 Hi folks I'm Mike and I hope you're welcome to Fix My Mix episode 33. Can you believe it? The show where we're all giving our ears some practice listening to each other's mixes and seeing if we can come up with some suggestions for how those mixes may be improved before people release them. I'm getting my birds waddled today aren't I? I cannot get it arrayed today. If you do release your music after getting a fix for your mix then you should release it through DistroKid, the sponsor of our show. There's a link for them in the description down below and if you follow that link and join up with DistroKid then you will be able to get a 7% discount off of their already cheap price which is very nice indeed. Lots to talk about in today's show actually I was having a great conversation with our guest off air before we came on. All the best conversations happened before and after the show for some reason, don't know why. But anyway we'll get on to that in a moment. I just want to say hi to the wonderful people who are here in the chat. First of all we have Pete Johns from Studio Live today. I was just over and I only, sorry Pete I only caught a little bit of your show this morning and during that little bit of your show you were talking about how basically you can't be bothered with lots of vocal comping and just use the presets. I love it. I'm going to tell people something completely different on today's show but I love that attitude. I love the vibe. Don't get too stressed about things folks. Have fun with it. We have Kevin Parrott here. There's several people that come on this show in the live chat every single week and I'm so glad to see that because aren't we all developing or what I'm growing through the show. It just gives you the chance isn't it to listen to lots of mixes and sort of develop your critiquing of a mix as well aren't they. Doug is here. I'll talk about Doug in a moment actually. We'll get back to Doug. Nice to see you here Doug. We've got the Mixed Club in here. Always nice to see the Mixed Club here. We have Neil Picard. We have a new name to me I think here. Hi nice to see you here from Sussex in the UK. Smart Arts Inc. I read that as Smart Arts Inc for some reason. Maybe he's. Anyway Keonra is here. Coffee in hand as always. Thank you for being here Keonra. I see that your Songtember's going well. Check out Keonra's channel for updates on Songtember. Yeah it's great to have you here folks. Do remember the people in the live chat play a very very important role in this show. I'll just a quick hello to somebody else there as well. Omni Collective Creative. You could see you play you play a very very important role. Sometimes even if it's for me and my guests it helps us to confirm that we're hearing certain things about mixes by the way. So it's you know it's very very helpful that you're taking part. Right. I'm glad I've got a guest today because I've got a feeling I'm going to get confused about a lot of things. I'm going to get distracted about a lot of things. A lot of things going on here in Creative Source at the moment. I mentioned Doug earlier because he rightly put a post in my Kate Walk Facebook group early on a few hours ago to congratulate the group on becoming a year old today and really really amazing that time's flown by. I'm so glad that this group has grown so quickly and that there's a really sort of active community there. But more so this community the community in there has got a great vibe too. It's just got a really really helpful respectful vibe in there. You know we have the odd issue very very rarely. Most people in there you know conduct themselves in a great way. So it's a great place to grow to learn about Kate Walk to learn about you know music production in general and I'm very very proud of it indeed. It's a year old and what I'm very proud about it one of the reasons I'm very proud about it is I wanted to create a group that had that kind of vibe that was you know very creative very nurturing especially to people who are new to recording. I wanted that and one of the reasons I wanted that is because I'd sinned that occur in another group on Facebook and that was the home recording studio zone and that group is founded and owned by the God himself of that group. Ricky T Brown who is my guest today? Have you ever been introduced as God before? Uh no. There you go. Revealed here folks God is black. Yeah well rumor has it. Yeah well well if you want proof of that check the Bible yeah check revelation. Yeah because we're not we're not doing that here we're not doing that here. It gives a Jordan. Jordan gives a very detailed description yes so you need to check it. Okay okay never ever bring religion up on on on a show on a channel. This is what I should have stuck to it. Anyway let's continue with the show um Ricky you've been a busy boy haven't you? You were right. First of all that t-shirt basically says your life at the moment doesn't it? Yes I love Fados. He does. You're right in the midst of this project of yours at the moment. You were telling me earlier about your vocalist what did she send you? Gee yeah she's wonderful but um mixing um her songs or songs she's vocal geez we got lots of tracks lots of lots of tracks man and you know what that means when you got lots of tracks. I don't think there is any shortcuts to some of this stuff if you want to get a good product you know I was talking about this on last week's show but well it's probably me it's probably me that I'm a bit slow with it all you know but um you look you can take that many tracks. You can take the Pete Johns approach which is nothing wrong with this by the way but Mr Mr Johns if you're still here um he's he's like I can't he bothered with lots of takes just try and get things in one take if you can all right and he likes to go that sort of free flowing uh sort of approach which is cool. Me I'm more in uh in the camp of I don't want to do 20 takes and pick the best but three four maybe five right but the fact is if you start doing that there's work involved isn't there you've got to do some editing of those I like to chop out the any background noises and things you get in there you start melodining all of it that takes time you know organizing it all getting the phrasing between them nice you know yeah so um Julieta in case you are watching or you're gonna watch this I love you babe but you've given me enough work enough work well this is what collaboration's all about it's about pushing people pushing people past their limits I probably sound like I'm stirring now I'm gonna no no it's it's it's as you could see I love so yes oh yeah it just takes time yeah it just takes time I've been mixing this one for the last month honestly oh you see oh oh odd it off odd it off not solid odd it off yeah Pete says he can't decide um if he's just lazy or just rock and roll I know Pete Pete is not a lazy guy but he doesn't like to fuss over details that's the thing about it is just just just sling it in yeah well no and there's something to be said for that isn't there's very much something to be said for that because we we do sometimes get bogged down in detail so I'm saying oh Pete Ricky I need to introduce introduce you to each other he's been working on this one for months Pete is this apparently this this this mix I think you need to find a compromise yeah yeah maybe yeah yeah yeah it could come in handy on this one actually yeah I like to get your you need to get what you've done so far on this show fix my mix and see what everyone's got to say about it actually that's that's that's an idea yeah well well in actual fact the one I'm working on now um yeah I'm getting it up on BandLab tomorrow so yeah oh give me a link give me a link I sent I sent it to you a few weeks ago didn't I I sent the mix to you and said yes you did listen to this that was terrifying I was like oh god oh god somebody's gonna give me an opinion on my mix now see now you know how I feel yeah and you keep threatening yeah yeah we're going to turn it around on on the guests there like they can put their stuff on there I've got some great feedback from you and Pete and and Dan and and people on that it was one of those situations it wasn't so much that I I couldn't judge it but I just cared a little bit more about it than than than I usually do so I wanted some other people listen to it anyway let's move on and have a listen to some mixes folks don't forget to take part in the live chat here um I'm very interested in what your ears are hearing with these mixes now um the first one that we've got up today first one I want to say to people this is an example of a cover song happy I'm happy to have cover songs on the show don't mind at all doesn't have to be original material um and this was one where in actual fact we just find this I I actually followed up and I'm normally too lazy to do follow-up emails but I actually did a little bit of a follow-up on this one to confirm a few things about this mix but I'll this is so I've got two emails to read out but I'll read you the first one then we'll listen to it and we'll talk about so um uh dear my hope you're safe and well um thank you very much Andre this has been sent in from Andre I don't know his surname or the group's name or I didn't know at the time anyway um anyway uh here's a bit of a different one from you lots of brass guitar and percussion etc it's an instrumental song I'll let uh Ricky just read out the title of it um yes um I've got a confession to make oh you can't see you can't see the screen can you I can't see you this is like a podcast to you isn't it all right so you don't you don't know what I'm doing at the moment then do you no I've no idea I mean I could see me but I could hear you folks I can't see you Ricky can't see you can't see us folks all right anyway so Ricky um this is um Henry Mancini cover uh the inspector theme okay so there's no vocals in this let's just let's just it is um I hope you like it I created all the arrangements on keyboard and asked some friends to play it's a worldwide collaboration guitar and bass from Brazil bass from Nigeria and I'm from Australia okay let's have a listen to this should be interesting Lord you know what I don't listen to these whole tracks before I play them on the show for the first time I maybe listen to the first couple of seconds I get yeah okay I read the email I you know I don't listen to the whole thing so that's the first time I've heard it all the way through I've got to tell you it's it's the wee hours of the morning here in Perth Western Australia and that woke me up what's that you Ricky yeah man I was just looking at all the comments coming in man the love it's getting some love isn't it it's getting some love being given to this and uh completely deserved um sometimes you you know you you hear a cover and it's you know you just feel like well it's a bit of a it's really a facsimile of the original but no this was just so well done to so well done mate didn't put a foot wrong at any point in this and uh I love that little bit of slap bass flourish wasn't that got me that yeah I was like yeah that wasn't expected yeah that wasn't expected but um fantastic job I was thinking with it I didn't know if the arrangement was um because I'm not familiar with the different versions of this I've heard this theme I've heard the original so right away I was like oh there's definitely something different in this arrangement to the original arrangement even though they kept the essence of the energy I don't know whether another arrangement's been done at some point and whether Andre and his friends have uh emulated or copied that arrangement I don't know but if if um uh these guys or if Andre came up with this arrangement then I'll say well done very very good arrangement carry on it Ricky I mean I'm interrupting yeah yeah um yeah yeah what can you say I mean it's supposed to be fixed my mix but yeah why try and fix it if it ain't broke man um this was just so good it was different to the original mm-hmm but he's he's captured the right elements I mean the brass arrangement it was excellent and I'm not sure whether he you know that was like all played live or if he was using you know some there's some good brass plugins out there that can give you that kind of thing well I actually emailed him about that because um yeah I've talked a bit about brass recently because I've criticized a couple of mixes recently which have had brass on them because I wasn't yeah didn't think they sounded that great but I tended to say to people that I thought there's more to do with the brass plugin rather than the mix itself they say they tend to even obviously most of them are sampled instruments but for some reason they tend to sound a little um synthetic or I don't know this yeah I think it's more about the way it's used you know I mean if if you understand what what all the articulations are yes you know a trumpet and how that's played then yeah you can do something really convincing but so when I heard this and I thought well this is the way I want my brass to sound it when I'm using brass right this is why I want it to sound so I emailed him but I've got some bad news this was not a virtual instrument this was some real brass so he said yeah it's really well recorded yeah the brass is played by a talented musician and producer his name is San Lima and he's from Brazil he did the trumpet solo as well I sent the concept idea and idea of my keyboard with virtual instruments I left two or three stems of the virtual brass to give him a boost but he sent me more than 10 stems to give a big band vibe the guitar player is also from Brazil he's super versatile virtuoso in rock and jazz brought in Brian sets of style to the solos yeah the bass players from Nigeria very precise and creative and the rest Andre did all himself drums percussion piano and keyboard everything's electric he said I'm a drummer but here in Sydney it's impossible to have an acoustic set so I tried my best to make it sound real yeah drums were killing it you know oh it was all cool it was all good this is fixed my mix though and it's very easy to say with this that there's just no problems with it there isn't really and the only thing I didn't like and a lot of people loved it I could see in the comments was the panning on the trumpets I explained myself so there was some very there was a couple of very noticeable parts where there was a very hard panned trumpet from the left and then it went to the right yes I don't mind that at all as a creative thing that was it was fun I just wouldn't do it quite so hard to me it was all completely in one ear and not the other or if you are going to do that what I would do for me this is what I'd try on that a little bit because it was a nice bit is perhaps have um that trumpet completely in the left but have all of its reverb or something in the right just to give a little bit of a sense of space because if you're a trumpet player in a room even if he's all the way over on the left hand side of the room up against the wall there's still going to be some reflections that you're going to hear on the right hand side of the room just see what I'm saying now it depends if you want that or not whether you're trying to get realistic or not for me I would have liked to have felt that I was more in a space and that yeah that trumpet player was over there in the room and that other trumpet player was over there I would have liked that and you may have felt that a little bit more if it wasn't quite so hard panned or as I say maybe balanced out with some delay you say that you say that Mike but um some themes that are mixed for television for example they'll do exactly what he's done there where you would have like a trumpet line one bit will come out on the right and then the second part come out on the left and that kind of thing it's not unusual if you're mixing it for um for film and that kind of thing those things will happen now if you were mixing it for a record I think maybe then um you might take a slightly different approach you know maybe similar to what you just suggested but um it didn't sound unnatural to me not enough for me to say well I think the you know the panning could have done a little bit more work I mean I don't feel like that about it it was really well done and when I was listening through the cans of course um yeah everything that's kind of where it was supposed to be and it was really dynamic and things happened where they were supposed to so it's like yeah I'll take your point Ricky but you're wrong I mean obviously you're wrong yeah I know it's your show yeah and this is the point about it this is very very very important thing to remember with mixing things right you know this is where your artistic interpretation comes in very much and and what you're looking for what your goals are um it's just something to be aware of of the different effects that you could have by different techniques you've you've got to go down your own road come to a decision can't please everyone um but you know there's not too much so let's be honest with it it was a very well mixed track there's not much to fix here so the only thing we can really say is um is that well done really great fun somebody said play it again I may do that right at the end of the show I reckon that would be a fun outro for the show today let's keep that in mind so um I think we should hear talking about the fact that um this was a cover version um you can actually release cover versions people often ask this can you release cover versions on DistroKid and yes you can I've released cover versions on DistroKid um you have to pay a fee so on DistroKid like everything else uh that you upload if it's your own material you pay that $19.99 a year and you can upload as many songs as you want you could do thousands of songs if you want folks upload it to DistroKid $19.99 and you won't have to pay a single penny more but when it comes to covers you have to pay and from memory when I did it I had to pay a dollar one dollar per cover per year okay so look I've goodness me so that's cheap if you want to have you yeah that's all you have to pay to use someone else's material strange you know what Ricky I just want to say on my system here sort of back in system I've got here I've got two Ricky T Browns yeah that's one there you are I don't know which one of you I don't know which one of you to have can can you kill one please I'll kill this one I was how are we going can you see now or I can see you now yeah you can see oh good oh good yeah good job you couldn't see me earlier than that with what I was doing anyway I can't middle finger anymore all right I'll get rid of the other Ricky T Brown all right then so that is my DistroKid advert for today so folks don't forget if you do sign up for DistroKid can do covers cost you a dollar per cover per year and just so you know it takes out a lot of the complication with it as well you don't have to be applying to use the cover or you don't have to be seeking permission from individual DistroKid does all of that stuff for you all right you just upload it takes a little longer than usual because it takes them some time to do that okay so my experience when you upload covers it can seem to remember it took about a week or something before it was approved I think that's fine I think it's a very good no it's very very good and then um yeah you get your music covers or non-covers out to the world iTunes where are we what's the places now Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Deezer, Dozer, Bill's a Bozer I don't know they're all TikTok, Flipflop there's so many different places now I sound like an old man don't I let's have a listen to another song shall we um I am going to I'm going to our next track you can now introduce it can't you Ricky yes because you can see the screen I'll just pop that up while I load the song up right the next song is by David Ola and the name is Leave It In Ruins here we go look I'll read out sorry I'm having technical issues here I'm trying to have you cover for me so this is uh this is from David Ola he said hi I made this track for fun playing around with some free instruments it's a dramatic orchestra track and almost every instrument I used was free I'm a beginner producer and I'm taking digital audio arts at university soon I'm glad this is good timing because I did a another video a couple or two or three weeks ago I did a video about a free orchestra it's called The Free Orchestra from Project Sam that's a great little plugin yeah so I did a video a couple of days ago well I wanted to take a look at a range of different free orchestra plugins which are available there's a few available it's amazing really when you think about the work that actually has to go into creating some sort of orchestra plugin the fact that there's things you can get some of them for free is kind of remarkable really and I won't say which one was number one but um I'll let people watch the video for that check out my channel for that folks but um so it's great that people are making use of these plugins and people make some great music we have a lot of people on the show here who use free plugins for different things and you can definitely get some great results so let's have a listen to this from David I'll leave it in ruins can I go first I'm gonna go through all right um uh god this is this is a useless show to watch isn't it this is a useless blooming show fix my mix crikey folks I wish I'd listened to more than a couple of minutes to some of these songs before I let them on the show because there's not much to fix about this there's not much to fix about this one again this is the second one in the road oh my god I'm trying hard so I'm trying hard to find something wrong with it and I'm reaching at scores even I'll reach at scores if I want to never mind everyone else reaches at straws um uh what do you say the only thing I could find my one little note was nothing to do with the mix at all was the piano there was some little inaccuracies in the piano just in a couple of places of the playing it was just a little bit sloppy maybe the piano was a tad too loud a tiny bit there's no issues with this I hope I haven't taken away all your talking points rookie go no no no right this is somebody that's just about to go into um music college yeah apparently so yeah wow um doesn't need to go he's no no well no he'll only get better if he goes if he does that um but my gosh that was so good I mean I've done you know a few tracks in this genre and um I'm I'm listening to what this guy can do already um it's really quite amazing you know you you can hear that straight away being put on to you know being a a theme for you know kind of like dark subjected kind of program you know like vampires and shit yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah it takes it took me somewhere immediately with that and I was completely drawn in by it um yeah a lot of Mike says it's it's a hard one to um well Mimo says um Mimo says pick up the repetitive piano um I'm not sure where Mimo's going with this mate so what do you mean no that was for my teeth that was for my teeth that's the glue that's the glue for the whole track I'd say Mimo um so I can sing it even yes exactly it's the motif um just just there was one pop space in there and I thought oh maybe that here to pick up your point on the last track was the padding of the strings I think I thought I thought when the violins came they should have been in the middle because they were dominating the space at that point in time it wasn't like it was an accompaniment so I felt that it should have been in the middle at that point but beyond that it's it's bloody good I've been listening if I came up with that I'd be well pleased with it yeah it's the sort of thing that I would come up with for a demo if I was got a new plug in to show off and my problem is is that um I go long strings I'm coming up you know I've usually got an hour to create a little piece of music like this to demonstrate a play I'm going right as soon as I hit any kind of staccato strings everything becomes Game of Thrones I was dun dun dun it's very everything's Game of Thrones-esque that's the trap I'm falling or Marvel or Marvel that's the hardest thing about creating these pieces of music is is actually being different in any way right that's there's a little bit of a sameness to it and not criticizing this for that but yeah and then again your goal is not to be different or noticeable your goal is to support you know a piece of a piece of cinema or something like I assume with a piece like this you know so different if you were using the same arrangement and instrumentation but this was not for film or television whatsoever and this was a purely an orchestral piece there may be something like that piano could be deemed as a little too repetitive just for a sitting and listening to I would like to see it evolve from where it was it wasn't particularly long piece so it's okay but maybe it could evolve you know yeah you were talking about the you know the the repetitive of the piano kind of thing and there's composer who did the theme for Game of Thrones and Westworld I think his name is Ramsey Zhwadi I think his name is and he's a genius and if you listen to his themes they have a repeating piano and coat going all the way through it so I don't know that he was way off the mark in terms of saying we're not way off certainly yeah I mean what's the glue what's the glue melody for this track and that that cycling arpeggio on the piano is the thing that links everything you know I think you've done it really good you know I love about this type of music yeah is that this is never about being a virtuoso instrumentalist of any kind right you could have very rudimentary keyboard playing skills yeah produce wonderful pieces of music like this I don't know if you ever watched the youtuber Guy Mitchellmore I love his channel he's crazy and YouTube tells me things like this in the background it shows me what other channels people watch that watch my channel and I know that he's in he's always in the top two or three I know lots of people who watch this channel also watch his I don't know Guy at all but he seems like a wonderful person as well he comes off really nice in his videos but I love watching his creation process it's some similarities sometimes you know when I'm going at it for all of us really you know I mean you just have that flow in this year but again a lot of what he does is he lays down some quite repetitive motifs to as the glue for the whole thing and then the other instruments are more color around that motif you know and color and dynamics I guess through the range yeah I've watched a lot of his videos bike Guy Mitchellmore is actually the son of a famous BBC TV presenter that's right yeah Michael Mitchellmore was that yes he used to do the holiday program if you remember yes yes well that's his son and actually Guy Mitchellmore was a BBC he used to be afternoon regional news he used to work on the BBC and then he then at some point he left that and went straight into music composition kind of thing so there's there's quite a story behind him but he's mad as a hatter we've got a correction when you watch his videos you know we've got a correction here Cliff Mitchellcliff Mitchellmore that's it Cliff Mitchellmore isn't that's correct thanks for that we stand corrected we do yes Cliff Mitchellmore yeah good stuff there I really enjoyed that piece music I think we're just another one of those ones David Ola I think you've got a very promising future ahead of you as Ricky says you can only get bed I'm sure when you go off to uni you'll learn more about the craft of arranging these things and and all that but you've you've got the basic talent you're halfway there by the sounds of it let's hear something about DistroKid you want to release your music via DistroKid there's just a couple of things you need first of all the music itself here's mine in my door cakewalk and I'm exporting it to an uncompressed wave file for best results now the other thing you'll need is some artwork I just grabbed an old photo which I'd taken on the beach chucked on some text here and that's what I call art then I went over to DistroKid and I just have to fill in this extra easy form it's a no-brainer form you get helped all the way through with little hints and things you can't really do anything wrong you just go ahead and confirm a few things about your music and then you just have to actually upload the artwork and the song itself and DistroKid takes care of the rest it's going to send it out to all of the best platforms so that people can hear and buy your music I'm praying Ricky I'm praying God you're praying for a dud I'm praying for a dud no you're praying for a dud I'm praying for a dud I'm saying please I'm praying to God and praying to God she's not responding to me anyway uh yeah so let's go on to the third track uh Fat Fox out of touch this is something uh yeah out of touch we've had Fat Fox on the show before long time ago um so the they said in the email we wrote recording to produce this ourselves at home and will soon be releasing it through DistroKid good choice method vocals recording at home made booth moving blankets and PVC pipe a very good solution in my opinion I have to say a reasonable solution in certain circumstances guitars are PRSD DGT through a line six helix a lot of people give line six a lot of hate but let's see if we're going to into a Tascam us 2000 audio interface Tascam never use their audio interfaces ever but they always look good the specs and everything I had one of those um the 2000 bloody good interface yeah bloody it's like a firewire interface or something it's from that sort of era isn't it uh no it's a usb if I recall but um it's a really good really really good really good the only reason why I've stopped using it is because um they stopped updating the drivers it's it's a brilliant box it's the thing manufacturers if you're listening you've got to keep those drivers going for a long time please we don't want to be abandoned in the middle of a project yeah bass is a blend of di amp simulator drums are programmed into the door with some software keys and synths are a blend of program software synths and uh di levels please please let this be a terrible mix so that we can critique here we go yeah Mike your homework yeah your prep sucks today I have to tell you it sucks if this is one of those tv shows where one of the judges stood up and gave a whatever they they do well slam dunk or something like that what's her name again what's her name the group uh fat fox uh that was um this actually I don't think this was without uh some critique ability actually but anyway but Ricky you go first mate if you're going to criticize this this one you're looking for stuff really well yes yes and we are looking for this man I'm partial to this this kind of um rock and um they they nailed nailed nailed this one down because you know the arrangement um whether you're talking about the drums or whether the guitars I mean yes I thought the intro was a bit quirky with the right left thing going on I thought that was a bit quirky but once you got into the verse man it's like all right all right all right and then the chorus nice with our fat guitars coming in um and then the it never let you get bored of it because I mean even like the time signature changes towards the end of the track went went double time and then they went into some funk man you know I was doing a slow motion and they double typed it that's what I was in there you know um these guys they're brilliant they're brilliant I would buy that as it is yeah so I think any changes to it is merely about taste yes oh absolutely yeah it's not often that you get to well not on this show anyway it's not often that you get to hear um um tracks so well done so well thought out you know they they crafted this mix and I've got to tell them you know listen guys if you're watching you got a new fan today back was just brilliant blew me out the wall up well I agree with you almost on everything there and I really enjoyed it I mean certainly like uh it's just the energy it's so this is almost like what's different what all of us struggle with to be honest with you where um I mean there's complications in recording live bands to be honest with you uh you know bleed and phase issues and all that so don't ever think that just recording a live band is easy but the great thing about recording a live band is you get the energy of a live band so what most of us wrestle with in home studios these days is um how do we recreate that energy when we've multi-tracked everything you know when we've gone through the slightly tedious process of one thing at a time um if nothing else this track showed it could be it can be done because the energy was there of a live performance in my mind I was totally convinced that that's a band playing together yes yes it's very very good from that point so yeah like because can I just say one I like the vocals very much um very Debbie harry esque kind of a delivery there blondie kind of a delivery in there which I really like sort of laid back um the only thing with that is it's got to be right on top you know so those very interesting um choppy guitars that were going left and right uh just here in there I felt they were masking the vocal a little bit however the vocal could come up just a tad all those guitars uh could just come down a tad or cut out some frequencies in those guitars for vocals I it's on my headphones it could be different listening experience different just there was a there was a little harshness to those guitars at time like right just could be deemed as just a little bit harsh somebody suggests I think it was Doug that maybe they could have a little reverb echo on them so yeah maybe try that I would try that as Ricky says this is all grassman straws this is all very much there these are things you could try you could try them and then maybe it won't work out and you'll just keep exactly what you want but I felt that they were just a little piercing at times those choppy guitars not much I want to say that um people we've talked so much on the show about programmed drums and there's always this debate about whether programmed drums are any good and whether we should have uh um you know real drums this was one of the best examples I've heard of programmed drums it was just very very very very good guys if you're programming drums you know I I say don't use I don't like to use um you know with all the drum plugins you'll get these preset sort of rhythms and things I'll use them sometimes early on in the track just to get things going but I believe program the drums maybe not everyone can do that but if you can program the drums and then take care on the details and then you can get something like this because I promise you that when they've programmed these drums they've spent a lot of time on them a lot of time on nuances what they've spent time on okay um and that's the result you can get but I don't think there's any shortcuts to it I don't think it's something you just check them out I think um can I ask was one of the members are they an actual drummer themselves and they haven't actually said um okay I wouldn't surprise me um it sounds to me like a drummer knows when stuff's supposed to be played and those those um roles you know they they were in the right place and and captured the right energy when they were played and um it sounded real it really did yeah yeah if you hadn't said that it was programmed I would have thought that that was um yeah we got a nice drummer on this one um Andrew Kofi saying um you need to be a drummer to program drums properly I'll take your point Andrew um if you're not a drummer then you need to have like really studied uh drums probably I think working in a band um it helps you a lot so if you've spent some years you know as I did with with a band and you get to know you know what it's like to be in room with a drummer and how they work and how they think and you know um but yeah if not and and you know spend a lot of time studying drummers and and what they do um it's very very important but it's all about nuance it's it's all about there are uh some roles that um particular drums play as well that you know you probably need to understand you you need to understand what it feels like just through observation when that drummer goes from using a hi-hat in the verse to going over to the ride symbol in the chorus or whatever is how that changes the dynamic of a song um understanding how drum kits work like it's like any other kind of virtual instrument it could be you know what we were listening to earlier which is like orchestral piece we all got orchestral libraries are fingertips now but you need to now listen to orchestras and see uh how different you know what what role does the uh viola play as opposed to a violin for example generally in an orchestral piece so um it's it's you can't just get the plug in and think it's going to do all the work for you you've got to understand i have an understanding yeah yeah um uh what a great show really though in terms of this one was the classic thing this one was a classic very hard for us to get classic very hard to get our teeth into much here and i just got better and better i feel a little high you sure you didn't do this on purpose no i didn't i feel a little unkind in the sense that you know these some of these pieces of music receive more critique than they deserve or criticism than they they deserve by a long shot but no thanks to the people who sent it in if you're i want to say at this point if you're creating music and you want to send it into the show and you're suddenly nervous about sending please do send it into the show um try and uh take when you hear things like this which are very very well done just take that as encouragement as this is what's possible but we all start at zero and we all have to evolve through practice um over time so so it's very very useful i think for you to send your music into a place like it's very brave but it's also very useful you will get some constructive criticism from myself my guests and more importantly also from uh the lot the people in the live chat as well um so so don't be nervous if you're suddenly thinking oh my stuff isn't up to scratch i won't send it in after all please do send your music in um if for no other reason to give us a role give us a purpose in life yeah give us a job give us a job please but no um as as uh mr. Ozzie's saying here i feel today was very encouraged into all the music producers nice change it's true though you know it's nice to hear what's possible isn't it with with some fairly simple tools um you know i mean some people i think the last uh the group in their fat fox for example they were using quite a nice microphone in neumann 102 but the fact is they didn't it's not like they've got a massive studio it's not like they gave me a list of you know compressors and eqs that they've got yeah yeah there's it's they've got you know if you can get one or two pieces of nice gear to help you along along the way fantastic but to be honest with you if this was as i say recorded with a neumann 102 if it had been done with a road nt1a or an audio technica 80 2020 it wouldn't have made any difference whatsoever to this song because it was a good song it was good arrangement just a good song yeah you know so it i can't there's no way there's absolutely no way that if they'd used the 200 microphone on this song it would have been any worse i'm sorry to say this because i want people to follow my affiliate links and buy the expensive microphones but it's true all right let's you know i've got a date to go on today uh means to be off on a daytime date together so i have to make sure i'm on time uh finish up show i just want to say next week um i am back but not with fix my mix i'm having a week's break from fix my mix we are going to do featured artists remember the old featured artists live show different emphasis we're going to do featured artists and just kick back and listen to some music from the community without really critiquing the mix and things and i've got marlin on next week from um from white sea studio not white sea white noise studios oh my god i've got the channel name wrong sorry marlin yeah marlin's on next week um uh from white noise studio so um he he's always fun to have on i've asked him to bring his best sarcasm to the show because i find that marlin's sarcasm is infectious make sure you have your chain mail best on because you're going to get so as Doug said isn't that what it was today it was really done really next next week is the same show no i did ask some uh some people in my facebook group uh yesterday yesterday for me anyway to post links to their distro kid links just the music they've released um and i had a quick listen to a few there was quite a few posted in there i had to listen to a few already and this is really really good stuff on there actually really really impressive stuff coming out from the community so looking forward to that uh next week i think we will actually finish off with that uh henry manchini uh theme there the first thing we had on there so ricky i'll leave the final word to you any words of wisdom before we go yeah thank you for joining us this week for this classic episode of fix my mix and see you all very soon bye