 Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. Welcome to episode 30 of Fix My Mix. I can't believe we've done 30 of these already. We've covered so many different types of music, so many songs and hopefully we've all learned something from it. But some of you may not have been able to catch the show recently because I've been doing it in a time zone which is probably not very comfortable for you unless you like being up in the middle of the night and watching YouTube videos which I guess some of us actually do. I'm doing this show especially, I decided to do it this week for the UK and European audience but of course if you're from some other part of the world then you're most welcome to be here. I'm hoping we'll have some fun today because I've got a guest from the UK. He can be a sort of a weirdo and a bit of a noxious kind of guy and that's what I like about him to be honest with you. His name is Ed Thorne and I'm going to pull him up right away. There you go. By the way, how are you going Ed? Hi Mike, thanks for the ching intro. I don't object to the obnoxious bit, object to the weird bit. I'm very, very weird. Anyway, thanks for having me on the show. No worries man, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. I must say point out quickly because I forgot to do it in the intro, just above your head. In fact, your hair is almost pointing to it for me. It's my VIP link to DistroKid. We've both got sort of pointy bits on our hair actually today, haven't we? It must be a very fashionable. Mindshays up a bit more. You're looking even at it in left. So anyway, follow Ed's hair up to the link up above. If you would like to make use of DistroKid and you should make use of DistroKid next time you're releasing some music because super easy. It's super cheap and it'll get your music out to the world and that's something you should be doing with your music rather than just keeping it on your computer. Am I right or am I right Ed? Absolutely right. Definitely put it out there. You should get it out, shouldn't you? I'm off again already. You should definitely not keep it to yourself, I reckon. It's very important. Have you released any music recently, Ed, yourself? Funny, no, no I haven't. It's been a few months since my last song that just crashed, nobody cared, but then I didn't push it to anyone really. But I do have a new one on the way and I'm incorporating all my analogue, new analogue hybrid studio gear to mix that. So I'm just doing some practice mixes to kind of get my head round of process for that and I'm hoping this will be a step up in, well not hoping, I know it will because already I can tell from what I've been doing on other stuff. Interesting. I think I had a chat with you the other day privately to let you know that I've just received a WA2A compressor from Warm Audio. You've got one of those, haven't you? I've got the 2A and the 76 and they are permanently fixed in my vocal chain, which has now got another couple of little pieces in it which is rather tasty. Well you've been doing some 500 series stuff as well. Yeah and I may get round to doing some content on that, it would make sense to do that at some point. Awesome, I'm just going to quickly say hi to some people we've got in the chat here, let's do a quick rhythm. We've got Derek from the UK, nice to see you here Derek O'Ram and we've got Mimu from Japan who's always here keeping everyone in a straight line and we have Joe, I'm sorry we have Doug, he's from the middle of the night, nice to see you here Doug, I didn't quite expect you to be here this week, he's from the US of A folks so that's a bad time zone for this show. We also have Dave Bobs in here and Andy Gallagher Music is in here as well, don't click on the right one, I clicked on the wrong one, there we go. Lovely to see Nick Ellis in here Nick, I did see your question on my video a couple of days ago and I haven't replied to it yet, now I feel guilty. I'll try and get round to that Nick but message me privately if you're like I know you were trying to get something figured out in contact there or maybe you've figured it out. Also great to have Keonra in here, she is also moderating, big thanks to some folks here as well, I want to say a big thanks to Keonra and also to Mimo Japan particularly because they've been helping me out with quite a few things behind the scenes to do with creative source which I can't talk about right now but I will be in the next couple of weeks. We also have nice to see House of Merlot in here always and then finally I think we will get on with the show Ed. I do want to ask you a technical question actually, let's do this real quick. When I come to plugging in my WA2A, tell me about how I'm going to do that with my audio interface, either my Apollo or my Antelope audio. Funnily enough, I have a video on my channel explaining exactly how to do this. There's two ways, you can set it as, now I lie, there's one way because that's the other way is to do with the WA3, sorry the WA73 preamp which I have as well. Just do it in line, just go preamp. Oh in terms of you wanting to do it with your audio or Apollo, so you'd need to route out so you wouldn't be able to track through it live because you need a preamp at the front end to amplify the voltage to level the line. I do have a preamp, I've got an ART one here actually, a voice channel one which is actually quite handy. However, of course I want to be able to use it as a sort of an insert sometimes, you know, so I guess that's what I'll be doing. Did you get the Apollo X4? Yes. Oh so incredible interface, what you can do on that is route out of the one of the outputs and then back in through the compressor and then in through one of the inputs and then bypass the preamp because you've already, presumably you've already recorded the source. In terms of doing that in real time that's going to cause problems but that's what unison is for and the insert monitoring in console which makes the Apollo so powerful but if you you'd have to do it later basically reroute it out in the mixing stage as a hybrid setup. I'll figure it out. Okay let's go for our first song here. Ed, this is a song, maybe I should let you read out the person's the artist's name and the name of the song. There you go. This is Where the Dreams Take Us by Who Is P? Who is? Oh dear, I sort of set you up really a little bit there. I know you did, I know you didn't. I'm used to this by now. This artist has actually been on the show a couple of times before so we've had this conversation, I think it was Paul Rickey got it wrong last time and me before that. The name of this artist is Who Is P which we have had a discussion about whether Who Is P should reconsider the name of their artist's name because of the confusion about how to say it but anyway their name is Who Is P. The song is Where the Dreams Take Us and they said to me in the email it's an old school rock with electronic twist, slide guitar with a crazy out there middle eight. I'm mainly a bass player but love to sing and play guitar. Well I like to tinker now with MIDI haha. Seriously you saved my life with cakewalk as my old eight track died. There's a few errors in the mix and I'm not sure if the vocal is too loud. I guess we'll try and figure that out shall we? Let's have a listen to this song from Who Is P. How suitable for this show because you can get much more British sounding piece of music than that I don't think actually it was just it was reeking of Britishness. Absolutely. I did like that from a melodic and an arrangement point of view yeah very Britpop. It was quite Britpop but to me it took it a little bit further than that at times as well with the synthy stuff in there which they did have back in the day but it wasn't so typical I liked that but anyway enough about what I liked you're the guest let's hear from you sir. Do I have to go first and play both good cop and bad cop? Yeah that's what I even do. Have you any information on how this has been recorded? I don't actually no I have no information on that whatsoever. I'm just wondering if this is a looks like we've got some nice spam in the chat. I know yeah I was just dealing with that I thought you might want to read it before I got rid of it. It's a daytime show Mike, behave. So I'm wondering I'm trying to think how to phrase this so there's a few points in the mix where everything clears up I would say overall it's a very muddy bass heavy mix and it sounds like there's been quite a lot of bus compression and because the bass is quite loud I would say if I'm being honest this is typical of what a lot of mixes that you hear you can very usually very quickly identify what instrument that person plays and in this case they obviously play bass as we know but I'd have supported that anyway because the bass is so heavy in the mix which I think is causing whatever bus compression is going on it almost sounds like there's an instrument bus with all the instruments going to that and then a vocal bus and the instrument bus is squashing everything because the bass is hitting some quite heavy compression which is a squashing everything down and b building up all the muddy frequencies that are in there which is kind of making it a little bit uh indistinguishable the drums seem to disappear a few points um and then when when the mix when the orchestration kind of dies out a little bit and it's just the vocals are a couple points when it was just the synths or just the vocals and the mix cleared up almost instantly and you had what's the word um an eligibility not something that I'm looking for everything cleared up and the I mean the vocals legibility legibility that's the word yeah um the vocals seem quite clear throughout which made me think that they were on a separate instrument bus because they didn't seem to be affected by the amount of instrumentation swamping itself is that something you do I do that in my mixes I eventually will route instruments to one bus and vocals to one bus you don't have to do that folks but it just makes it easier because it's such a key component do you do the same it or uh so I have kicks snares toms symbols overheads all going to a bus for for their group then they'll go to a drum bus bass pretty much on its own so I don't really bother sending that to a bus unless I've got multiple channels and then I'll go to a bus guitars keys backing vocals lead vocals all to a bus and then uh on the output all the instrument buses so master drums bass guitar all go to one instrument bus and then all the vocals and backing vocals sometimes sometimes I put them on a separate bus sometimes I put effects on a separate bus so then I can sidechain the instruments bus with a dynamic EQ set to the vocals to dip out you know if the vocals need a bit more help sitting on a mix uh I'll sidechain the instrument bus so when the vocals performing lead vocals if you won't bother with the bbs uh one or two usually one maybe two dbs between about one k and three k just dips the instrument bus slightly to allow the vocals to come forward yep similar to what I said yeah I tend to always have the the backing vocals not always but a lot of the time I'll have the backing vocals eventually going through to the lead vocals as well depends though because if I was going to do some um sort of sidechain compression I may I may not want to you know I may not want to do the same thing to the backing vocals but yeah I tend to have them together because that relationship in the mix is important to me like basically when I'm setting the level of backing vocals I'm setting them according to the lead vocal if that makes sense so if the lead vocal goes up I want the backing vocals to go up as well but that's just the way I think about it there's different ways of doing it I guess yeah anyway carry on you were gonna say um yeah I'm interested to know more about this mix I wasn't sure if it was a um an internet thing or a um a restream studio compressing things um I wasn't hearing loads of stereo imaging and I believe you moved to restream from a previous uh provider because they couldn't fulfill your stereo mixes but but this is but I'm not hearing much stereo information going on so there's not a lot of movement in the track and everything just seems mono in the middle and quite muddy I hate to be negative um good things are I like the synth sound um I would suggest uh high passing synths unless you want the low end if they're so if they're isolated then you can bring in the low end to bring some fullness but when the bass comes back in you need to separate the two same with guitars um separate all those out with high passes I mean really bass drums are the only things that need anything below 100 um with exceptions obviously but in a general general mix approach um yeah again EQing reverbs I think someone commented on that in the comments EQing reverbs is a good idea if you do have a low end build up again top and tail the reverbs high pass and low pass those I had always high pass a reverb to again at least 100 possibly 200 depending on their um on the source and again with reverbs um have you can have them on the channel I remember when I started music production I had all the processing on the channel itself on the channel yeah yeah which is fine but it in some cases but it it it limits your control whereas if you have it on a bus you can then EQ it compress it definitely I've talked about a fair amount you know I've talked about a fair amount on the channel maybe it's just an old habit because like you know several of the reverb plugins that I use do have high pass filters on the reverb so like in theory in theory you can um you could do this as an insert and you can still do things like some you know high passing but I'm a bit of a traditionalist I tend to have a reverb on the bus with probably an EQ like pro q3 before and this not always but yeah I've just tended to be in the habit of that but I do I would tend to do things a bit higher than than 100 like you were suggesting the I I go way up I mean at least 100 yeah yeah right because with vocals I may be right up there and just only let I'm only letting through you know 102 sorry a thousand two thousand letting that through you know um because for me I just don't need any of much I definitely don't need the low mid reverb in the vocals normally at all you know so yeah if you go to if you go too high though like that you can because a reverb obviously on a parallel bus send is effectively a little bit more you're gonna be allowing more gain of that channel through um when they sum up together so if you're it's a bit like um a part like a parallel send you can EQ those but then if you only EQ 1k and above you're gonna get quite a bright top end sounding vocal so if you need a bit more weight you know if someone's got a thin voice or sings from the back of their throat like this um and that you want more low end in the voice uh a reverb is a good way of getting that as well if you keep that low end information in and maybe suppress the top end again for sibilance as well reverbs can cause yeah they can be sibilance to go over the top so it's worth sometimes dropping those out at six to 10k okay um I will move on from this I'm gonna quickly see abbey road reverb trick exactly memo yep my notes were very very similar to yours and um definitely muddiness was the main part of this mix which was the issue I love I love the song actually there was some nice creativity in the song there was some changes in the arrangement which came along nicely you know nice little guitar solos and all that stuff in there I got the feeling that the artist wasn't necessarily playing into what should be appealing to the mainstream at the moment and doing their own thing a little bit which is cool I like that I like to hear someone just like doing their thing um I actually had a comment about some a little bit of nice stereo stuff on the guitar there was a little bit here and there I felt the guitar was poking out on one side not the other normally I don't do that I tend to double and have them even but there was one bit where the for me on the left side one of the guitars was coming through I rather like that drums were just a bit absent though um that was partly because things like the kick was just totally absent because the the the bass was just masking it you know I mean the bass needed to come but they need to be space carved out you know from all sorts of areas in the lower end anyway but um but they're there appeared to be no kind of ducking or you know parallel compression going on with the kick and the bass if it was and it just wasn't working hard enough because the kick wasn't poking through and the snare as well was just you want that snap of the snare coming through and it sort of wasn't there really I sort of had drums up but it's not it's mostly about frequency ranges rather than level but it probably needs a bit more level as well to be honest with you and a little bit less bass but I think all of those things could be fixed um reasonably easily actually and and really improve what a song which I think is actually really quite good I didn't think the vocals were too loud that was the artist's concern um I thought the vocals were good often I think someone said in the comment maybe Kevin that um often vocals on this show look quieter than this and often vocals are too quiet because people are very self-conscious I think about their singing um so in this case yeah me too so yeah in this case um I thought they were just about right so um good luck with that uh thanks for sending it in um who is P I've got the name right I've got the name right I hope to um hear this release your music via distro kid 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 distro kid 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 distro kid 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 Ed you spend quite a lot of time um honing your skills and and and you know doing the best you can with mixes etc is there a time though where are there moments where the mix doesn't matter the quality of the mix doesn't matter um with certain genres of music or certain songs where it's just not going to matter in your opinion or does the mix always matter hmm um now you're talking to a professional audio engineer um who's professional job as a live sound engineer and someone who is trying to become more of a professional mix engineer in the studio I I think it always needs to be important but if you flip that statement on its head compared to the song that's got to be the priority there's no point mixing a crap song the reason I say it is because the next artist that we're going to play a song from is known to the show I think I think he I picked him as my number one song for the year on the old features featured artist show that we wow that's quite the accolade it was and and I'm a lover of his music and I had think I've had another song of his on the show so this will be the third one um and the reason I say it is this because when I've listened to this is happy ron I'm talking about whenever I've listened to happy ron's music I'm always drawn in by the the message the music the lyrics and I don't pay much attention to the mix I've watched a few of his youtube videos and what have you and I'm just drawn in by his particular quirky way of singing and and so on and so forth I think with this song he's sort of like gone I'm going to focus on the mix and the arrangement and da da da right he's saved in his email to me go on it's a bit like music videos I remember back in the MTV days a a a band would have a great song and the video would often be rubbish because the label didn't think they'd put much money in the video because the song was so good was on the radio and would sell itself conversely a not so good song would have a great video to you know to sell on MTV it's a bit like a bit like mixing I mean if you you know if you listen to the Beatles stuff now those mixes if you put that out now they wouldn't stand up they'd get crucified put the magic is in the songwriting a bit like the first arctic monkeys album great songs not the best mixing compared to album four and five sounds great yeah they'd kind of lost their way a bit I think there you go interesting well let's have a listen to happy ron's song he says he spent he said I spent more than three how 300 hours working on this song recording video the most I've ever spent spent yet somehow I still feel I'll tweak some more this was originally a drunken full song called la love and I decided to make it serious and changed it to the lost art of love and released it then I decided to make it even better and spent hundreds of hours on it going through new age electronic rock and bolero versions before coming down to this I have so been there and done that with some songs in the past and occasionally I've gone all the way back to just keeping it as an acoustic song with just a voice and a guitar let's have a listen to this song from happy ron then so fast that they never learned to dance arts with romance give up I know it won't come back a start of love I'm gonna go first on this one I want to go first on this one and I and I'm gonna say this some of this a little bit hesitantly because I'm a bit of a fan of ron's I like his music I like his writing I've had some chats with him he's been a guest on the show in fact and we've talked about song writing so mm okay well my first impression was and it may have been after the first song ed I was like is this all a bit top-endy but then I was thinking maybe it's because we were listening to the other song that was so muddy and the contrast was suddenly this was very very bright and I wasn't quite sure I think on balance after listening to the whole song I think it was reasonably balanced all in all I'm gonna say a couple of things I look I like this message in the song I like all that stuff I like the writing there were some timing issues which bother me it just bothers me a little bit when there's obviously some good instrument players on there because ron uses real musicians you should know ed there's I don't think there'd be any virtual instruments in this um and you can hear that the people can play their instruments but there was some looseness in there which I just think I would have retaken some of it because I don't I don't mind looseness which is natural and human that's good that makes it like but when it's distracting when I hear that there's that whatever the staggered hit on a beat it distracts me I don't know it's because I'm a musician whether other people wouldn't notice it but it's distracting I don't want it so yeah there were some things in there that I felt a little bit like that um and there was even a couple of phrasey issues which felt like timing on the vocals in one particular spot I think the second verse from memory um so yeah I don't know not sure about this but the other thing that side I mean we can we're all hands up who's never played out a time on a track I mean so many times like all the time I'm a drummer I've never done that right so I think sometimes that you hear that on the show sometimes and I think that you know I know you're in the flow and you want it wants to be natural but I just think have a listen to your takes you know after you've done them and be a little bit critical is like I say a little bit loose fine I'm going on about it too much but that's what I felt about it um next um if I'm totally honest and I'm going to be totally honest I don't think this song needs all the instrumentation that it had I just that's this is an arrangement thing it's not a mixed thing because I haven't got much to say about the mix I thought the mix was okay but I just felt the arrangement was kind of a bit busy sometimes and didn't need to be I I think I know he's playing with other musicians who is friends and and all that sort of stuff this is so much easier isn't it if you know that person just had a bunch of virtual instruments and you'd say just cut it out you and the guitar would be fine but that's the way I felt about it I have to um I'm sorry to be a bit negative I'm not normally but I really respect Ron and I respect his writing and I know that um uh he would he would uh rather an honest and opinion than me blowing smoke up someone's ass to so to speak but anyway people may totally disagree with me um but Ed how did you feel about it I think a thousand people could give opinions on on any mix and you'd get a thousand different opinions um I'm just wondering um how these songs are translating over the restream because with this and the last one I was hearing phasing issues in those songs okay oh bass issues okay no phasing issues I was getting stereo um anyway that's we can chat about that um so as you pointed out in contrast to the last song which was very bass heavy I felt like this was a bit bass weak but partly because again it's your other point about the orchestration piano guitars um what's some nice sparkly lines going on and the vocals that seem to be high passed from about 250 300 hertz upwards there's not much warmth in the vocals there with with quite um a middly sound uh kind of five to 600 hertz and again a lot of presence at one to three k which gives the vocals quite a nice clarity but because they're quite loud this is unbalancing let me do it from yours which unbalancing the mix slightly well quite a lot to be honest um the drums I liked and the low end of the toms comes out really nicely uh in those and um quite a Beatles-esque drum performance and parts and sounds which I quite liked um I'm struggling to hear any bass um again maybe that's what's translating over the over the internet um but a suggestion for the vocals would be load up an EQ plugin and set the and you can do this in stock plugins on logic but I'm guessing this is a cakewalk user um or get a load of a fabfilter pro q3 and set the analyzed after processing don't do any processing but it'll tell you what's coming in after um and I reckon you'll see quite a lot of like 600 and quite a lot of one to three k to compensate that maybe boost some of the the low end to add some warmth or alternatively leave the lead vocal as it is send it to a parallel send low pass all the way past five or six hundred down to you know and high pass up to a hundred because you don't want that money in us but low pass down to about three fifty four hundred and compress that a bit and just have that parallel coming through all the way through the track and that'll kind of thicken out the sound and warm things up a little bit um the snare drum sounded like a floor tom to me I'm guessing it was a very low tuned thing without a bottom snare mic so that was lacking definition for me um and again I think this might be an internet connection thing but I was hearing some phase issues between instruments in the background so I'm okay I wasn't hearing struggling to comment on that okay um okay and any reflections on that arrangement or you're good with it I mean well arrangement's different to the mix isn't it um I mean nothing it didn't didn't didn't bother me um I quite like the the storytelling aspect of that um um but again there were times when the vocals were on its own and it seemed a bit fuller um but when everything else was in it seemed a bit thin so maybe the instruments in the lower frequencies when they're in are overpowering the vocals in those low registers which might be again why it sounds a bit top heavy um dynamic use and multiband compressors are your friends in these situations absolutely absolutely okay we will be going on to our third song thanks for your comments there Ed and let's have a little bit of um interest about distro kid here just point up for me just point up for me point up with my hair with my hair with yeah there you go don't forget to follow that link folks if you want to release your music now if you do follow the link in the description down below it's going to take you to a special page on distro kid with this yellow banner at the top that banner is letting you know that you're going to get a further seven percent discount off your first year if you sign up here and let's face it it's already very cheap if we scroll down we can see that year's membership is $19.99 per year for an unlimited number of albums and songs and so long as it's your own music there are no extra charges and you get to keep all of the royalties from the various platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, Pandora, Amazon, Instagram, Tidal, iHeart, Radio Deezer and more Paul Morgan was just saying in the chat which I think is an interesting point he says uh do you guys find it difficult to decide on a single hearing of a tune um I take a few listens to really start hearing things uh my opinion on this it's an interesting point um I think you could we could certainly you know if we had time on the show we can certainly gain more um by listening to a mix once or twice but I want to say that I think it's my personal opinion and I'm pretty strong on this is the first impression that you get from a mix is so so important okay because uh to this point Paul the problem is once you start to get into two three four you're not hearing more you're hearing less in my opinion um all the time this is why I often promote any tutorials I do that I um I spend so much time organising my mixes so that I can get a very quick static mix do I spend hours days weeks finalising things of course I do but that basic overall mix I like to get as quick as possible um before my ears get fatigued um and then you know leave it obviously look I and getting other people's opinions I think this is another thing let people give their opinions I don't let too many people listen to it and they've got to be people I I I respect their opinions and then but don't get 10 opinions that will not help you at all get three or four opinions from people that you you know and and let them give you their first impression would be my advice you can disagree with me if you like mr thorn go ahead give it a try now I totally agree but but get opinions from people who have better ears than you there's no getting an opinion from someone who's not a musician or a producer said yeah it sounds great because they they're a friend or loved one and they support everything they do anyway pointless opinions sometimes what I sometimes what I do and this is a bit off track for example I when I'm creating my videos um which you know obviously I have to in terms of mixing it's like 30 minutes 30 minutes for a sound mix you know it's got to go out today blah blah blah so I'm always concerned about background music and my voice for example right so it's a big I can never seem to judge you I've I've been editing the video for like two hours and I'm thinking is that backing music too loud you know so I'll grab Susie and I say come here and I won't tell her what I'm looking for I'll say listen to this what do you think so I won't primer and say is the back of music too loud or not I say tell me what does anything poke out gents you go nah sounds all right and then I know it's kind of okay to the untrained ears so sometimes untrained ears can be useful in that way yeah true just as um uh I've got a couple of people who are like song acid tests you know they'll tell me yeah I like that will be like no it's a crap song and then usually that's a good indication of whether it was worth pursuing or not but in terms of really analytical mix stuff just speak to people who've got better ears and you know that's how you learn I'm doing it I've literally got a couple of people who I'm uh men who are mentoring me with my mixing and you know I do it for a living so it's you know never never stop learning um yeah I don't think you should ever mention that you'll sorry again no no go on here well I don't think you look yeah I don't I'm glad you brought that up because I don't think that's a goal I don't think it's a goal to become so good at this that you can totally judge completely by yourself whether you've got a good mix or not I don't think that should be a goal I think there should always be a point where you're gonna um ask other people because I think even the top the best mix in the world surely suffer from fatigue um from being overexposed to a mix for too long it's so subjective as well again like I said earlier a thousand people could listen to these mixes my mixes your mixes and you'll have a thousand different opinions some of which you'll agree some of which they'll raise points that you've overlooked some things you'll completely disagree with and be like what are you doing and other things you know maybe you're already doing or you've tried but didn't quite execute well or you know difference in opinion absolutely difference in goals as well in terms of creative goals you know in in what you know what you expect a song should do obviously there with this last song and again talking about arrangement rather than mix my creative expectation is that that vocal and chords is enough for that song I don't need a lot of instrumentation Ron was feeling when he's doing this now I want to make it a little bit more of this I want the music to be and at the end of the day there is no right answer for that it's just down to what were you trying to do yeah what were you trying to achieve with the piece of art you know I'd say two more things though referencing reference your tracks against other other tracks when you're mixing all the time there's a really good plugin for this from mastering the mix if you don't know their plugins I don't believe you've featured them on your channel have you mastering the mix I haven't no no although I have used one of their plugins quite a lot yeah yeah great great plugins and they're not year like you know LA 300 clone algorithm plugins they're really useful mixing tools and one of them is reference and you can load up a reference track and you can set the auto gain so the levels are the same between a loud master track in your mix track and then it'll show you where the compression width is the mid side stereo imaging the frequency curve difference and all these great details so you can hear where your track is under or over performing from a compression point of view EQ mid side stereo width really good plugin to use I'd suggest getting on that and the other thing is going back to the first impressions thing if you look at the attrition rates for Spotify in terms of how quickly and frequently people are skipping songs if you can get a listener on Spotify past 15 seconds you're doing really well that's there's something like 85 percent of people have clicked on from a song within within 30 seconds and it's like it's some hideous statistics so your track to keep people on board has to sound as good as possible really and because people will click forward and there are no second impressions on this stuff especially with the amount of music out there and how critical musicians are of other people's music sadly don't get don't don't get me started on musicians anyway um Mike Squire sent in the next track it's called in brackets burn the bewitched like that title quite a good title isn't it yeah he says hi Mike I hope you're well you've no idea Ed how many people wish me well at the beginning of emails in this way I can imagine usually with a smiley face afterwards I'm the email says I'm Mike Squires an Edinburgh bass singer songwriter working mainly on piano led alternative music well many years ago I was an active musician over time I found myself writing less and less as working life got in the way been there done that now all about that but during lockdown I discovered your record mix release series and was inspired to I didn't realize I was good I didn't read this I just copied and pasted this right so this is the first time I'm reading this it's going to get a little bit crazy folks so just I didn't know this but during the lockdown I discovered your record mix release series and I was inspired to follow along and start writing again your channel's made invaluable helping helping me to learn cakewalk discover new plugins and instruments okay I'm enjoying reading this I have to say it's a lovely email however I find myself struggling to get a finished mix that I'm truly happy with join the queue there Mike anyway I would love it if you could take a look at my new song burn the bewitched in your show and give me some points down to how I can improve it the song itself is two minutes and 52 seconds of overcommitted melodrama blending piano and orchestral accompaniment courtesy of the marvellous bbc discovery from spitfire audio and a hard rock rhythm section it demands an unapologetic in your face mix that heightens the drama what advice can you give me to make it now I do find this very interesting because it's a little bit of what we were touching on there I like the fact that he's stated an intention here and and this is something I didn't do for ages I do it with my youtube videos now and I've started to do with my music having an intention what I want how do I want to make people feel with this right how do I want to make people feel at the top of all my scripts now I have the title of the video and I say how do I how do I want people to feel when they watch this right and I start to do with music a little bit when I started recording a couple of songs recently is like having a tie and that affects what the mix should be the mix is a part of the art it's a part of what you're trying to achieve right so I think it's interesting that he said that is he gonna make us feel that this is a bit of melodrama let's have a listen and see okay that was different and I'm gonna I've yeah I want to hear what Ed's got to say about this hmm I thought that was cool um that was a fun track um I I quite like the drums I like the parts and the sound I quite like the snare drum sound um but as as dogs just said it sounds like they're quite heavily limiting in places but then the whole track sounds like it's heavily limiting particularly after that last breakdown and then everything came in again it just seems to squash again maybe this is an internet transfer thing but it just seems to squash like five to ten db just the whole track but um again maybe that's an internet thing um the piano and bass are clashing in quite a few frequencies definitely in the 80 to 100 region um but a little bit more in the low mids four five three four five six hundred hertz now a great plugin for this for identifying frequency masking is claro by sonox really good plugin for many reasons I've got to walk through all my channel not to shamelessly plug that but it's got this um it's got two a few things that are really good one there's one area that shows you the stereo imaging and the stereo spread and enables you to eq sorry control the stereo spread it looks like an eq but it's actually a stereo imaging control so you can mono everything below 100 and add some side or mid side um image to the top end really useful that goes on my master bus only like a db on each one but that works really nicely um but there's also a frequency masking part of the plugin where you can load up to if you load the plugin on two different instances say in this case piano and bass it will show you the eq response and where they'll show uh in bands and they'll show you in yellow where they're really overlapping and then there's a feature where you can invert the eq so you can go to say in this example I think 80 and 100 hertz are quite overlapping there's a lot going on so they're they're fighting for each other a bit um you can set the eq to in like a you know a box shape say or a bell or whatever shape you want um to those frequencies and then basically boost them on one and it'll automatically cut them on another and that's a really good technique for frequency separation and going back to one of the other tracks maybe it was the first one I think where there's lots of bass and we couldn't hear the kick drum this is also another great technique and you don't need clara for this you can do this with any stock plugins boost the fundamental frequencies of the kick drum and remove them remove those same frequencies by the same number of decibels roughly from the bass or converse and do the same with the bass boost the fundamental frequencies on the bass and remove them from the kick drum and that will give each part its space in the mix I'd suggest doing this with the piano and bass here um and again dynamic eqs are your best friend on bass and vocals and acoustic guitars they're what I use them on primarily so again in this one um with the vocals they could get quite heavy in the low mids kind of three four hundred region which which is where the warmth is but then you also get this texture and again it can play have it with your compressors and limiters if that's too forward so a dynamic eq is different to a normally q for those of you don't know how to use them and a normally q is a fixed cut so whatever's going on if you cut out three to four hundreds it'll always be there but with a dynamic eq it won't cut those out unless they're particularly prominent in that frequency so it won't thin out the sound if you're for the rest of the signal but only when that particular line or that particular usually it's a note usually it's a fundamental frequency that that triggers that um so it'll only dip those frequencies when they're particularly hot and you can play around with the threshold and if dynamic eq it honestly it's a mixing game changer annoyingly I don't know many doors that have stock dynamic eq plugins but f6 from waves is is a cheap version that's really good if not obviously fabfilter pro q3 is a really good option um I think claro doesn't have it tdr does one then nova eq um which even their free version um has dynamic eq and it's quite nicely implemented actually on there um but their their gentleman's edition does as well so yeah there's a few there's some around with a dynamic eq I use it a lot all the time actually um and for those of you who sort of wonder about it explain it really well there um it's not dissimilar to a multiband compressor in some ways um apart from that you can just be a little bit more um you can have a little bit more precision with it I would say I mean you could do with a multiband possession you you could hone in on specific frequencies but um yeah it's it's a similar idea um but yeah I I prefer I don't you I use multiband compressor on busses sort of more for things like that but you know um but yeah especially like um a place I sometimes use um dynamic eq would be when I'm playing acoustic guitar and I'm doing percussive hits it's a weird thing um you could it could sound lovely in a room stick a microphone 12 inches away from um a guitar and record it and it suddenly sounds like the worst and loudest snare drum in the world um the other thing is you can do sidechain compression with a snare if you've got an acoustic guitar doing that sort of thing as well I've sometimes done that anyway good good stuff that I haven't got much to say on that mix the one thing I will say and it should be the most obvious thing about this mix which I think everyone said those bloomin vocals need to come up really good vocal performance actually really nice vocal performance really interesting full of character full of passion think you achieve the idea of making this a kind of a full on in your face track um as you stated but those vocals definitely need to come up because I think they are pretty much the best part of the song in terms of performance and they were just getting buried especially by that piano which was sort of dominating um kind of everything there I had a weird thing going on you know sometimes uh Ed uh what's that um what's that hi hat thing they do on track beats and stuff like that you know that I can't remember the you know on track beats how they have that hi hat which does the really quick little bits on it like yeah yeah that sort of thing and you know once you can hear that there's songs on and once you can hear it you can't unhear it and it just drives you freaking nuts oh I don't know how you're hearing this I'm going to play the bit of the song we just listened to again I want you to listen to open hi hat okay open hi hat in one ear I don't know for me especially the fact that I'm getting all that open hi hat in um in one ear for me personally I'm terrible with drums you probably completely disagree with this so much of my drums actually quite close to the to the center I can't think of meant because for me even if you're trying to replicate a real acoustic drum kit if it's back at the room over there if it's at the back of the room the back of the hall I mean apart from the reflections around the room it's still mostly coming from the center and I don't mind my toms to pan a little bit from left to right this is all this is all taste things but I don't like hi hats to be over there I still want to be just a little bit off-center for me but what do you do head you probably disagree with me I'm panning wise I felt like they were bang on three o'clock wait nine o'clock yeah or nine o'clock as the cameras look at me which is fine I think that's a good placement for hi hat it was the sound of it and the fact that it was almost doubling up exactly what the snare drum was doing as if they'd copied and pasted the snare drum rolls um so the hi hat was doing exactly the same but in a register where it was kind of the top end clickiness of a snare drum sound rather than a hi hat so it's a it's there I mean it's present in the mix which is you know good but yeah I wasn't sure if I mean hi hats are quite a top-end instrument naturally I'd say get them out of the way above everything else for me for me that was a bit too much a bit too loud and and here's the thing for me as a mere finger drum player on my keyboard yeah I'm learning only you knew a professional drummer for me I'm learning all the time about different roles that drums play I know it sounds crazy but for most people out there who are bedroom producers they're probably not paying enough attention to what real drummers do and an open hi hat is such a great little accentuator of things right it's it's it's it's if you don't if you're not using open hi hat on your songs if you've just got closed hi hat all the way your song can sound dead it's like when you go from uh isn't it when you go from a hi hat in the verse to a ride cymbal in a chorus or something like that and the whole thing opens up and goes crazy you know all that stuff going on but yeah so hi and to me it felt this is again this is not a mixed thing but that open hi hat I became aware of it and it felt like it was accenting not the right things like maybe I didn't notice on the snare all the time but yeah you know there you go maybe that was a snare frequency thing and that's what I was picking up on interesting very very interesting thank you so much for your time and your input mr thorn folks if you want to find out a bit more about Ed thorn you can follow the link in the description recently Ed you just released a video about how wonderful um Apollo interfaces are we had a conversation about this I'm going to talk about this in public I don't care I don't care I'm going to sit back yeah so it's about that time I've got to go it um it's a hard lot it's a it's a it's a I'm going to make a video about this soon it's a little bit of a difficult line we follow as youtubers sometimes isn't it um when we're reviewing gear that's been sent to us and what have you you know about well I always think you see because I don't do many negative reviews because I don't like to review things I don't like I just don't review them if I don't like them you see and I have thought to myself maybe people think I'm always positive about it now it just happens that I just I like to focus on the things I like rather than things I don't like um I'm going to say this now in public folks just in case you want to go over and watch Ed's video about Apollo gear and why why he likes it um that he did uh get he got some crap I think about this you know um but I just want to state publicly I've spoken with Ed extensively over the last um few years in fact we've known each other for years I would say it um about different gear and I know that genuinely Ed really does admire what Apollo what universal audio do with their interfaces you know so away from making videos he's always telling me it's just brilliant I just love it that said now I've briefed everyone to go and watch that video I think they should go and watch that video I watched a little bit of it today and I didn't have time to watch the rest but I will watch the rest um tell us quickly Ed why what what's the thing if you could think of one thing because I know you're proposing that professional audio engineers love this gear why uh just the flexibility the expandability um the monitor processing functionality the so I've got um with logic and console which is the universal audio mixer application I've got sessions for tracking vocals um with different in and out on my uh on logic um to get a really good headphone balance and I can do that for up to four different headphones sends um I can process each channel in real time with you know sub two milliseconds of latency which is inaudible so therefore but basically zero latency um now latency is a big issue these days because everyone's like whoa with them one max and thunderbolt and usbc latency is not an issue but from every interface I've tested the round trip latencies the m uh m2 has by far the best round trip latency that I've tested on my channel so for guitarists wanting to go through ampsims and all that who don't have an Apollo that's great but you're still talking a minimum of four and a half to five milliseconds of latency depending on the um sample rate and buffer size universal audio can you can track through any guitar emulation or pre amp or channel strip with less than two milliseconds of latency and no one can compete with that I mean there is there is a brand who we've discussed off off off air mic that you like and haven't had any problems with who claim to do even quicker latencies than that but they in my experience have fundamental problems with it um I won't mention the brand but you can anyway it's basically watch watch my recent video on um on the Apollo stuff because there are things in there that other interface other brands aren't doing or trying to do and failing miserably at and um it's it's for my workflow again I've got another video coming on Tuesday that's outlines expandability and how I can get more IO um more dsp processing more you know adat inputs and a spidiff inputs and the amount of details they've thought about is unbelievable I just don't see that level of attention to detail from other brands and a hashtag fanboy um I as I say at least you're a genuine fanboy because I'll say I don't like to hear people give you crap like um they think you're saying these things because it's a sponsor video I you know I think you've got more integrity than that for a start and and and I can definitely I can definitely say that um that I've had so many conversations with you about this over the last couple of years and I know that you genuinely like the stuff the other brand that you're talking about is antelope audio I have as you said I personally have not had um uh any issues with antelope audio I read stuff that say people do it's a funny thing you know it's like prisonis for example I run a prisonis audio interface as well never had any problems with it never had to go through their customer support you can go and you can find you know thread after thread after thread about prisonis and how bad their customer service is and all that sort of stuff I don't know about that because I've never had to use it and so I tend to just talk about things I've actually had an experience of because just about with any brand of things if you search hard enough you can find uh that one customer who had a bad experience yeah a few paragraphs I mean universal audio traditionally have struggled with pc so pc users have an issue with them but they are actively working on that on many fronts that again as well with my x4 um I run a pc here never had a problem I run it with thunderbolt 3 and now thunderbolt 4 I'd never had an issue with it at all whatsoever when I read people's comments about these things sometimes I do wonder whether they read the instructions about how to set them up um as well um there you go that's why they need youtubers like us before we go ed because you do something for me it's very very important I did this with Pete a couple of weeks ago and I rather enjoyed it I'm going to need you to move your head over towards your right I'm going to go over towards my left you need to go the other way buddy the other way you need to go now you need to get right the way over come on I want you there we go okay I think I see where you're going with this you know where I'm going I'm going to go yeah there we go let's get the size right now I'm going to go in there a screenshot on this oh I will I will do later give me a nice wide we look like oh god we look like we're related and two of our relations had affected each other thanks for joining the show folks it's been a pleasure people from an English background are a bit more ugly aren't they don't you speak yourself thanks for doing that for me it's always fun to to make a mockery of ourselves I think we should do that yeah excellent folks I thanks if you've been joining here and you're from the UK from Europe thank you so much for being on the show today it's been fun to have Ed here as well I will be back on Friday with fix my mix don't forget to follow the link in the description to send your music in for fix my mix whether you've certainly eaten before we'll have a kind of genre of music you play anything like that just send it in don't mind at all always a pleasure to hear something different as well Ed let's say goodbye and au revoir maybe as well it's been emotional