 Welcome to Featured Artists Live, a weekly show to discuss and listen to your music. With help from my other YouTuber buddies, we hope to give you words of encouragement, guidance or simply just enjoy your wonderful creations. I'd like to thank our sponsor DistroKid, all of the wonderful artists and all of you for watching. Now, let's get on with the show. Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. Happy New Year to you and welcome to the first show for 2022 of Featured Artists Live. It is 7am here in Perth, Western Australia, wherever you are in the world, welcome. It's nice to see you here. I see we've got a couple here already of our regulars. We have Doug here from Washington State, always good to see you Doug. Of course, we have the insanely wonderful and talented Mimo Japan who's a moderator in the live chat today. And we also have Danny Goh here, nice to see you Danny. So I'll be saying hi to other people later on in the show. I'd like to say thank you to the sponsor for today's show. This is DistroKid. If you follow that link that I'm pointing to right now and you haven't signed up for DistroKid yet, you'll get a further 7% off of the regular price. And I'll get a little kickback from that, no extra charge to you. So thank you in advance if you go ahead and do that. I've got some great songs coming up in the show. I was mentioning on my little sort of promotional video on Facebook, not too long ago, that if there is a theme for today's show, whatsoever, and it's always accidental, the theme, it's that all of these three songs have been created in some way or other using a minimal amount of equipment. And at least a couple of the cases by people who have told me they don't have an awful lot of experience as well in producing music. I actually think we've got three good songs on the show today, which are probably going to receive a little bit of critique from my guests. But it's probably not going to be overly necessary. So I hope that this can inspire you to realize that you don't need loads and loads of equipment. You don't need loads and loads of experience and you can still produce great music. Now, if you would like to submit your music to be on future episodes of this show, which is ongoing, then please do follow the link in the description down below and submit your music to me. It doesn't have to be the best, most polished music in the world to be on the show. I pick songs based upon different different reasons, you know, maybe because they sound great, maybe because I think they'd be interesting because we can talk about what can be worked on with them, or just maybe they're unusual in some way or other. So anyway, I see we've got some buffering going on. I hope that things will improve with that. Thanks for letting me know on that, Doug. And let's just say some more hellos just quickly to some people in the chat. If you are in the chat by the way, could you hit the like button for me to let other people know they should join our show? So nice to hear from West Sussex in the UK from Smart Arts Inc. I feel like I have to be careful the way I say that. Nice to see you here and who else have we got in here? We also have Pete. This is a this is a comment out of context. I don't know what it means, but Pete Guns, nice to see you. Did you touch them up? Oh, probably talking about the thumbnail. Yes, it's just a little bit of thumb touching up of my guests. Talking about my guests just sounds wrong, doesn't it? I've been touching up my guests. OK, so let's talk first of all to well, an interesting guest, I have to say, he's been on the show many, many times. I've always had to introduce him as the illustrious leader of the best Facebook group about home recording. But now on this week, I'm going to introduce him as possibly the newest home recording YouTuber on YouTube. We're going to be saying hello to Mr. Ricky T Brown. How you going? Hey, hey. Hi, everybody. Sorry about that. Happy New Year. Yeah, I just want to let everybody know that no, he hasn't because if he did, he'd get a left hook. OK, so that ain't happening. He lies. He'd love it. Now, Ricky, you have entered into the world of YouTube this week. Yes, indeed. How's it feel? I'm delirious, mate. Yeah. Now, listen, I know you two had your doubts as to whether I'd actually get one of them out by New Year. So that was a bit of an incentive, if you like. So, yes, I am now a YouTuber. It's true, isn't it that you did tell myself and our other guests who were here at the moment, Dan, that you would be releasing a video. I think you promised us what was it, the third of January? You promised us originally, I seem to remember. Yeah. And did you get it out on the third of January? No, I did it early, mate. You did? On the first. So I'm really impressed and you were going to be, you of course were wishing people a happy new year. And speaking mostly to the wonderful participants of your Facebook page. But tell me, what are the plans going forward for your Home Recording Studio Zone YouTube channel? Well, it's basically to steal all of your ideas, mate. Yeah, because you seem to you seem to have done OK. But on a serious note, the whole idea behind it is to have a channel that's tailors itself to the membership of my Facebook group, which is growing fast every day. So I kind of know what the kind of thing that they want to see. Because we get so many posts a day and you know what their patterns are. So let's enhance that with a YouTube page, YouTube channel. Sorry. And hopefully. That, you know, they will get a lovely response of that if we're giving them what they want to see. So it's good to see. I like to see many, many, many YouTube channels, you know, on music production. There's lots of different perspectives that people take. And I'm very excited to see what perspective you take. You're always a great contributor to this show anyway. Now, I don't want to make you hit any bigger, so I'll stop there. But we'll say hello to a man who's got a huge head. But it's mostly because he's much closer to the camera than he is. Dan, the lonely rocker. There he is. What's up guys? Hey, Dan, how are you going? Look, I don't know if I need to introduce you, but ladies and gentlemen, if you need to know about acoustic panels at all, Dan Jaman, follow the link in the description. By the way, I have put a link in the chat for Ricky's new channel. And even though he's only going to be wishing you a happy new year, folks, please go and subscribe to his channel right away. I feel there's some good stuff coming. Anyway, Dan, I feel like I want to look this way. I have to look at Dan on my screen. My screen's actually over that side of my studio, but I feel like I need to look at him. So I'm going to do this weird head position. Dan, how do you look like the thumbnail? Oh, I can do it. That's true. Big eyes. Dan, let's get down to this. Well, how's the new year? How does a Jewish man celebrate Christmas and what's going on? Well, first of all, I feel really inspired by Ricky's leap of creativity. I think I'm going to start a Facebook group. Yes, I've done that. I actually have one, but I don't use it. We all have the same page now. I'm excited to see what Ricky does. You know, we've all been pushing him in the behind the scenes and he's out there. And it was, yeah, I thank you both for your encouragement. Yes. Yes. You need to share that smile with the world, my friend. Absolutely. Between Dan pushing you behind the scenes and me touching you up, it should be going forward really quickly. No, it's fine. Hell is one hand. Guys, I have, I think we've got some really interesting music to kick off. OK, 2020 here. And I'm going to sort of get straight into it. We can have a chat in between, of course. But I'm going to start off with, as I say, I don't ever intend a theme before the show, but then I sit back and I look at the songs I've picked. It's always like, OK, this ended up being a theme. And this is one of those ones where, you know, people tend to have in these these examples, tend to have not used an awful lot of equipment for what they've done, which I think is always a sort of an inspiring thing in a way to hear what people can do with just a little now. With this first song, they've used more equipment than the next two examples. And there's a couple of bits of kind of really nice equipment in there, to be honest with you. But mostly, mostly it's kind of bare bones ish, you know. So the I'm going to let Ricky, because he needs to, you know, learn about pronouncing things on YouTube. Ricky, this is the name of the artist and the name of the song. You can introduce that for me. OK. The name of the artist is Fat Fox. And the song is The Breeze. I love the way that Ricky always goes into like DJ mode when I ask him. There's a little pause, isn't there? And then his voice changes just a little bit to like a radio. Listen, I don't mess it up like I did last year. Yeah, so I've been extra careful now. That fox, I hope it's not about me. Yeah, I was going to apologize to any four legged furry friends out there. We're not meaning to fat shame you or anything like that. If you are carrying a little bit of weight after Christmas. But anyway, so I'll apologize to Fat Fox in advance there. Now, Fat Fox agree. I'm not sure which country they're from or anything like that. That information I'm going to guess that they're English for some reason. I just think the style of music is quite typical of an English band. I could be completely wrong. You know, they can let me know about that. But anyway, they're new to audio production. They've learned this is, you know, listen to this, Ricky. They've learned most things from YouTube and community forums. So if Fat Fox are watching, I can definitely recommend that, of course, you watch the Lonely Rocker, Creative Source and the new H.R.S.Z. YouTube channel representing an awesome Facebook community. I'm really glad that Ricky's wearing that V-shirt because it helps me to remember the actor. I was going to say, I can see you're in the picture. A little visual cue. Thank you. So I'm recorded in recorded in this spare room using Cakewalk and a bit of an old audio interface, Tascam US 2000. I've never used the Tascam interface. You said one of them. Yeah, you used to have one of those. It looks quite capable when I looked at it. It is. It is. A channel rack mount sort of thing. So anyway, mostly the plugins they use with FabFilter and Waves plugins and some software since they mastered it using Ozone 9. As many people do, and I use parts of the Ozone package to do my mastering. So if I haven't used that for your mastering, then definitely check it out. Now, this is where it gets a little bit outside of the bare bones in the sense that I did read this and I thought, OK, they're using for vocals a Neumann TLM 102 large diaphragm connector microphone. Now, I haven't actually used this microphone, but Neumann, obviously, if you don't know and you're new to recording, they may not be a household name for you. But once you get into recording and you watch enough YouTube videos, you'll realize that Neumann regard as possibly the number one brand for microphones, it's certainly some of their models and pretty much everything they produce is of a reasonable quality. The TLM 102 is more or less, I'm going to say, is like an entry level kind of vocal mic. They do it, they do a 103 and a 102, and they kind of put it, I think a lot of people knew to record and say they're still expensive in a way. It's a fair outline of Neumann terms. They're quite they're unaffordable. Let's use the word affordable, which means expensive. But if you save up hard enough, you might get one. Right, so Neumann TLM 102. So I'm not surprised I'm going to preempt you guys and say there's actually a reasonable vocal sound on this. Although you may want to comment on the mix with the vocals, I think. But anyway, drums, there was they used an LISIS DM 10 plus addictive twos. Adjective drums to the drum sounds. Guitar was a PRS DGT into a line six helix. There's a lot of line sixes coming up recently, and I know Dan hates them. But we'll we'll we'll go over that. We'll just breeze up. Bass was a square Jaguar direct input. There's a lot of people go direct in with bass. I do too quite often and I use a blend of DI and I'll either mic up my amp, my bass amp or if I'm feeling lazy, I'll just go for a bass amp sim, which there are some really good ones around and blending the two. But you can also use a DI bass guitar. It could often just sound good or by itself for certain types of music. Anyway, moving on from there, just a keyboard MIDI controller and they were using Dimension Pro synth, which is I think used to come with Cakewalk many years ago, Dimension Pro. And that makes up their synth sounds. That was a long introduction. Let's listen to the music. This is Fat Fox. I'll introduce it again, Ricky, because you sounded way too DJ for me. Fat Fox. Fat. Let's have a listen to Fat Fox, The Breeze. Those are a bit of a long pause at the end there, wasn't it? So I've got Dan up full screen. I didn't mean to put Dan up full screen. I'm just going to roll with it. I'm just going to roll with it. There's so many little technical issues going on here at the moment. I can't tell you. Anyway, Dan. Me. Time for me. It's time for the opinion of Dan, the Lonely Rock. Fat Fox. I liked it. You know what? It was a very catchy tune. Lots of guitar, which is always a good thing, regardless of what technology he may be using or not using. Some really tasty part. I love the stereo spread with the guitar. It's something I always listen for in guitars where the main riff was over here. There was some other bits over here. A nice little organ in the background was a nice little touch. I love the vocals. It was a very present mix, if that makes sense. It wasn't overbearing. There wasn't too much in there, very clean. I have nothing bad to say about the mix. It was not overproduced. I mean, when I say underproduced, I don't mean that in a bad sense, because it was very realistic, sounding and present, I think, is what I'm trying to say. And it was a good song. You know what? It was a good, fun, good, fun song. And what do you think? I guess what I'm always trying to do on this show is when we find good music, it's not just to say, great. But what do you think sort of really works about a song like that? What was the first thing that sort of grabbed you about it? Well, that's what I'm saying about being when I say present. I just feel like, you know, when especially more amateur people are learning to make songs, I don't like I never know at what level these people are or how they're achieving these productions. But we hear a lot of people who are learning. So we hear a lot of things that need fixing or things like that, where this felt like they were just very realistic with what they had. They didn't try to overdo it. Everything had its place. You know, does it sound like, you know, full, full blown production? Maybe not quite yet. But I have nothing bad to say about the mix because I feel it's it's clean. Everything is present. I heard everything I felt that needed to be there. I mean, I can't say if things weren't. They're supposed to be there that I couldn't hear them. But it just felt like a very clean mix. And it's nice to hear because I know we listen to tracks for people at different stages of production and a lot of people are musicians first. We need to I think viewers need to understand that a lot of these are musicians who are trying to record their own music, right, as opposed to the other way around. So while the music performance might be exceptional, it's often where we hear sort of the weak link is in the production. But in this case, it was very listenable. I it was a very smooth and clean, clean and airy mix to my ears. How did you feel about the the non guitar solo solo? Did you did you pick up on that there was no need in the break? Yeah, but there was. But it's funny because I was listening for these like little tasty bits and what was either the bridge to the link to the chorus or the B verse. I don't know what you call it. It was like this little three note heavy riff that I was kind of waiting for it to kick in, but it was really nice that they kind of threw it in there like, forget it, we're going back to where we were kind of thing. And that happened a couple of times in the song. Yeah. And but I was listening that the guitar was like more on the right side of the mix. And then suddenly there was this little riff happening on the left side. Yes. That's right. And a little bit down in the mix. Maybe that's what you were talking about. I don't know. It's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. And you can't I like stuff. Guitar is a great instrument for doing that as a guitar player myself. It's very easy just to be complacent. But I love playing with stereo tricks with guitars. There's so many cool things you can do. Doubling is doubling, but playing in the stereo spectrum and playing different parts. And it's very, very, very effective for and this is not a very heavy guitar sound. It's it's, you know, slightly over driven. So it's very articulate. We can hear everything that he's trying to play. And I like the interplay between left and right. It's one of my favorite things to do on the guitar. So I thought that was well done. Yeah, I made a video during the week about doubling. I don't know if you saw that at all. And what I find about it, and I didn't really mention it in the video, is when you go through the process of doubling stuff is the wonderful little mishaps you have where you don't play exactly the same in the left and the right. And the ear picks up on it very quickly when they're similar. But then suddenly this one's doing something a little bit different phrasing or something. And I think that can be very interesting. On the face of it, you would think it would just be messy, but it doesn't always come out like that. It sometimes just comes out as it creates interest and just a bit of a feast for the years. Look, some old things just work really well, don't they? In this case, for me, it was just the muted guitars. I sounded like it was probably a Stratz style guitar or maybe a Telly. But, you know, just muted guitars can be very rhythmic, you know, and really just a bit of a feast for the years. Ricky, yeah, I've seen a few comments already through there, which we had someone saying a bit of a Cheryl Crow kind of a feeling in there. And then also someone saying a Fleetwood Mac in there as well. Did you pick up any on that kind of stuff? What were you feeling with it? Yeah, I can hear the Fleetwood Mac influence there. I mean, tonally, it was a similar thing going on there. But yeah, I started moshing, mate. You went as soon as it started. I love that guitar riff. Yeah, catchy, straight off. There's this really is you picked a really good one, Mike, to start off with, mate. I know. I know. I know. I can see I shut you guys up. Well, not quite. Not quite. Now, I understand what, you know, Dan mentioned before about sometimes, you know, groups that we get to hear on this show. And, you know, they might sound like OK, they might be at the beginning of their journey more at the beginning than being, you know, totally accomplished. I think from a mixed point of view, if I would have done anything, that probably would have just given the lead vocal a little bit of wetness, man. OK, a little bit of reverb, I think, because it really lent itself to to the way that this song has been arranged, because it's not packed with loads of instruments and there's lots of space. OK, let's make the most of it. You know, we've got some space here. Let's let's give it a little bit of air, if you like. OK. And I think the drums really well programmed. Yeah, again, I think the snare I would have been tempted to put a little just just a little bit more reverb on it if you're using any OK, just to open it up a bit. But other than that, what a fantastic catchy little number. It's brilliant. You know, I thought the it was a good example of how when you get to me, that song was mostly about that guitar riff that was happening going through it. You just drove the song, it just set up a base. So if you can get one good idea for a song like that and then just embellish it, they can hold a whole song together really nicely. And I thought they did a good job. In my opinion, the vocal. I first felt Fleetwood Mac. But in that good way that it was not exactly the same. It just it was reminiscent of, you know, so it was so unique. But I just thought the lead vocal wasn't actually quite loud enough, in my opinion, just ever so slightly. Really? Yeah. Just felt that just needed that little, you know, when you do that little nudge on the fader, which is hardly anything, but it makes all the difference. On the chorus. Yeah, I think I think you're right. Yeah, on the chorus is it could have been done a little bit more. It's almost like to me, I was loving this guitar riff so much. And that was that was what I was listening to. And then I was like, oh, hang on. It's actually just a little bit overpowering the lead vocal for me. Just a tiny amount, hardly anything. You know what it's like on this show. Sometimes we feel we have to give some critique and you know, could have not bothered giving that critique. But but it's just, yeah, if you're going to do a remix, then I would nudge it up a little bit. But yeah, great start to the show. I think it shows again, the apart from the obvious a bit of expenditure there with the Neumann mic, you know, using some pretty basic sort of equipment to get the job done here. And I think. Yeah, I just think if that came up on Spotify or my playlist or ever, it would never occur to me. Oh, that sounds like an amateur recording. That that wouldn't that wouldn't occur to me at all. No, it's really good. I would just be enjoying the song, you know, so. Good start to the show there. Good start to two thousand and twenty two with a nice little number. And if you are going to be listening or releasing your music to Spotify, of course, I almost forgot. Then you should probably use you should probably use DistroKid to do that, not just because they that's it. Thank you, Dan, not just because they're the sponsor of the show, but all three of us, Ricky, use DistroKid. Don't you tell me you do? Yeah, I'm signed up to it. Yeah, OK, so I think all of my guests use DistroKid to distribute their music to the world because it's very, very easy and it's extremely affordable. And also it's got some fun features like the spotlight feature, which I'm going to talk about right. Meet your music to the DistroKid 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. And the better you do in this process, the more likely you are to appear in one of DistroKid's 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. Thank you, Mike, for that little add in the middle there. Very interesting, the spotlight feature. Getting on playlist is an important part on Spotify if you want to get more people to hear you. So check out those sort of features on DistroKid, of course. Now, something very, very, very, very different. Now, for a piece of music and it's almost one of those things. I had a long email from the artist about this, and I always have to take people's emails and get them down to bullet points. And I don't think I could really impart to you guys what was really behind this song from an emotional perspective. It comes from a very, very deep place. How can I put this in a short form? The person was going through an emotional crisis has always had some long term mental health issues, as well as some physical issues, which made it difficult for them to sing through this process and and and they recorded this song at that time. And what they decided to do was sort of try and harness that place they were in and try and capture that emotion in the moment of recording the song. So I think it's a courageous thing to do. Now, the person who submitted this to us has been a regular on the show. I've never listened to their music before until I heard this song. And he's just actually said, hey, in the comments. And it's taken me weeks to realize that I should just be pronouncing him as Wi-Fi, his W question mark Fi, because I'm only semi-literate. And and and every time I see that I go, how do I pronounce that? Of course, it's W question mark. Why? I mean, God, just the penny dropped with me. I'm such a time to tell you. Anyway, so I was finally, finally got that. But anyway, what's interesting about this, it seems to me from reading the email without going too much into Wi-Fi as a person of life, that the beginning process for this was recorded after a breakup, and so he didn't have much gear available to him as sometimes happens in breakups. I went through that once where I had a whole studio once. And after the breakup, I had a microphone. So so so it's always an interesting time when it's what you do. But anyway, so he's the really probably one of the most interesting parts of this this song, vocals in this track were recorded using an iPhone, the internal microphone on an iPhone due to various circumstances. Now, there is some percussion and piano and synth in there. They were recorded on GarageBand. I don't know on the computer or whether that continued like being because you get GarageBand free on their iPhone, of course, and iPad or what have you. So I'm gathering that was the idea. Now, later, the artist was able to get some gear back. And so he used his Ibanez guitar and had access to an Apogee duet. I've never used that interface, but obviously really good reputation. And so the guitar was not recorded through an iPhone. The guitar was recorded through that. Now, just reading from my notes here, Wi-Fi, the the artist here was suffering through various health challenges, both mental and physical. But as I said earlier, tried to harness them and the emotion of the music. Now, here's a quote from Wi-Fi from the email. He says in quotes, the entire song was structured as if you are in a storm on the ocean trying to get back to shore. And the end of the song represents death. Death caused by my own suicidal thoughts, death of a loved one by separation and heartbreak. It was the worst time of my life. And fortunately for me, I could transfer that into a song. I'm not sure if I'd be alive today if I hadn't done that. So that's, you know, there's definitely I'm going to say some depth to this song. It's going to be really interesting to have. Let's not just pull it up now. The song is called Deep Water. I'm going to go straight over to Ricky for this one, mate. Yeah, just yeah. Just give me your thoughts, man. Wow. He squeezed every ounce of meaning and emotion into that performance. And to, you know, OK, he's used an iPhone to record vocals with. But I'll tell you what, in this particular instance, I don't know they actually made any difference because all of the value and the content of this song was in the delivery. And, you know, it was done so, so well. You know, total respect to Wi-Fi because, you know, I can speak from a not from a personal point of view, but I used to work with a singer that had struggled with bipolarism and what it did to her. You know, having to go through that and also at the same time being a productive musician and, you know, you should give yourself a big pat on the back, buddy, because not everyone can do that, you know. This is more than presentable, sir. More than presentable. And total respect, you know, I'm here to to give a little bit of critique. And, you know, I listened intently to everything that was going on there, you know, and I think what you've achieved, it's we can call that production. It's almost deliberate because if you were going to make, you know, classical perfect as in all we use the best mics and we got the best EQ curve we could possibly get. No, that's not what this is about, though. But as you've presented it, I cannot fault it. So well done, buddy and total respect to you. Thank you, Ricky. I'll move straight over to Dan here. Dan, probably I suspect not kind of the music you normally listen to and all that kind of stuff, but what happened for you there when you were listening to it? In some ways, I almost wish we hadn't gotten the preamble before we heard it. Right. Yeah, because to be quite honest, I feel like any criticism I give right now, I'll just look like an asshole. I mean, knowing what we know and I just say as the host before you do that, that's not true. And I know why if I wouldn't see it like that. I'm quite certain he wouldn't. I'm sure he wouldn't. No, but obviously, I mean, we can't help not be affected by the story before we know this is not a critique about anything or the process, right? But knowing what we know and what we're being told about this song and the production of the song, all I can say is that I'm glad that he had music because music is the great healer. It's gotten all of us through difficult times. You know, it's just it's just that that thing. Some people say, you know, what's important in life, right? Well, anything that makes you feel good is important, right? And if a piece of me writing some music helped him escape the challenges he was going through, then this is the best song I ever made, right? So that's kind of I just found myself thinking of thinking about that while I was listening to the song. And listen, if I had heard the song without the preamble, I don't know what I would have said at that point. But but knowing what I do, I think that's the best thing I could say. I mean, I'm following him in the comments and I can tell how much just even being here and sharing this with us and everyone in the comments, how important it is for him, how therapeutic it is. And bravo. That's all I got to say. Yeah, cool, man. I appreciate that. But I will say again, I will reiterate that that, you know, it's important that we we're here in two roles as human beings to we'll be affected by music and just also in a technical sense as well. Because I've got to some I've got to somehow segue to to a distro kid advert after I say this. So that's probably going to be the most difficult thing I've done during the course of doing this show, because I want to say that that this is what music is all about for me. Just this song, this is it. This is the whole deal. This is if you can ever whether you're a vocalist or whether you're like Dan and you play an instrument and express yourself through melody and harmony. If you can at least one or two points during your musical career or whatever you want to call it, reach to a deep place inside yourself, a dark place that we all have, you know, we all have struggles of some kind and try and express that in a really honest way through through music. That's what it's all about for me personally. So from that perspective, I thoroughly enjoyed this piece of music, just really 100 percent. And you know, as you guys will know, last the end of last year, I picked the top 10 for 2020 of the songs. And I'll just say in advance, for me personally, I can see myself picking this definitely in the top 10 in a year's time because it has that power to me, you know, just just when we were listening to it then it was just really reaching to me. As it happens, I sort of agree with Ricky, I think in this case, recording it with the iPhone microphone works really well for the song. I don't know, it's going to work well for all of your music Wi-Fi, there may be other songs where it's not going to cut it. But I'm glad it sounds like you're getting some some more gear back now. So that's good. But yeah, it seems a little bit crass to compare it to other things at this stage. But I will say it did only I don't notice it this time. But the mood of it for me reminded me of Phil Collins in the air tonight. You know, it just had that kind of darkness to it, you know, production wise. I just loved what I always love in music is when something is more or less feels like on the face of it, it's the same all the way through. But when you listen, there's these subtle additions to the arrangement as we go on through to there was times where, you know, there was just I think when the sort of drums or the sort of percussion sounds came in, it was just really light at first. But it just it was very natural and just you went, Ah, yes, that was when my ears needed that little bit of extra entertainment. And that's exactly what I got. So I just think it's a good example of a good arrangement of a song for me in terms of the instrument. So yeah, but I think I've said on the show before, I don't mind saying that I myself over years, over decades have suffered, particularly from anxiety and depression, I've had a good few years, like the last six years or so have been fantastic for me. But before that, for most of my life, I've really been in some of those dark places myself. And and yeah, I don't like to dwell in there with music these days, because, you know, I don't always find that's helpful. But you reminded me it was very real for me to listen to that of where you can hear those things. So just a really good example of why we listen to music. Now, when I talk just as a little side note here, when I talk about reaching inside yourself and connecting with emotions and expressing them in music, it doesn't have to be about depression. It could be about joyful things. It could be the love of your children or your partner. Or it could be that you want to go and party tonight. That's that's a valid emotion as well, which you can tap into. And if you really tap into it, express that through your music. You know, it doesn't always have to be deep or dark emotions that are expressed and meaningful, but connecting with it and expressing it through your music. That's that's a challenge for all of us, isn't it? I mean, every single production is. Did we deliver on the emotional content of of the song? Probably the hardest thing to do of all the things. How about you, Dan, like when you because you don't you play instrumental? So, you know, is there a challenge there? Because you don't have the immediacy of lyrics, which, you know, tell people exactly what the music's about. But I know you do you do come from the perspective of emotion with your writing. So what do you do? I mean, how do you deal with that when you're. That's actually a really, really, really good question, because the reason I'm instrumental for my channel is because the focus of my channel or the theme of my channel is Lonely Rocker. I do everything myself and I am play a couple different instruments and I just don't sing and it's not, you know, I music I listen to has vocals. So it's funny that sometimes I feel a limitation because when I write the music that I'm creating for the channel, you know, I'm thinking in terms of, you know, rhythmical structure and melody through the guitar and I try to use the guitar to replace the melodies that would be present with the guitar with the vocals. Sorry. So it's a very I mean, I've I've been in bands, I've written songs, I've written lyrics and handed them off to the person singing. So I'm I'm I'm comfortable with that kind of songwriting. It's actually something I'm missing, to be honest with you. So it's it's a challenge to keep it interesting. I mean, I'm not writing a ton of stuff. I write a lot of short bits and that helps me or I'm coming up with a lot of rhythmical bits and things that I use for demo purposes on the channel. But I am trying to make as much as I can. I try not to repeat too much. So the approach really is to try and keep it rhythmically interesting. I find that's where my focus is compositionally to have some, you know, a bit of rhythm and some interesting movements there and and that's kind of in my focus lately with music that I've been making. Interesting, interesting. I always find for me personally that that's the bit that sometimes I feel like I'm really missing in my music, like it's finding that, you know, true, true expression through the music. Sometimes it's just the music sounds nice or good or whatever. That's not the same as music really expressing, right? It's a cool guitar riff. Isn't the same as something which actually evokes emotion, right? That makes any sense. Well, I mean, as someone who's trying to express himself with the only way that he can, you know, it's just, I mean, everything that I'm doing is an extension of how I'm feeling, right? So I just can't like, oh, I'm feeling shit today. Like, I'm sorry. But it just it just whatever it is, that's how it comes out. Right? Dance war, Masha. Just sign he's the second person to do it. It was Pete Jones. There goes the only Pete Jones. He was John for the f-bombs. I haven't done that. He was, he was. You're Canadian, you would never do that. You know, so I think, like you said, just good music to me, there's a level of emotion and feeling in it. There's some music that just there's no room for that in there. But I think that's the difference maker, right? That's the connection point. That's the tether from me to the listener is some level of emotion. The music, right? And whether it comes out through a guitar melody or comes out through a vocal or a lyric or whatever. That is the intangible part of music. I think I think it's an integral part of music that separates music from music. It's not so musical. It's hard to relate. There's got to be a level to relate, right? Just a quick hello to one of our regulars, Keonra here. And she was saying, going home theme of the local hero by Mike Knopfler is an emotional song. You know, I remember that. Hey, that was a great little piece from Mark Knopfler there. I can I can understand why that would move. Nice stuff there. How about we didn't actually mention it, but how do you guys feel about the little rap section in the middle of that song? Yeah, um, you had to go there, huh? By the way, that wasn't like, let's talk about stereotypes. I know, I know, it's all right. It's OK. Yeah, the rap part. I think it worked for that song. I mean, yeah, it was a bit of a surprise, which is a good thing, actually, because, you know, one might have expected, you know, a guitar solo. Yeah, where he actually came with something different. So it never listening to the whole thing. When that part arrived, it didn't like, oh, that sounds wrong. It worked, all of it worked, you know, all of it worked for me. Awesome stuff. Interesting. Now, someone's just said it's a rap just to close this section off. So thanks anyway so much for Wi-Fi MIDI for that. Have been having you there for a few weeks and nice to hear your music. If you are in the chat and we haven't heard your music yet and I can see a few names there, then please go ahead and submit it to the link in the description down below. I am going to continue to talk now about different ways that you can promote your music, and I definitely think that Wi-Fi should promote this music through the sponsor, which a wonderful guest, Ricky T Brown, is pointed to there, which is distrokit.com there. Follow that link, you'll get 7% off. And they also have this great little feature to promote your music called the Wheel of Playlist. One of the ways to actually get your music heard on Spotify is to get onto a playlist. Now, distrokit offers a really fun way to get onto one of their playlists with their Wheel of Playlist feature. Simply head over to your distrokit account, go to the top right where it says Goodies, then go down to Wheel of Playlist and then you start off simply by selecting a song, something you've already released and then click on Connect with Spotify. Now, obviously, the further up a playlist you get, the more likely people are to actually hear your music and enjoy it. So what distrokit do here with this feature is they give you three chances to spin a wheel, a kind of a Wheel of Fortune type of thing going on here. Now, the best result of those three spins determines your number in the playlist. And as I say, the higher up you are, the better. So on this occasion, I achieved 1,088. You can try every day if you like. So maybe that's something you'd like to do to actually get your music in a playlist on Spotify. Now, I feel sorry for our next artist who is Sean Lagaspi, because following up after a song which has got loads and loads of praise is surely not a nice position to be. I'm ready to unleash. Bring it up. You set him up, didn't you? That's what you did. You set him up. Dan's like, give me something shit to get my teeth into. I might have to disobey you, Dan. But now, Sean, I'm just going to read. I'm basically going to read his email to you because I couldn't get this in bullet form. But anyway, so this is what Sean was saying about this song, which we call Keep On Loving You. It's not a cover song of the famous Keep On Loving You, which was by was that? Are you a speed wagon? Yes, not not a cover song of that, thankfully. So sorry, are you? So as Sean says, my recording process was fairly simple. All of the sounds in the track were made by vocals and acoustic guitar. All right. So all of the sounds in the track were made. I recorded these with a Behringer UMC204HD audio interface. I don't know that one, but I've yet to try a Behringer interface yet, to be honest with you. If anyone's I must hook up with Behringer and get in contact with them to look at someone. And we're also using a Behringer XM8500 dynamic mic for the guitar and an AKG D5 dynamic mic for vocals. So one interface, two different microphones to choose from, two sources, vocal and guitar. The percussion heard in the song are actually samples I recorded from hitting the body of the guitar. The kick was just the top of the guitar while the snare was hitting muted strings above the sound hole. I've done this before many moons ago in contact. It's a great fun thing to do is just to make your own instrument of different sounds you've got around with you. In fact, I did it with my cajon because sometimes I record songs and purposefully have cajon on there. And I don't always want to set up the microphone. So I actually sampled my cajon so it sounded like my cajon in the tracks. But I digress. But it's a fun thing to do if you get into a bit of sampling. And I'm sure even Dan would approve of it. I wrote this song almost three years ago. Back then, the lyrics were kind of a way to emulate singer-songwriter styles. But now it has a deeper meaning to me now that I'm in a relationship. It's basically about loving someone even through all the hardships both of you would experience. That's interesting to write a song, but then get the meaning from from your own song later on as your life experience changes. How interesting is that? I like that. So now, listen, the one thing I'm going to say about this song as well, which I cautiously say this, but I'm going to say it for all songs that have a certain length, this is about five minutes long, this song. OK, now think about it, just vocals and guitars, samples, what have you? So I've been tending to say to my guests, I don't really want to preempt it, but I want you to be mindful of, does this hold your interest for five minutes? Because in this age of short attention spans, it's maybe a bit of a question that you may want to ask yourself about a piece of music. So now let's have a listen to this, as I say, from Sean, Sean Legaspi. Keep on loving you. There we go. Dan, you're still awake. That's a good sign after five minutes. Let's face it, once we get into our fifties, staying awake for more than five minutes, this could be a tricky time. So Dan, I know this is not your sort of music in lots of ways, but I know it's your music in some ways in the sense of there's a lot of real instrument stuff going on in there. So I don't want to preempt your comments, but first of all, did it hold you for five minutes? We're starting to drag a little bit there. I think this could have been wrapped up in about three and a half. I think it would have been nice and complete at that point. Yeah, I think it's, you know what, five minutes to me is actually not a long song because, you know, I have a classic rock, progressive rock. I'll listen to 20 minutes long, but there's lots of movements and things. And I won't listen to a 20 minute song every day, but when I do, it's got to have lots of, you know, intrigue and things like that. This is a very simple song that has no business being five minutes long because there wasn't offering anything new. It was more of the same thing. And it kind of, and I have some good things to say about it. So I don't want to come across it. I'm jokingly, you have a hard time because of the last one. I mean, the first thing I was thinking, I was really missing a rap breakdown. That's the first thing. It's like an uncaged tiger, isn't he, Ruhi? I'll get it back. Don't you worry. I'll get it back. Carry on, Dan. All opinions are valid, Dan. That's like carry on. So just being, you know, the one thing, and I'll get the sort of my challenge out of the way, other than what I just said, like thematically, you know, that guy that didn't have a girlfriend for a long time and then he finally got some girl interested in him and he just wouldn't stop talking about her. He's like, man, enough for it, right? I'm sorry, but that's kind of what I, you know, you can't go five minutes of that, right? That is what it is. But I mean, but aside from that, I mean, I I do like acoustic music, actually. I think I think the strongest songs start acoustically. I think because harmonically and melodically, you can. Someone said, Tim, don't sing to her. I'm sorry. I didn't say it to the comments. No, but harmonically and melodically, I think songs are stronger if you start and write them as an acoustic piece. And I think there's a good foundation here for to build on to, you know, create some more with this with this song. But the fact that it's five minutes long, obviously the songwriter had a bit of a confidence to or it couldn't bring it together sooner. But I think it would help the song a lot to shorten the song, because there wasn't anything new to offer at that point. And that's sort of my first point about saying is because you said three and a half minutes, so you felt up to three and a half minutes that there was new things being introduced and it's like, well, there wasn't. But that was like, OK, it's good now. You know, after three and a half minutes and that's just ballparking it, right? After that, if I'm not hearing anything new, it's actually, you know, I used to I come from the production world on the visual side and we produce music videos and things like that. And it's funny, I take influence from all over the place. And I remember when we were analyzing those productions, we'd always want to shoot enough footage that there was always something new to see. You know, it wasn't just like, oh, there's the people dancing and we've seen that four times, you know, it's like we want to save something up that we can trickle it out. And so there's always something new. And musically, I like that. And songwriting is where you can, you know, introduce some new bits as you go on. It keeps the I just want to interrupt you here a moment, Dan. Just so we've got Pete Guns there in the comments. Let's get our teeth stuck into a little bit. Some of the commenters here needs to needs to work on seeing he's out of tune. Pete Guns, LOL at me. Come on, bro, putting up all the nice comments in yellow. So you just proved wrong there, didn't I, Pete? You know, so I'll tell you what, mate, if you're going to come here and be an asshole, I'll just remove you. There you go. Oh, we have drama. Oh, the show has lost. I've never had to do this before. There you go. Where's me, mug? Yeah, we usually get nice people. It's not the Pete Guns show, unfortunately. So anyway, carry on, Dan. Yeah. So so anyways, I don't want to sound like I'm bashing this song because I don't mean to do that. I mean, I who am I, you know, to say that? So those are the things that we're bothering me. But I think there's enough there that, I mean, if the artist is interested in developing this a little bit further. I mean, people are talking about the voice. The voice is, you know, in popular music, I can think of a lot of bands where the singer was not so great, but somehow it worked in context of the song. Here it's out there. So the thing that's bothering me about the song is so in your face, like the theme of the song, it just wasn't working for me. But not to say there's like the guitar work. There's a lot of harmony and melody there. There's a lot to build off of there, I think. I just think it needs to be pushed a little bit more and like tighten it up a little bit. I think the artist will be surprised to put what you could achieve with the song. Yeah, I mean, I sort of feel I'm sorry, Rick, I don't interrupt your your spot here, but I'm a little bit of a green with you in the sense I always think it's better to leave people wanting more to go on. That was a good song. I'd like to listen again, which I think this song definitely has that potential because there's lots of good, interesting things happening in the song and the production. But anyway, better to go that way than then that outstay your welcome to the point where people go, OK, I'll listen to that maybe another day and that's it. But anyway, that's not my opinion. But I guess that's the way that that what you're trying to say in a nutshell there, Dan. Anyway, Ricky, I feel like you're going to come to the artist's defense here a little bit. Dan, you are brutal. I'm just telling you, man, you. But that said, I'd agree a lot of the points that Dan made are just be nicer about it. Yeah. Right, OK. Right, the song. When I first ate 16 bars, I was thinking, oh, this reminds me a little bit of the beautiful South. They were they were a spin off of the House Martins. Yeah, yeah. From the late eighties. And I could I could hear where it was kind of trying to go. But I would echo Dan's comments about the song. Yeah, man, it was too long. It's too long. OK. Because, you know, me already, I'll stick with it right to the end, yeah. But it was a little bit too long. OK. So I think you get a better end result if you really looked at your arrangement and cut it down a bit. You know, nobody's saying that it's got to be three minutes. I mean, that's too literal. But you got to like. Do I really need that bit there? Exactly. Does this add to it? Is the song building. And if it's not building, then it probably doesn't need to be there. Or you need to add something to it that makes it feel like it's building. Because I must admit, as I was listening to it, I was thinking, OK, nice, nice instruments kind of thing, but come on, we need something else. So I was thinking, yeah, maybe like a little string arrangement. So as you get to the middle of the song, it's, you know, that emotion you're trying to communicate, those things kind of add to it. Because I don't want to go back to what Dan was saying a few minutes ago about how you add emotion musically and with or without a vocal, you know, a good arrangement helps you to do that if you make the right choices as far as what you've had to it. And certainly from a vocal point of view, listening to that, I think you ought to take another run at it. I think that the towards the end of the song, I think you kind of lost your way a little bit with the ad-libbing. You know, because even though ad-libs always sound perfect on records, I can tell you now they're done in bits. All right, so don't be afraid to go back and say, right, OK, then I want the song to do this here. So I need to do something different. Just work in eight bar sections and then you'll get a nice full performance over the, you know, the whole of the song. So in a nutshell, cut it down a bit, OK, and add some interest as you go along. Because the way I share this with people, I say, look, you know, giving critique on people's songs and look, if you were looking at a graphic for your song, you need to show a wedge towards the end. So whatever intensity there is, there needs to be more of it at the back end than the front end. So build your songs that way, that way you keep your audience locked in. Yeah. So I mean, we're essentially talking about sort of dynamics in that sense as well. But I mean, there's quite an interesting conversation, which I can't share completely all of it here, but quite interesting conversation that's going on in the chat and the way I tend to look at it in just in very straightforward pieces of advice is, you know, you've got your song going along, you maybe got an intro verse, chorus, bridge, blah, blah, blah, is for me, it's like if you've got, say, two verses back to back to each other, which often happens, add something to the second one, you know, just add a new, you know, it could be some strings come in or it could be a different guitar line or a different harmony on the vocal or also removing something as well can be very effective, especially, you know, you've come out of a chorus to have a big drop down back to the verse can be really, you know, impactful and interesting. So just first of all, look at it in terms of yeah, just arrangement really, in terms of which instruments are making up that arrangement, as well as energy of performance as well within those, you know, within those musical parts. You can't really go too far wrong as long as you're doing that. Be super critical of your of your own work in this way. Say, hey, look, I just had a verse there. Now we've got another verse. Is this really interesting? Is this really got a purpose this one or is it just kind of more of the same? You know, it's a very fine line in music to be able to do that, because sometimes we need repetition to establish familiarity in the song. Yeah. But then when we repeat too much, it's like having sex in the same position every night with your partner. You know, it may be a great position, but, you know, anything can get tired. Judging by the lyrics, I think that's what he's doing. What's happened to you, Mike? What's happened to you, man? You know what would really make the song? You know, what really made the song is right at the end. You should break it should break up with the girl. He's singing. Oh, no, no, no, no. Just break up just specifically on the song. There was some interesting things going on in there, which were harmonically interesting, almost to the point where when I first heard I thought, oh, did he go a bit out of tune there? No, I don't think it was. It was a slide, you see. It was it was a slide like from a discord into a chord, which was really interesting. A little bit of a delight for the ears on that. Some lovely harmony stuff going on in there as well. I liked the whole tone. It was a little bit Jason Maraz's for me in places here and there. That sort of whole groovy acoustic feel good. Could have had a ukulele in there potentially as it was bopping along. And I don't mind a little bit of that sort of music at times. And I don't know the labor of the point, but I felt that there was like a verse and a half too many in there because the last ones weren't doing anything particularly different. If we go to the song before, whether you liked it or not, whether people like it in their music or not, the rap which came in was a completely different thing to the rest of the song. And it just took you by surprise a little bit. And it was more than halfway through the song as well. So it gave it gave you oh, there's another little surprise in this song as well. So I know that people it's hard to judge this when you listen to your own music about, you know, am I keeping it interesting all the way through or not? Hey, look, you can't win all those battles every time with every listener, of course. But but yeah, try to be a bit harder to play to other people and try and find try and find one or two people in your life that are going to give you honest opinions about your music, right? Not essential. Not not not your mum. Your sort of thing, you know, it's got to be honest opinions. People say, look, you know, I love your work, but that there wasn't doing it for me. You need that in your life. I've got Susie to do that for me. She she does it without holding back. And we've got Dan here to do it without holding back. No, but I just want to say, Dan, I'm very happy. I'm fine with it. No, you should be fine with it because it's all good. But anyway, listen, thanks so much to the people who almost all of the people have been in the chat, apart from one person, of course. But thank you so much for being here with the show. And if you're watching the show on the replay, love to have your comments about everything we've been talking about, especially let me know in the comments down below the video how you deal with repetition and avoid boredom, if you like, you know, by going on a bit too long. I feel a bit bad for the artist now. We've sort of used him. He's hardly the worst. He's hardly the worst example we've had of going on a bit too long. We all go on a bit too long at times, that's for sure. But yeah, but personally, I enjoyed the last song to a great degree. Just, yeah, watch the length on things. Now, we will be here next week. I'm not sure which, which guests I've got on next week. I think it's probably going to be Marlon and Ed next week for another three songs. So I hope to have you all here. I'm going to leave the final word for this show to the newest YouTuber on YouTube, Mr. Ricky Dettground. He needs to practice talking to the camera and all that. So, Ricky, it's eight 16 by my time. You have got five minutes to talk about five minutes. The importance of using compression and EQ on your master bus. Go, Ricky T Brown. I'm doing it. No, I think the most important thing is to thank all of our guests for coming on with us this week. And hopefully we'll see you all again next week. OK, very well done. Bye bye. Make sure you subscribe to Dan's and Ricky's YouTube channels, folks. The links are down.