it's not so much to do with volume as it is to do with EQ there so there's just some little high frequencies in there which I was just finding okay that's kind of annoying me now like the vocals I thought could just come up just a tad not a lot but just a tad please I like the vocals though love the keys in there love the spooky sounding keys that were going on in the background and this is what I disagree with you Dan I like the panning there was some nice panning going on from my perspective I know you're it dugs in agreement with you so I'm disagreeing with you both but yeah I thought it was some nice stereo spread in there I think probably Cooley you're probably being a bit harsh on yourself you're saying you've been an engineer for years but you're finding mixing more difficult but I think you're in the ballpark just it's just refinement it really probably is just a matter of having some third parties listening to to give you a different perspective to make those final decisions this is close close to release in my opinion and yeah I mean as much as I can judge this genre of music which I only listen to with my teenage son who listens to this kind of stuff listen for what it's worth I mean I know you said at the beginning of the show that all these songs were in progress that they needed work and when my first impression of this track was sounds pretty good actually I had to really dig and start listening like that real fine tooth comb listening so I would say he's not far away with this track at all just you know there's a couple little ideas that come here I think there's just some small thing like I think this is a good example because sometimes we get lost in that spiral of trying to make a track better and it gets worse if you look at this mix and say you know what this mix is not far away so we're talking small moves we're talking small moves and judge those moves as you make them don't go six small moves deep and realize you just screwed up your mix like one move at a time these are small moves I think the track is pretty close give it a good master and I think it's probably good good point really really good point Dan I think now before we move on to our third track it's time for another distro jingle and I'm gonna get in the hot seat here I may regret this hang on your turn guitar we're gonna see that beauty we're in acoustic now um let me let me um adjust the microphones I don't know obviously it's not gonna be a great I'm using a dynamic mic as well to pick up a voice and acoustic guitar now sorry well Dan did a little gear review we talked about tuners earlier I'm gonna show you my tuner maybe I should tune up do you know what it is looks like a webcam it doesn't look like a webcam I can't even remember what this tuner is called it's so terrible hey who knows what it is do you know this stupid tuner cost me like about $200 who would ever spend that much on a tuner it's a Peterson it's a Peterson tuner right Peterson Peterson but it's really really good it's not $200 good but it's really really good it's so accurate for $200 I think better vibrate can you hear the guitar yes we're in the people's key of G there but no suggest a key suggest a key for me Dan that's not I get to suggest a key you can suggest a key yeah how about C sharp minor oh why would you do that to me oh it's a nice one that's actually easy if you think about it alright I'll put a K form for that C sharp minor can I give you a little guitar tip after we're in minor keys today making distro kids sad let's have a couple of lyrics anyone in the chat who's going to be quick enough what would you suggest distro kid what does it mean to you what's good about it Dan a point about distro kid give me something a point about distro kid it make you feel like family on a rainy day distro kid you are my family kid did you say something about a rainy day on a rainy day you took my blues away distro kid this is from Mimo it make my kidneys kick what does that mean Mimo are you such an Mimo that's the only thing I can think of oh distro kid let's go for the solo man are we in sync maybe we should check that in the future because we could jam together you know what I wanted you to play when I said C sharp minor I wanted you to play this the C sharp with an open E on top that's what I thought you were going to play you're right though I should have done that by the way you could play D major too you can get that sort of jangly ringy sound going on there I know you're not a big rush fan but that's an alex life something with those open notes on top always I'm glad you I've been looking for some inspiration for a new song so that may well be it there you go you can do that hey do you find that as I say Pete Johns was talking about songwriting with his lovely guest April Keys earlier on and one thing I find for people if you're lacking inspiration if you're a guitar player do some different tuning some open tunings and things like that they can just kick you off in a direction you would never go on and it forces you to play shapes with your fingers that you don't normally play on the guitar as well which is just a really healthy healthy thing to do and the other thing is is even if you don't play it well if you're a guitar player jump onto a piano and start writing some tunes it would just again unfortunately as players and as writers we often end up in the same ruts don't we sort of favorite things that we like to do so anything that can just push you out what do you do Dan to kind of just give yourself some inspiration I drink what do I do you know what I the best way to get out of a rut is to listen to some music you know lift us you know just pick a song and learn it you know learn a new chord you know I mean I have chord books sometimes but they're very dry I need to often I'll be in the car and I'll hear something damn and I can hear a riff in my head I'll get it at home so I think just listen to music you know because we forget sometimes when we write our own music and we're in our little studios here we kind of get lost in our little world but if we think about why we started playing music in the first place is because we like listening to music I find I don't listen to music enough sometimes I haven't been listening to any music so I'll just stop I'll watch some videos on YouTube so anything just something musical just to kind of get the brain I think you know this is the value to me I know some people are almost I'm going to say the word snobby about this song writers where they only ever play originals and they go out and do gigs and I only play originals in the song series and but this is the value in playing covers if you play covers and just kind of totally mimic people of course I don't think that's art it's not really worthwhile pursuit however if you can look at it as learning exercise so when you learn a cover try and you can then try and get yourself in the head of that writer how did they approach that chord change or that rhythm change or what have you of course this is I think why for many people Lenin and McCartney is of such an inspiration because the width of what they did musically within their writing for example is if you just studied a Beatles song book or something you would you would you know you would learn a lot about songwriter honestly I'm saying that not as a big Beatles fan I'm not huge Beatles fan in that way I'm not a fanboy but as a writer you just can't ignore what you can learn just by playing some of their song that will throw you off in a different direction I reckon for most people that you know what a channel we both love and so did two million other people Paul David's he did an analysis on Penny Lane I recommend if everyone in this chat hasn't seen that video watch Paul David's analysis of Penny Lane it'll blow you away just to just to see what went into the creation of that song another suggestion here from music life crypto he's saying Pink Floyd too I agree with you there Pink Floyd for me more so for feel as well you know just for pure feel in music just wonderful stuff and what else it's another interesting comment up here two new band names have been suggested here Dan creative rocker or lonely source I don't know about lonely sauce that sounds that sounds wrong doesn't it that times into that reach round earlier we don't know we're not going down there we're not going down there no we're not doing that I don't want to talk about my lonely source in public god great rocker I feel like I've got Pete Johns on the show things have gone down here on things just getting filled in all right so moving on to our final piece of music for the show this is I'm going to put this up and allow you to embarrass yourself pronouncing it here Dan did you write it backwards or something oh my I could probably do a better job reading it backwards okay I'll let you know it has been you have a go at it yeah go to Kyengie that's so terrible thankfully the person who sent this in Brian has put this phonetically for me so it's 2C Eng 2C Eng had you said that first I would have laughed at you no fenced it 2C Eng you are so wonderful thank you for that so it wasn't Brian who sent it but Dave my friend Brian and I decided a musical collaboration about six months ago to write and record some songs we've both been in bands in the past but home recording has been a massive learning curve for us your YouTube videos have helped enormously we've sent a song called you're so wonderful I don't think the song was written about me but now I like to think that maybe it's not particularly complex it's definitely written about me and deliberately retro we've got this far with the mix and need a little help from more experiences it would be great if you could consider listening to the song Brian plays guitar and bass and I sing to and I do all the midi stuff we're both trying to learn about recording and mixing our band is called Tucky Eng in brackets 2C Eng we'd like to get to a stage where we feel we can upload upload our music but we realise we're not quite there yet okay let's have a listen to this piece of music and see if we can help them get to the stage where they may release music to the world probably through DistroKid I would hope 2C Eng final song of the show there Dan, sorry I cut it off a bit short it stopped straining there but anyway, I think we got the gist of it there it was just on the outro so Dan, I'd love to hear your input first of all so that was kind of interesting I tried to decide where I want to go first so this might sound weird but I was listening to it and I felt like I was listening to two songs because what was going on in my right ear felt like in a complete it was like there was a wall here and I could hear some stuff going on here that was reasonably in time to the rest of the song but it wasn't and then everything else was over here and there was some stuff kind of sitting there in the middle it was just like that tambourine hi-hat thing which if that was supposed to be connected to the drums they were in two completely different rooms like they were just you know what it's like, okay deliberately retro, it reminds me like you're at some 60s prom and some girl in this big boopy dress snapping her gum in her mouth and she's just sitting there going like this at the side of the stage I'll see Davey in the chat here Dave I told you it can be scary having Dave on the show I mean that the song is great I should have said that first by the way I don't like to come off as an asshole I know I really like the song but the mix needs a lot of work and I think it just sounds to me like things were sort of like splattered all over the stereo feel that was like that tambourine or hi-hat whatever it was was just so prominent it was, I mean it had great space and air, I could hear it clearly it was right here, but it was totally disconnected to the rest of the percussion of the song it was not connected so that told me right there now in sort of placing the instruments like you know I know a lot of people talk about echo and reverbs and stuff like that but I think there's a fundamental issue here that it's almost like they need to step back because it's a great song and it deserves the effort it definitely deserves the effort so I don't want this to come off as just criticism for criticism's sake and not at all I think it's definitely worth the effort but that told me that we kind of got to stop sit back and sort of the song needs to be built up properly it's just kind of like, it sounds like a demo where things were just kind of thrown around a little bit to me and I hope I'm not offending them by saying so but that, there was another instrument I don't know if it was a guitar or something that suddenly was so prominent and clear on the right side and it felt very disconnected to the rest of the song so I could go down a laundry list of stuff which I won't I know you've got some points as well but that's what I would kind of like step back and really, and if you can get help to kind of get through some of this the song is really worth it actually I think it's a really fun energetic track and it deserves a good mix this was interesting to listen to because I think with the first song we talked about getting the basics right, you know even before the mix and before the recording in the first song with with Sam Juror or Sam Jr we talked about some timing issues when I first heard this immediately I was like, oh there's some timing issues here again but after listening to it now a couple of times there's only one timing issue and that's the tambourine if you take that tambourine out Dave, you're going to find the rest of this song is actually in time it's a strange one because I haven't quite heard it and it was completely panned for me over to the right hand side as well but I want to talk about that Dave as well because it wasn't the only thing that was hard panned to the right if you look at this and I didn't have it on a meter but I felt that there was something going on there and you've gone, oh let's do some hard panning with some things but you've made too many decisions to the right hand side just take a look at that I don't mind hard panning but you've still going to find some balance eventually and tambourine probably is not the best instrument look Dave, I'm going to suggest you this is going to be hard just get rid of that tambourine it doesn't need it it doesn't add much to the song and again I'm suggesting I'm going to suggest here again that potentially if there's latency issues that you know if you're playing I don't think it was an acoustic tambourine it may have been a virtual tambourine even when you're playing that on a keyboard you've got latency issues things can go out there but anyway the timing is I felt, by the way I was getting a Jeff Lynn vibe from this and it's weird I was going oh it's not yellow but it's Jeff Lynn some there if that makes any sense whatsoever because let's face it Jeff Lynn was yellow but I was feeling that vibe and then I didn't mind it didn't mind it at all actually it was good but that then is a big production when you go down that style of music there's lots of layers going on there and I felt like at the stage you're at with mixing and you're saying you're just getting going with it you were trying to do too much you were trying to do too much of the fancy stuff there was a bit of weird panning going on here without sort of just focusing on the basics of just pure balance you know so what I would do Dave is just going to yeah that's great it's great fun to do these things which are kind of ear candy but you've got to get that sort of basics in place first of all so I thought that you know but not a million miles out on a lot of things I have to say if we take that tambourine which was very noticeable out of the equation not a million miles away I felt the bass could come up a little bit lots of people touched upon the the I'm going to say reverb but echo delay being a little too much I think there's an argument to be said that for stylistic reasons it can be that prominent but I probably think especially towards the end it just went a little too hard maybe um and what else did I have in my notes here there was a really interesting break in the middle wasn't there which just came out of the blue which maybe when that comes from I like to be surprised that's good yeah also the electric guitar which sounded really nice and grungy at the beginning can I just play the beginning again if I can if this is going to work oh it's not going to work there's another weird thing on me let's just listen to that guitar at the beginning when it comes in don't prove me wrong ah yeah I thought some nice tone there on the guitar it was pretty good and there was probably a little bit of doubling going on there as well that was good but it felt a little bit too loud compared to the rest of the mix just a little bit too not too much but a little bit so that tambourine confused because I wasn't sure originally if that was the hi-hat on the drums so I thought oh is that the hi-hat and then and I'm still kind of confused about that do you want to listen again just that beginning oh so the tambourine is here there is a hi-hat there is a hi-hat hiding under there so if they lose the tambourine let's get those drums working and I think we can start there yeah I think so so Dave I hope that helps if you have a tambourine player in your band I hope he's not absolutely devastated at this moment in time let's face it being relegated to tambourine is one step away from being fired so just get it over with you're still in the band you're playing tambourine Linda McCartney I think I'm thinking more Yoko no since we were Dave says it's a virtual tambourine I thought so yes it's a good thing Dave isn't it the virtual tambourines don't have any feelings what so ever tambourine guy owns the PA that's true just to reiterate and I think it is worth Dave's probably copped a little bit Dave and Brian I should say have copped a little bit of criticism here but I want to really reiterate the song is worth it this is actually quite a big production and easy to get wrong very easy to get wrong with so much going on there so you've had a good crack at it you should keep going at this one the song is worth it and don't feel bad that we've had a few things to say we'd all struggle a little bit with a mix which has got so many elements going on in it Dave I admire you it honestly is and I mean this sincerely it's definitely worth it it's not an easy mix but keep at it and listen to some references too you know one thing here's one tip I'll talk about with percussionists especially sometimes you want to listen to it and figure out the perspective that's sometimes people get it wrong when you're mixing a drum kit for example are you mixing it from the perspective of the drummer or from the audience start there and then you can start placing things and then build that sort of sets the relationship where you can start placing everything else you know your hi-hats on this side or this side if you're placing your vocals guitars you start building it around that foundation but start as a listener and figure like what would it sound like if I was standing in front of the kit or if I was the drummer decide that first branch everything up from there it's really interesting that you say that because I have a mixed relationship with that kind of idea first of all I think for example with orchestral pieces I don't know much but when I started to use some orchestral things in my piece of music I kind of studied the orchestra I thought in a real orchestra where did the different elements sit in terms of in a 3D way closer and further away and I think it's a really good but of course at the end of the day the studio is a great place to break the rules to have things that aren't possible in real life as it were as well and if you feel for some piece of music you just want to put a snare drum right over there on the right or on the left I think that's valid as well but I mean Pete Johns was talking about this earlier with his guest on his show which again I'm encouraging people to go back and watch it's an old thing before you break the rules it's good to learn the rules that you're breaking right so it's nice to get an idea of how is a drum kit laid out how does it sound in a real environment and as you say is it from the drummer's perspective or from the audience perspective as well you know some instruments like you said messing with the formula definitely works with some things like a drum set just doesn't work if you mess that up like I realize percussion different things you got some bongos, you got some things happening some shakers you can play around but a drum set is an instrument so it has if the hi-hat's all the way up front it sounds discombobulated that's why I was saying start there did you just use the word discombobulated on this show my god we're going to get a bit high brow here folks discombobulated there's our next team for next week I want to thank the submissions that we've had in to listen to this it's actually been a really good show the music to listen to today it's been really interesting definitely I think if I could take anything away from this show personally it would be to remind myself of some of the basics before we start mixing at the tracking stage and even before we even get into the studio rehearsal timing, tuning all of that good preparation is really really important because it's such a pain when you're trying to fix that in the mix in fact often impossible to fix it in the mix vocalists are lucky we can fix some pitch and to a certain degree actually with Melodyne we can fix things in guitar pitch wise but you don't really want to be doing that you really want to be getting it right at the beginning and timing is another key part you know of music so we can all learn from that we can all remember to get the basics right before we hit record so that's my biggest takeaway from the show Dan what's your biggest takeaway don't ever come to the show again I should have been prepared before I came on this show but no I think you nailed it on the head you know you and I we have an ongoing thing with our YouTube channels and sometimes we're under such pressure to move forward and get something done and it probably reminds us weekly how important preparation is because sometimes it feels like preparation gets in the way of creating right but actually being unprepared I can't think of anything more that would kill creativity so sometimes taking that minute as we talk about writing a little script or getting some ideas jotted down so we know what we want to do I think with music being prepared it's a bad habit to get into when you work alone you know lonely rocker I work alone but you know if you ever want to get to the point where you're collaborating with others you've got to be prepared when you come into those sessions so why not practice it now get good at preparing yourself for the session this is something I'm afraid it's a bit boring but if we ever do videos on you know basics of mixing I'm afraid I always include that section on you know make sure your tracks are named meaningfully and perhaps you know when you can colour code them and things like that I'm afraid those things as boring and bland as that is and it doesn't sound as interesting as sidechain compression or something like this but it just helps you out so much those kinds of bits of preparation before you actually start mixing even I kind of view gain staging a little bit like that as well actually I was about to say that that's part of that process for me name your tracks, colour code them I gain stage everything I know Andrew Shep says he doesn't but you know he does in his own way even the mixes I do for my youtube videos there's only 4 or 5 tracks in those things but I gain stage everything so everything is sitting nicely and then I can mix that show in 20 minutes I'm a big believer in gain staging we're going to be off topic here we'll say particularly in the digital realm that it's not necessary anymore and what have you but you see I think the value of it it just gets you thinking about where your levels are and I always describe you can get under the misconception that gain staging is always a thing you do at a specific stage alright but it's not, it's throughout the process it starts when you set the level on your audio interface a healthy level when you're recording an electric guitar you're gain staging every time you add a plugin and you're volume matching you're gain staging it's about monitoring your levels all the way through the process it's so important so I think gain staging gets you in that mindset more than anything else before I hit this saturation plugin where are my levels at how's that affecting that plugin really important stuff listen a couple of people and they said they were new to mixing and the one big mistake that people make when they're learning and I was guilty of that I had a song that I had written it had 48-50 tracks in it and I was mixing it and mixing it I didn't know what I was doing I was learning but I heard something in my head and I would go for it and you get caught in a spiral that you just can't fix it there's no fixing a mix that's completely off the tracks you learn as you get into this is that that process is critically important because by the time you get to the end of that first pass you've moved the ball forward because if you've spent I had a song I spent a year on it it was like around and around and around and around my iPhone is full of probably version and version of that I hear it sometimes and I listen but the only way to get that right eventually was to go over and then build like you said start the project properly get the game staging right that is something that will continue to throw out the mix and build it up until it's finished and by the end like that last track that we heard where I said small moves because I didn't want to push it back and start screwing up what was sounding like a pretty decent mix to begin with with small moves and that's really the goal is to get to that point where we get to the end you're just combing some things out small moves getting it to sound right like it's done and move on and you can't do that unless you had a good methodical process to get there absolutely and the other thing we're getting a lot of love for game staging in the chat I can see just quickly I might as well answer this question while we're here this comes up a fair amount and it's a little bit this is a little bit of a weird thing with game staging where I guess people want to kind of think there's this thing where you follow a book of levels and I may have been guilty of suggesting some of these levels in my own videos music life, cryptos saying minus db game stage to give room for plugins so can I just touch on this Dan quickly there's two things in my opinion you're going to be looking at during game staging there's sort of what I'm going to describe as rms or the kind of average level of something and peak as well so look of course as long as your peak is below zero good a lot of people like to have it below around about say minus six for peaks just to give a bit of head room that's fine I'd sort of look at it differently I think on I think of this is what I think about Dan I don't know if you do but for peak based instruments I'm talking about drums things with a very you know quick attack yeah just they're mostly transient at the beginning I think of them in terms of peak because they're kind of I'm talking about individual drums sorry not as a kid but so their rms is not so important whereas something like a guitar probably the the average level of is way more important so in that case music live crypto I personally do try and get those types of instruments guitars vocals pianos and things are around about minus 18 decibels and that's because in the digital realm that equates to zero DB yeah so yeah so there's this sort of idea going round it's not always true these days but a lot of plugins are sort of what should I say they're made so that if they're true to life then you're just going to start to get some of that nice distortion at around about zero DB VU which equates to minus DB I've forgotten the term now for this not DB DBFS is it I can't remember decibel full scale so there's an idea in there I don't know if it's always true music live crypto but I think it probably is true here and there so I've tended to stick to around about that if you don't get it exactly that doesn't have to minus 18 could be minus 22 or minus 16 don't get hooked up on a very very specific DB I call it safely in the green I that's what in my gain staging video I talked about yeah you can look at that level six minus 16 minus 18 but if you look at our digital meters we have the green we have the yellow cherry on top the red we don't want to see you know because it's a cumulative thing too if you're bouncing up high in the yellows and then you're you're you're clipping your master bus before you start that's the problem right yeah so I said bring everything down use clip gain at the beginning just to bring everything down safely and then you're tucked into the green you know eight minus 18 could be a good reference but if you're tucked down nicely in the green that there's huge dynamic range in digital signals it's not like an analog where you got to really saturate it otherwise it's hissy and you got to get you know because gain staging on tape was the exact opposite thing it was like filling it up so you don't hear the noise right where in digital we have such a huge dynamic range we don't have to fill it up we can be down there and then there is still a noise floor in the corner to record things too too quietly but yeah I agree with Dan here just a healthy I mean Mimo's just said in here consistency is key and I think that's very important you know if you're finding this is a little sidetrack is a little mixed tip thing but if you're finding say you've got all your faders in your mix and they're going to be different levels but if you're finding a lot of them are up near you know zero db but you've got one or two that are right down the bottom there you haven't gained stage those tracks very well that's what it's telling you and you haven't got sort of much resolution down there so a small change on the fader is going to make actually a big difference to the sound whereas at the top end of the fader you can make more gradual and more subtle changes with kind of big movements so just if you're starting out and you're finding I've always got these tracks which are turned all the way down yet you haven't gained stage and that consistency in level is not there and it can really make it much harder to mix a track this is the point at the end of the day it's not to tick box and say aren't I clever I did the proper thing I did gain staging we're not here for that I found years ago when I started to gain stage it just improved my mixing process really really quickly it was like ah a light bulb kind of a thing right for me personally anyway so I wouldn't not do it ever these days well by the way when you're gain staging at the beginning it's about clip gaining it's not touching a faders they should all be at zero oh yes every DAW has a clip gain setting where you're adjusting the level on it's like it's like the input level of that file I need to do I need to do a video on this the difference between gain and volume I talked about it in my game staging video so what Dan's saying there folks is that the reason we're putting the faders up to zero is because when we're using our metering we can't tell where the gain actually is in a metering sense unless we've got that fader at zero is that the best explanation for it Dan I keep them at zero because I want the full range of the fader so if I can adjust the clip gain to get it set right then I have the full latitude of the fader when I'm mixing if I'm bringing a track down because it's too loud before I start mixing I got nowhere to go if I got to bring it down so if I keep everything at zero and I clip gain so now I have full latitude of that fader those faders will be far more effective in your mix nice, good stuff we should have talked about this at the beginning of the show maybe well if anyone left and missed this they can always check the replay now if you're still here we are about to say goodbye and move on with our Fridays I'm moving on with my Friday you're moving into your Thursday night Dan just hit the like button for me that would be helpful we didn't have Kyonra here this week to remind everyone of that so if you could hit the like button that would be great if you're watching on the replay as well and you've got this far first of all thank you for making an hour and 18 minutes into the show and we'd love to hear your comments as well and the replay it's always helpful to hear your input don't forget to send your music in for the show even if you've sent it in before we're happy to hear your new music that you've created and would love to offer you our feedback I don't know who I've got as a guest next week on the show I haven't planned that far ahead who knows who could it be nice to have you here Dan looking forward to seeing what comes out on your channel this week what have you got planned give us a little I am having a little fun this week and someone on this live stream might be a small part of it actually so stay tuned who could it be who could that be I don't know thank you to everyone who's been here in the live chat thank you to Dan from The Lonely Rocker and thank you to everybody who sent their music in what a fun show and we will see you