 Hi folks I'm Mike and I hope you're well welcome to episode well I'm going to say it's 14 it's not really episode 14 it's another number but I avoided I skipped over a number I'm not superstitious but I know some other people are superstitious so yeah welcome to fix my mix 14 where we're going to be listening and I say we me and an amazing guest such an amazing guest wait till you see this guy very hardly ever comes out to be honest but yeah we're going to be listening to three songs from the community today and going to be just not look I'm not going to say it's an expert opinion because that's not really true but what it is is is an honest opinion and a sort of a slightly educated opinion I'm going to say about the mixes that we're hearing the idea of this is not just the benefit the artist who sends in the mix but for all of us to kind of get used to using our ears and listening to a mix and trying to figure out where it needs to go before it gets released and when you do go ahead and release of course I would suggest that you use the sponsor of this show who are districted I'm pointing to them here but you can find a link in the description down below they're not expensive as a service anyway to get your music out to the world but if you follow that link you'll get further the 7% off and I'll get little something out of the deal no extra cost to you so it's a win-win-win situation we'll talk about districted throughout the show if you're here in the live chat right now first of all thank you so much for being here I see there's 16 people watching and there's 15 likes and I haven't liked it yet so that means wow amazing thank you so much I really appreciate that I'd love to say hi to Thomas who's here already thank you Thomas for being here again and also lovely to see Danny here as usual I'm going to say Danny you're so often here lovely to see you wonderful to have Doug here in the chat he is moderating thank you Doug for doing that for us very very helpful we also have Mark good a mark thank you for joining us today and a couple more we'll say hi to in here whatever a bit a bit a bit a bit a nomad here's thank you so much for being here wonderful don't forget that as we're listening to these pieces of music and of course by the way Jade yo yo yo Jade yo yo yo don't forget as listeners here in the chat it's really interesting and useful to myself and my guests if you give us your opinion about what you're hearing it's this is interactive it's a live show it's important that you're here and it's important that you give us your feedback on the music that you're hearing got some really interesting tracks to listen to today but before we talk about them let me have a chat with our guest on today's show my oldest friend on YouTube and when I say oldest I think in years actually he might be my oldest friend on YouTube mr mr sadly I think that's correct I was just thinking that because I think you made the same joke last time because you're dad and you have dad jokes but yeah I think I am a lot of people we get around with a lot of people we hang out with our YouTube croonies and buddies uh are these young dudes that have all this energy and all this enthusiasm and we just have to bring them down like a big wet blanket when they get too excited so well apart from uh Ricky T Brown who sometimes on has been on both of our shows um and uh I feel I'm gonna say this and I'm glad you raised this the subject you didn't but anyway let's pretend you did uh the Ricky was uh last time he was on my show which was last week or the week before it was his birthday and I forgot to say happy birthday on the show happy birthday Ricky he's older than both of us uh how is it there in the future of life Ricky good I hear it gets better and better as you get older that's all it does yeah everything just fits well and you know no creaks and no aches no pains it gets better just make sure you've always got a toilet nearby that's all I can say about but so we've already gone there we've already gone downhill we've been out together over on my channel just now so uh we didn't get to go there so now we're there now we're now we're toilet humor stop the toilet humor absolutely uh Pete um I just want to tell you that we've got some interesting songs on today's show I like yeah we've got we've got different genres different languages um different sort of lineups but I just want to say before we go ahead and listen to the first song because we're going to get on with this show we're not going to waffle this is a short form show uh I just want to say big thank you to the people who do send their music in it's very very brave of you to expose yourself to a couple of nut jobs like me and Pete Johns and who are going to put out their opinion um and if you do want to send in your music to fix my mix you're most welcome please do follow the instructions down below in the description it's very easy you're just going to send it to me by email with a specific email title and um we'll take a listen to it on the show now um you will find if you watch this show that all kinds of genres are accepted um all kinds of uh lengths of song are accepted to a degree sorry I'm just you don't this off camera off camera uh the battery just ran out of my mouse so I'm just having to plug the thing in if you're buying one of these stupidly expensive mice is it are they mice oh there we go fine I wasn't gonna be able to continue the show without that um then do make sure that um the battery life's good anyway continue so look we'll accept any I've had sort of film type music on here I've I've had you know sort of game music um all kinds of things um dance music anything anything very very welcome so don't feel that there's this genre specific don't judge the book by its cover when you look at us two we'll listen to all kinds of music it is true yeah like last time yeah last time I was on here you had someone who said you've never heard any music like this on the show before and they played it and it was true so it was so true I can't even think of what genre to call that but it was I loved it it was one of my favorite things that's been on the show actually now um I reckon you're the kind of guy who likes a little bit of sort of 90s rock aren't you I'm a big 90s rock proponent in fact on my channel I'm doing like a 90s retrospective I do a happy hour show each week and I'm going through year by year it's 93 this week so I'm I'm revisiting a lot of my favorite 90s rock as we speak awesome awesome well I think we've got something in the show for you then today which is gonna be happy times yeah but we'll go to the first song I will read out the email from the artist and then we'll have a listen to the song um he says his name is Otis Isaacs in fact let's just pop that up let's be professional pop that up on the screen you don't make me read it Otis Isaacs oh I've got one for you to read later on don't worry that's enough I'll do the first two you can do the last one just to be fair okay so my name is Otis Isaacs I'm a pop rap artist from the United States I would love it if you could play my song circles on your show fix my Mitch I've started mixing mastering I started mixing mastering in cool edit pro 2 respect respect somebody was saying to me today let's go off topic already somebody was saying sorry Otis because you were asking on your show earlier which people should watch watch the replay of if they didn't watch catch the live show and it wasn't all a blur even though Pete Johns is all a blur at the moment but uh he was for a moment but but we was you were asking about doors and things now there are some pieces of software that people use which are not really doors like cool edit pro um and someone was saying to me in the comments the reason they don't use a door anymore and they only record in those kinds of pieces of software which really audio processing software more than anything else rather than the door um is that is that they don't they're not being forced by the tempo map feature to do things in a certain way that they use it like a tape machine basically don't they um and they do that on purpose this person does that on purpose so that they're not being pushed in directions by a door how interesting we should have said that on your show rather than on this show going back to uh going back to Otis sorry Otis you know that a tangent is mathematically like that's the the intersection between like two different sorry I thought we were getting off track again so Otis started mixing mastering in cool edit pro um he used it up until around about february of this year and he says since then i've been using cakewalk by band lab and your videos are the main reason why thank you Otis that's very kind of you to say so i didn't have to read that bit out but i did your your videos the main reason i've been able to transition doors and create better sounding mixes now i originally started strictly as an artist just writing lyrics and recording them but due to certain circumstances i've had to start mixing myself and i need a lot of help uh something isn't clicking in the mastering phase and i'm having a difficult time getting the sound that i want so that's the that's where Otis is that i always think it's wonderful when we've got people who haven't been doing this for very long um to hear what they've achieved in a short period of time so let's see where Otis is at in that score i wonder if you can pull the right words can go on for days hold it in till it hurts then explode with rage all the times i had a chance i was too afraid and now look at me i regret everything i'm all petty all i know is that life and what it ought to be cuz i would rather run in circles holding your hand to deal with what i'm dealing with i would rather run in circles about being honest ain't different than being heartless when both of us are being l-antharchic won't try our hardest and running don't feel the same so would you rather run in circles holding my hand then deal with what you're dealing with or wasn't your plan to be out here running without me tell me if you even ever think about me would you rather run in circles holding my hand deal with what you're dealing with or wasn't your plan to be out here running without me tell me I'm gonna go to Mr. John's first to see what was happening over there. I thought a little bit of a groove happening there. I liked the groove. I thought it was super groovy. It was a cool beat. I love the, it's very cool right now, very hip right now, the retro kind of tape warble kind of effect that you have going on there, very low-fi, very cool. So I like the beat. Not a heap of variation with the beat, so I probably would love to hear a little bit more variation. I'll talk a little bit about what I think you could add in there. What a lot of folks were saying in the chat, what I'd agree with is that the bass was a little lacking, so you could hear the kick drum kicking through reasonably well. But yeah, just with lacking the bass. And I really think that probably a sub bass is really what I'm looking for, something that's really gonna sort of rattle the bones down at that low, low end. So, and what I've found in a lot of music, I don't produce this sort of music, but sometimes adding a second bass that's an octave lower, that's that sub bass that just driving it can really help with that. So the low end was a little bit missing there, and that kick is just crying out for a big juicy bass to help it out. Also at the top end, I thought the whole thing was a little bit mid-rangey. So there's a lot of stuff going in the mid-range in both the beat and the vocals, and that kind of crowded it a little bit there. I think it could have really used some toppers, either some arpeggiated sort of sounds or synth sounds up the top there, or just like a hi-hat. It was sort of missing sort of that sort of high end energy, as well as that low end energy. So I think that when the artist said at the start, you know, when they're hitting this mastering phase, I think that's the key thing is that it doesn't have a heap of range in that frequency spectrum. So there's not a lot going in the bottom, not a lot in the top, it's all kind of sitting in the middle. One thing that I really like in this sort of song, and the vocals was probably the other big thing, big call out for me. I thought they were probably a good four or five dB too low. I think they just needed to come up in the mix or maybe a little compression, because they did sort of have a bit of variation there. So maybe a compressor there to level out and lift the overall gain of those vocals could work well. And because the core, I really love the hook, but the hook was the same every time. So I'd love like a melodic enhancement of that hook. And what I mean by that is either what a lot of artists would do is they'll do it an octave up vocal, like a background octave up vocal, or even a lead instrument, like a synth or something doing that. At the same time as you're doing that, just a compliment to give you that top end stuff. So I mean, really good song, really, really catchy, really good hook, really good beat. You're close. It's like 80% there, I think just 20% enhancement could take at some next level. What say you, Mr. Mike? Yeah, I mean, I agree. Like overall, so I'd say to Otis, great job if you've only been using cakewalk, you know, for a few months. And if you've produced all that instrumentation, sounded great. A lot of people said they love the synth. And I agree with that. And it's 80% there. Don't want to go on about because there's so much I agreed with with what you said and what was said in the chat. Definitely the the bass itself, a kick was great. But the bass was not matching it and wasn't punching with it, which was, you know, it's probably going to be the main takeaway. The vocals. So what was happening with the vocals for me is they were first of all too quiet in general. But I could almost hear some of the different takes. There was a couple of lines here and there which sounded as though they hadn't been recorded at the same time, unless you suddenly went closer to the mic, which I don't think you did. So that that's, I'm not going to say automation, but you mentioned compression. I wouldn't use compression to fix that because we're talking about like whole phrases which stood out. So I would be looking possibly automation, but if you're using cakewalk, then I would look at clip automation. So in a lot of doors, you have this where you've got your different clips and you know, you've probably got them broken down into different phrases, what have you. And you can just raise at the clip level so that you're not mucking around with your mixer when you're doing it. So I would fix like my approach with vocals is to first of all edit them, get rid of, you know, any crap that shouldn't be there. And then the next stage is always clip edits to get a kind of a balance between everything. Yeah. And then from there, I'll use compression and perhaps automation. But yeah. So Otis, I think that's what you need to look at that with some of those phrases. And I, first of all, I want to say the width was nice in this. It wasn't overly wide track, but there was some nice width in that and I was enjoying the sort of stereo image there. But yeah, I think that if you were to take a look at the vocal level and the level, first of all, of the of the bass, then you're there. Yeah. Now, the only thing with mixing is it's a bit it's a bit sometimes you fix the one thing it does just just there's a possibility here, especially with bass that when you bring that up, and then when you bring your vocal up that other things start to go a bit skewer. So do these in some slightly gentle moves to begin with, I would say. Yeah. At the first. But yeah, all in all, I thought it was a great start. I do like to have this sort of genre on the show. We don't have enough of it. And it's so representative of what music is doing at the moment. It comes to seems silly to me that we don't have enough of it. So thanks, Otis, for sending it in and giving us the opportunity, even though we're evidently not kind of artists of this type of music. The final thing I'll say is because you may listen to this and think it was a rap song. He wasn't rapping at all. There was melody in what he was doing. Yeah. And almost what you said, Pete, I think this song for me, I think it was about three and a half minutes long. And it was interesting for about three minutes and five seconds. And there was a little bit towards the end there where you went, Okay, there's one too many repeats here. And it wasn't so much that was too many repeats is that you could have done a variation on that vocal. And one of the other things, apart from what Pete mentioned, sometimes you'll sing what would be a harmony to the lead vocal, but then you make that harmony, the kind of melody for the final chorus. So I don't want to actually sing it because it's too early in the morning to sing it. But yeah, something like that would do a real treat there. Or even, you know, putting another vocal line underneath, which is perhaps saying something different, you know, it's something going on there. An ad lib. Yeah, a little thing going on. Yeah, a bit of an ad lib in there. So I mean, just to do that final lift as you finish off Otis, then you'll hold people for the whole of that song, actually, I think. Or you could do the what you talked about in your recent video, that whole just shift everything up a tone for that last chorus. Like the 80s, every song just went up in a different key. Like just that would be weird. Don't do that. Add a saxophone solo. And a saxophone solo. There was someone asking in the chat about that sort of muddiness. So when you start adding things in, how do you avoid that muddiness? And Thomas Christ had a good point that a good low cut or what's called a high pass filter on a lot of your other tracks. So if you're fine, if you once you add your bass, if you find it all gets into this big muddy mess, yeah, take a look at your EQ on your vocal tracks and your synth tracks and that sort of thing and just make sure, especially your vocals, because we're not all recording in a perfect environment. If you've got like trucks going past, you've got rumbling, we've got electrical ground loops and things like that. Just adding that high, high pass or low cut filter can really help reduce that low end rumble in tracks that shouldn't have it, which means your kick and your bass and your low end tracks are going to have that real kick and have space. Another little suggestion there in the chat is from Nomad Tribe. I quite like this. I'm sorry, I clicked on the wrong comment there. Add distortion to a vocal on a bass. Yeah, you could do something like that. I love that. Just anything you can do just to create that little bit of variation, Otis, because it's like a good thing and a bad thing. Music does need repetition sometimes, so that creates a familiarity, but then that's the danger side of it is when we start to repeat and repeat. You always want to have something at least subtly changing in my opinion anyway. Let's go on to our next song. Before we do listen to the next song, of course, Otis, when you do release this, make sure you go ahead and use mine and Pete's favourite and only place. Let's face it, I don't know anyone else who, I'm not even kidding. Everybody I ask is who's releasing music. I'll say who you are. They say I'll DistroKid. It's a no brainer. I've had some old stuff on a Muse and other distributor, and sorry Muse, but I've actually just removed it and I'm about to put it up on DistroKid. So I'm eating everything. I'm putting all my eggs in the DistroKid basket because they're just that good. And the only reason I know about CD Baby these days is because of their irritating copyright claims. They put content ID on everything. So use DistroKid. We're not here to bag the competition. No, absolutely. Use who you like, but use DistroKid. Exactly. It's really easy. Follow the link in the description and you'll go here. If you do follow the link in the description down below, it's going to take you to a special page on DistroKid with this yellow banner at the top. That banner is letting you know that you're going to get a further 7% discount of 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. Platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, Pandora, Amazon, Instagram, Tidal, iHeartRadio, Deezer and more. Matt Phillips has this song which called Captain. I think you'd have to say Captain Poverty. Is that like Captain Crunch? Either there was a typo in the email or he's been very clever. And I just copied and pasted it. So don't blame me folks. But I think it's probably supposed to go like that because he had that in the file name of the songs. There's that as well. Anyway, this would be unusual because we're not unusual. We've had songs on the show before which don't have lyrics on them, which are going to have lyrics. And I think the last time I did that, I had Dan and Ricky on the show and they commented on how difficult it was to assess a song when the vocals are missing because it could change things about the next. And I agree with that. And sometimes when people send mixes like that in, I don't play it for that reason. But I did feel compelled to play this one because I think the reason why is that this artist has the lyrics prepared and I think they know what the melody is going to be. They're not a singer themselves. And they've been trying to find a singer. I think they've tried five. I'll read the email in a moment. We'll find out. So just interestingly, perhaps there's someone who's either in the live at the moment or is watching on the replay who thinks that their vocals may fit this. But I think that does make a difference. I do think that the fact that there are, that he sent me a whole lyric sheet, Matt Phillips on this. So he's obviously got it planned. Let me read it out. He says, the song I'm uploading this email sounds much like, sounds much like 2000s rock. It was a style I was, that was, I was going for and I feel I've achieved it. I used Kate Walk for everything. And this is where I am after starting for the first time about two years ago. I put a lot of time and energy into this one. I worked on the mix for two months until I felt like it was good enough, sorry, good enough. But I hope that you can give me some pointers maybe on EQ or something. It's called Captain Poverty. But really, it is a good message in there with the lyrics. I'm paraphrasing a little bit here because I can't read. This is the instrumental version I'm sending here. But I do have lyrics, which I can include in the message. He did. I'm not going to read them out. I did hire someone from Fiverr, but they didn't really create the right vibe. I was so you know, I'm getting ready to hire someone different. Just don't have the extra fun yet. Okay. The song is about the little man in society. I assume you're a little man. Are you Pete? I've never really, I don't know how tall you are, but I'm assuming you're a little man. Are you a little man? My nickname was Big Pete in high school. So not that little. Five eleven, Mike. Thanks for asking. Medium. Well, you're actually taller than me. Because I'm always sitting. You've never seen me stand. I may not have legs for all you know. Maybe you don't have legs. He's down in the horrible room on Jane's channel and she has no feet because we've never seen her feet on her channel. So now I don't have legs. No, it's not true because we chat while I walk whenever I talk to Mike off camera. I'm always walking around. Yeah, yeah, you've always looked short to me in your video. I thought, oh, he's a little man. Anyway, the song is about little man. Your tangent is when two things, sorry, getting off on tangent all day. It's about the little man in society these days. I'm always trying to survive and live in a system designed to keep the rich in power. I don't know about these days, by the way, Matt, like forever, that's been the case. But anyway, we get political now. Anyway, designed to keep the rich in power and feeling there's no way to actually get out. Just working every day, even dreaming about work. I'm a lot. I'm sure a lot of people can relate. I think you are completely correct about that. So, first of all, maybe Pete Johns could be your next singer. I don't know. Maybe he'll sing a lot. I'm going to mute his mic, but you'll see me if I'm singing. I do have a habit of doing that when I hear a cool instrumental. I just sing a lot. Yeah, one of my viewers, Trevor Bear, who I think I saw in the chat earlier. Yeah, he did an instrumental and I loved it so much. I'd sang along and then he said, hey, can you sing on this? And I wrote lyrics and sang on it. So it has happened. And I know you've got many people in your group. So maybe join the Facebook group and put it out there. And there might be a cool singer just hiding in the weeds. I'm going to say, and I don't normally do this. I'll keep my opinions to later. But even though this is obviously lacking vocals, I really enjoyed listening to this track. I just have to say that. Anyway, we'll have a listen. There it goes. Yeah, rock on. I like it. Always guests first here, Pete. So yeah, I mean, when you start with some Chugga Chugga guitars, I'm in the zone already. You already got me. So yeah, really dug it. Definitely encapsulated that sort of late 90s early 2000s pop punk rock kind of vibe that was going on. So I dug on that. I thought the drums were nice. They were doing enough, but not too much, if that makes sense. So sometimes drums in these sort of tracks, the drummers try to do too much or the drum tracks are too full on. And sometimes they're just you can hear that they're a virtual drum pattern that's really not changed. I think the feels were just enough to complement the track. So yeah, a lot of good stuff going on there. In terms of what stood out to me. Again, the bass was a little bit missing on this one as well. And I think this time, instead of it being that you could hear the kick and you couldn't hear the bass, I think because the guitars were so, because it was in C major, the guitars were so low in some parts. It was kind of drowning out. It was sort of overpowering. And there's a lot of low end in those big crunchy distorted guitars. And I think the bass was there. And funnily enough, in the second verse, the bass kind of stood out a bit. I think the bass was doing a slightly different pattern later in the song. And I could hear a little bit better. So you basically think the low end of the guitars was masking the bass? I think so. Yeah, that's what I'm sort of feeling. So I don't know. First thing that comes to mind is I think a lot of people are too scared when they've got low chunk of guitars, bring the bass up, bring the bass up the octave and do the I think it could sound really cool with the bass up full octave, because a bass on a low C, which I don't know if the bass did go down to the low C for those C chords, but it sounded really low and it just seemed to conflict a little bit. So love to find a way to pull that bass out a little bit. Guitar tone was really good. Love the guitar tones. Love the sounds of the guitars. The only thing I'd say about that is that it sounded the same on both sides. So the guitar tone and the EQing sounded very similar. So you did get the wall of guitar sound, but I love, this is my personal preference maybe, but I love a wall of guitar where you've got a different tone. You've got like a fender on the right and a marsh on the left. It sounds wider. It does. It just gives that variation. And because it was played so well, like clearly Matt's a really good guitarist, if this is him playing, the double guitars sounded almost identical. They were really well in the zone and in the pocket, which can actually mean that it almost sounds a little bit too artificial. So I would love to hear a different sound on one side to the other. And that can be as simple as like doing some EQing. Graham Cochran did a video ages ago where if you just basically scoop the mids on your left guitar and boost the mids on your right guitar, you can create that. Just to explain that a bit further. So what you can do is pick a frequency, you know, just say, you know, 1000 hertz, you've got one guitar and you think, oh, I feel like it would sound good if I boosted 1000 by three decibels. Then if you happen to have recorded the guitars exactly the same, then reduce it by three decibels exactly that frequency on the other side and then pick one to boost on one side and one to, it kind of works pretty well. Just create some space or, you know, we're in the world of virtual amp sims, so literally just change up the mic or the amp sim or the tone of one side or the other or even just use a slightly different distortion. He's an overdriven tone on one and a distortion or DS1 type distortion on the other. So yeah, that was the one thing. I think that could just create a bit of a wider sound like the solo that was fun. I'll put here fun solo. Like I love that. Like coming in with a solo like that that then builds. I liked it. Yeah, I too needed to hear the vocals. I could hear the vocals in my head and I actually love this because I think this could start simple with a simple vocal, go to the first chorus and I really hear it building. I hear some ooze and ars and I'm just saying that because maybe when you got the vocalist to record it, I don't think this song is going to sound right with just one vocalist singing one note the whole way through. Definitely need some harmony in that second verse and second chorus and definitely needs probably three or four parts of I could hear that like a like someone doing the work. I think you need that lead vocal with doubles on the choruses and you need harmonies and like you say some ooze and you got that going on. It needs to be a thick chorus sound. It's got to be a big epic ending. Yeah, because it's starting so well high energy that there's no way to go with that unless you can sort of build on it. So I think yeah doing a little bit of work around those guitars and the other thing the guitars were super thick and super chunky and I think that could be the challenge you'll get to once you start adding in the vocals and I think you mentioned this earlier that it's hard to think of a mix until you add the vocals. I think you'll probably need to pull back on those guitars because they're pretty intense once you start adding vocals because that mid range is going to start getting very busy around that area so you might need to just sort of pull that back a little bit but I love the song. I think that's really really cool. I thought it was really interesting actually because I was like oh I can't wait to hear this song because I can I think the fact that he has written the lyrics and I suspect the melody and things beforehand you I could hear the sections of the song I could hear all these parts obviously the chorus and this is the pre-chorus and what have you was going on there. Yeah so it was despite it being instrumental and pretty much the same lineup of instruments all the way through there was defined sections I think it's got it's got structure to it which is super important. The vocals could kill or you need a good vocalist on this you're not not a good vocalist but the right vocalist yeah just because it's a sort of a rock sound I mean yeah it's just my personal opinion I'd be thinking Green Day vocals rather than Bon Jovi vocals. I was thinking yeah Green Day Blink 182 that California punk offspring that California punk style definitely. Something that sounds like it's got a little bit of attitude going on it on in it rather than being so much melodically perfect or tuned for in that way. Yeah I think it's got the makings to be a great job. I don't have much to add. Some people were saying some things you know the low end for sure but be careful with that because it could be as Pete Johns was saying that you know you've got those guitars masking it. Electric guitars are very interesting a lot of people I probably think get that perfect guitar tone you know they've got their amp and they play in isolation that's not probably the sound that you want in a mix it's not going to work in a mix you know there's a kind of a narrow band of frequencies which work well with electric. Maybe that's what's gone on there with those guitars maybe with all that low end in the guitar sounds great when you've been playing it by yourself and practicing the riffs but yeah in the mix no you need to correct that space for for the bass guitar there so it could be happening there. But anyway you know I just really really loved this weirdly I just sort of think I can just hear so much potential in this as a song. Yeah I would go listen to a song by a band called Jimmy Eat World called The Middle. It reminds me of this song and I think if I was doing if I was bringing in a song while I was mixing or mastering this as a reference track I would bring in some Jimmy Eat World because the vocals from Jimmy Eat World has that exactly that sound we were talking about before and that's a similar kind of song to this it's got the chug a chug of guitars it's got the real heavy distortion but it has like that variety and it has a really good bass and drums so um yeah that's another tip because referencing songs can really help you learn that guitar tone because you might be thinking like you say my guitar tone sounds great when I'm just playing it on my Marshall or my Fender as soon as you try and bring in a bass it gets super muddy so um yeah. Now I'm almost tempted to say with with this particular one um do take the advice that we've given you and there was some you know there was some opinions it's slightly different differing here and there um in the chat um so Matt I would take a look at that and see what you want to incorporate but I'd hazard a guess that if we hadn't been critiquing it and this had the right vocal on it we may not think about any of these things um I think it's sort of obviously it needs a vocal but I kind of think that when it's got the right vocal on there it's it's pretty much releasable it's it's so so close they're being releasable um so yeah vocal some artwork and then do this you want to release your music via distro kit 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 trapped 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 district it 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 couldn't have said it better myself do you want to hear some cool cool things about distro kid a couple of things I'm thinking while that promo was happening uh number one is district it splits is 100 free so if matt collaborates with another artist and what's the release is with district kid they can split the revenue they can agree all right you get 30 I get 70 because you did the vocals and they can just put that straight in and it's all managed completely automatically so that's another reason to use district kid and for my mobile creator friends I did a video this week the district kid uh web site previously wasn't mobile optimized they have updated it improved it you can now release directly from your phone so android or iphone or ipad you don't need a computer anymore if you're mobile people have needed that for quite some time so i'm glad it's here i'm glad that that can be happening now um now we as uh english speaking westerners are very very lazy when it comes to other languages aren't we we basically don't listen to music in foreign languages um if it had subtitles we might do but how can you do that that's not possible uh we we we sometimes watch movies occasionally look we'd prefer a voiceover than subtitles because subtitles means we have to read so even as the voiceover might be dodgy uh but unfortunately the artists for this song didn't provide a voiceover in english uh so it's going to be in danish for us unfortunately i'm trying to point out to the fact that aren't english speaking people so lazy when it comes to taking on board art which is not in english i agree i i try to like we get a lot of people submitting songs in other languages on the show that i do uh your music live and yeah i love playing them because i don't know it's it's almost like more of a jigsaw puzzle and when you don't hear the lyrics uh you actually sort of listen more to the music anyway i tend to find so i don't know maybe that's exactly the point i was about to make is that it's a good exercise for people in the chat at the moment and people watching on the replay to to to listen to this because you're going to hone into the mix in a different way than if you were listening to something in your own language but but talking about our laziness i'd like to demonstrate that pete jones is not lazy i'm going to let him read out the final name of the final song today this is hands cron with navi say again i think you actually said that really well it gets repeated in the song a fair amount and i think you actually did a good job there um anyway hands hands wrote me a lovely email he said i hope you're well i am thank you hands the song is about a danish summer it's about remembering a summer and the nice time we spent together um with his the nice time he spent together with his summer love um now he just can't wait till it's summer again the language is going to be a problem i guess but i hope you enjoy it anyway he said it was written produced and played by me hands henrik in collaboration with carlos molina lopez who plays the bass all in cakewalk and it was sent from mix to nina in denmark who is operating in logic pro if you want more details you can blah blah blah let's have a listen to this and see what we think of this mix and again for people in the chat i'm loving hearing your opinions today um i know um there's about 30 or so of you watching i am hearing opinions from about six of you so everybody else don't be quite so shy okay you might say the most valuable thing yet let's have a listen to this song i thought i'd let that just sit there for a second silence from a bit of an awkward side how dare someone minus of summer it's freezing here look i've got my i've got them the first i've won a hoodie uh this year distro kid hoodie i've got here nice hey you're still in a t-shirt is it i'm still it's no it's it's actually freezing i forgot to put a jump from before the show um but yeah no it is it's about nine degrees here today so um it's very very cold oh yeah and when you when people say to uh from different countries perhaps if someone was contacting you from denmark and they might say you say it's cold here and they say well how cold how cold is it and you say it's nine degrees and they go what do you mean nine degrees is cold there'll be like else so you go to you go to the beach today then because uh that's fine yeah if you live in the uk that's that's that shirts off down to the beach if it's one day of nine degrees in england that's what they call summer that was the whole thing and then they go to the what they call a beach which is just a bunch of pebbles next to the water but uh anyway i don't know where you go it's too late they're all asleep they're all asleep oh no there's the replay oh oh shit i mean oh there you go i got the first word on your channel okay you'll you'll get revenge against us with the ashes go on then um yeah what what a what a fun song um it was fun wasn't it yeah just from the from the word go it was just fun it was a summer jam and i dug i really enjoyed it i thought it had really good melodies and harmonies and was just a bop i love the um the synth sounds in there like a lot going on but not so much that it got distracting it was just enough to just yeah i don't know i feel like a ben lee jam like i don't know don't know ben lee but just the the hand claps in there like everything will catch my disease kind of style there um so yeah really love that the chorus um so that had a middle eight had a bridge or a middle eight didn't it didn't couple actually yeah yeah yep so i really enjoyed that thought that was cool um i thought the bass and the drums were actually linked in nice and tight in this one like not overpowering but they had their own space which which was good in the track what what would i do differently or what would i work on here vocals um now i'll preface this by saying that in the chorus especially the final chorus the vocals sounded really good but the challenge there was i think that there was no volume changes or automation changes between the verses and the chorus and in your verses um we only had the one vocal and then when you had the double vocal and the and the backing vocals come in and the choruses it sounded much fuller but i think uh and it's a mistake a lot of folks make myself included well and truly is that you you don't vary that vocal some time you think oh i'll go in the chorus the vocals are going to go up but when when a double and when backing vocals come in your chorus your vocal actually needs to go up in the verses because it's on its own it's like out there doing its thing and i thought when i first heard that as soon as it kicked in it was so high energy it was right in your face and then the vocals kind of just felt a bit distant they felt in the background and they weren't sitting up there up front so i don't know whether that needs some automation to volume just some gain up there or some compression just to really give it a bit of guts but it just sort of sat a little bit behind for me um so yeah a bit more up front there i think i mentioned the space before and you know me mike i've said this much i i like to create a song that feels like everything's in the same space i just felt that there was perhaps a little bit of maybe some reverb or some delay that could be added into a lot of those tracks like that especially the vocals just to to make everything sit like it was in a space i thought it just sounded like the vocals you know sometimes vocals either sit on top or sit behind uh tracks you've got the instrumentals and then the vocals aren't part of that track i just thought that uh yeah playing around with some delay and some reverb on especially those vocals could really work well i think once you came into the final chorus with that fullness it sounded much better but when it was there by itself that was a bit of a challenge um that's that's really all i really had from this um yeah i like i say it was a really fun song um i think if you brought those vocals up a little bit there um that that's about the only thing i love the adlibs too like the counter vocals that final chorus that was just a blast that was things going everywhere you had the nice little counters on the off parts when you weren't singing the main part uh and for a song that wasn't in another language i completely understood the vibe and the intention of the song which i think is really cool so that's yeah i think that um if the goal was to make a song which made us think about summer or i i should say uh you know what we typically think about summer which is you know happy times and and what have you and it's certainly done that and and i think that um there was a there was a slightly dark part in the middle maybe it was that um that middle eight where things got a bit darker i'm not sure what the lyrics were there but it was a that was good so what i mean is this is this song actually whatever you say about it it worked on some sort of emotional level right it affected you in some way um which is you know why we make music so um it was good in that way i i did make some notes that i felt that um just overall just as an overall thing this could i don't want to say this is a mastering thing but i think the whole thing was a little bit light sounding too light sounding okay um almost weak is probably what i would say and i think so much of this song existed in the middle frequencies um really you know for me from what i was hearing around these headphones um so a little bit it's hard to say because in some parts i felt the actual bass guitar was too uh a little bit too loud um but but the whole i'm not just talking about a single instrument i'm talking about the whole thing just could do with a bit more down that lower end and on the very very highs i'm talking about the airy highs okay not the yeah not not your sort of four or five k but up above that all like cheers to the ten k's and stuff they could just be a little bit of sparkle in there um but yeah i thought the vocals there was a couple of things about the vocals what i was originally going to say was they were just too quiet um in in places and also i felt they maybe had too many effects on them sometimes when people were not feeling confident about their vocals they they now i could be wrong about this but it sounded to me like they may have used a widening plug-in on the vocals rather than actually doing doubling and maybe wider and uh it was just a little too wide for me at times that didn't feel focused enough with the vocals um but then somebody said and i just put the pop this up on the screen and now i thought oh they said it much better than me the singer is too shy especially in the verse you can sing go for so so true we're thinking about mixing but there may be a performance issue with this vocal um during when we're hearing it's too quiet it just may be that the singer is just not going for it they obviously can sing so um if you're listening hands or watching hands and and you think yeah maybe i do lack a little bit of confidence sometimes there's those telltale signs there there's a little bit of performance and maybe over-processing which you've done to compensate because perhaps you're not feeling overly confident in your vocals so i'm afraid to say i hate to say this on a mixing show that you may want to retract those vocals for that reason yeah if the vocals are if vocals are pitch perfect and all that but they don't deliver in performance you've got to retract we haven't got a plug in to fix that really you know there's a couple of things you can do here in there but they'll get it right at the source isn't it so joe gilda quote from way back when but um yeah i think that that's exactly it and the couple of things that you said there and uh and yeah doug said the stereo um stereo wideness can give some phasing weirdness and i think that's almost what i was hearing that because i i i heard it as distant and almost sounded like they were back from the mic and you were getting a bit of sort of room reverberation in there but it could have just been that it could have been a combination of those things of not not singing at 100% and i think i said this last time i was on the show but you can really hear when someone is singing within themselves at like 70 or 80% because just the delivery like if i'm talking to you like this versus talking to you like this there's a difference in that tone and you can never there's nothing you can do to change your inflection and to change the projection of your voice there isn't a projection plugin in yet maybe one day but at the moment you may need to go back and and rerecord some of those vocals and it's a good opportunity again like the beauty of the digital world is that you got unlimited retries so um you're not paying for studio time you can plug in your microphone and experiment try and do it when no one's around because that's the problem like a lot of us when you start out you might be a little bit uh you know a little bit self-conscious but just make sure just wait till everyone's out of the house and uh you know lock yourself away and then just sing like nobody's watching and listening because even if you just do that for one take right if you're a little bit shy and you think maybe i shouldn't be go i shouldn't be too weird and crazy you know record your normal tape but then just for one go look i'm just gonna go nuts on this you know you'd be surprised sometimes you can blend in the odd scream and that and the regular vocal and you can get some gravity i'm glad that Doug bought that up about phasing stuff we often hear people talk about mixing and mono mixing and mono one of the reasons you should at least be checking in mono is if you've used any widening stereo widening plugins because you can get phasing issues with them when you listen to the track in mono it's going to become more apparent to you if those issues are there um so for those of you who don't know don't understand um when we get um two very similar waveforms which are maybe identical waveforms but could be very similar and their um their timing is out with each other one when one's going up and one's going down there's a cancellation effect perhaps similar to like reversing the polarity not the same but similar to reversing polarity um and and then suddenly all the life disappears out of the track and if you apply stereo widening to a whole track yes some as Danny's saying here phase cancellations that's sometimes called then you get this effect of um you can still be there the instrument or is still there but it's just lacking and uh that's that's a problem when you get tempted to use stereo widening even doubling plugins on on vocals can be an issue with this yeah um and it is actually similar technology used for noise canceling headphones too so there is a use for phase cancellation for for things like that because that's what noise cancelling is it sampling the sound and replaying the sound at a reverse polarity to remove it so it's a handy thing too um but yeah i think it's really really cool um i had another point but i've completely forgotten it now but yeah just just go for it just just record and then you can release using districate drums can i mention drums on this do you have any notes about drums on this i i didn't but they were not no all i said was that no the drums of the bass seem to just sort of i think they did much so i don't know if that's your comment on that but um they were non-threatening like i didn't i didn't really hear them so well my thought was this is that is that i think they're programmed to drums it's so weird these days and it's a good thing actually that sometimes on this show i'm listening i'm thinking i'm about to criticise the drum programming but maybe that was a real drummer but i think these were programmed drums and the thing that struck me is that you've put so much i think there's actually quite a lot of work went into the drums in terms of programming them but not quite enough i'd say go back and have a listen to some of those snare fills um hands i i i or harn terry pronounce i i think there was a couple in there were and they were all exactly the same velocity uh you know when you do that sort of snare fill roll um and they were sounding a little bit machine gun-ish to me so it's it's really what you've done so much work on these drums with some fills and things like that um and i think that it might be worth going in and just finishing that off a little bit uh here yeah um if it's a real drummer then don't i look like an idiot it's just a very ringo style style drummer that could just sit in the in the zone and they could do that if it's a real drummer and that's their fill then okay nice yeah no i like i'll have to listen again to because i wasn't for some reason i wasn't paying attention to the drums which is weird because i'm sorry to add and add thorn and other drummers i don't listen to drums that much they're not that important that's what i've been telling i remember the one of the point that i had uh yeah around that step that a lot of people are looking for a reason like we've all seen that you know shift it to one left one right do the slight shooting do the slight changing thing there's so many people that are just trying to record a vocal that's perfect and i just want to use that just record multiple vocals just keep recording take after take and use them as your doubles and your triples and your quadrills because if you want to get a nice stereo sound on your vocal just record your lead vocal put that down the middle and then triple it up record one put it on the left one on the right blend those in do what we said in the last one add some distortion or something just to kind of give it a little bit more uh more feel and then use that because you're going to have much less phasing issues you're going to have less problems with plugins and performance and all that sort of stuff so little things just a little time saving thing that i do on that um because you know i definitely advocate in a lot of music doing doubles yep especially on your choruses but you could use them anyway um and uh just a little time saving tip because you i think that most of us should be doing comping as well not just for vocals but for other things but yeah so what i do is i record the lead vocal um and often those uh those little passages that i'm not going to be using in my final comp although i didn't think they were good enough for the main vocal line they are good enough for the double yeah so i keep them and i use them and the other trick you can do is use say you've got a repeating chorus you know maybe we've got three times in the song then use the version from your first chorus and use that as the double for your second and the third chorus be economical with it so you really only have to record often i'm going to say three or four takes and you'll have enough material there to create all of these things and even sometimes i've never done it but i definitely want to give it a try and i know people do is use something like melodyne to create a harmony here in there if you want to to grab one of those the important thing is like well i once i've never done it i've done it a little bit here and there i mean me and susie love to sing harmony so we enjoy it but um if you find that it's not convenient the trick is is that if you use melodyne to create harmony don't just grab your main vocal line and then just add the change the pitch use one of the other performances it has to be a different performance like with doubling and then change the pitch of that you can get away with it more from the new think it's true and yet even the octave it like we talked about in that first track um yeah that can be great for octaving like just put the whole thing up a whole octave just in the background with a whole bunch of processing on it and it can sit in there and almost sound just like a synth playing your melody line at the top and and like you say if you use your second take for that don't use your first take it'll sound too much the same but use your second take and do that and i do exactly that these days if i'm recording a vocal i'll sit down i'll record it four times and here's a good thing if you're recording it all the same time you can avoid those issues we thought about in the first track too where maybe your mic technique changes your settings are different your environment's different record you take bang bang bang bang bang four takes and then you've got a whole bunch of headroom you can go through and comp those four down to one and then you can use the the dregs it's like you're a crazy mad scientist you're putting the other parts together into into your doubles and your triples and your harmonies and all your experimental stuff and it just sounds so cool you can you can get some great tones and some great sounds from your own self so i think a lot of the time people go nuts with all these processing and these programming things that they can use when really just do it a bunch of times and you'll have everything you need but i will say um i don't know if this comment's intended in this way um uh from rock hi rock nice to see you again um played one of his songs two three weeks back back up singers i'll say one thing if you do have access to other singers family members what have you then having a slightly different tone to the voice really does really can help absolutely we've accepted it these days we hear a lot of very famous songs which are not just these days even yeah where people did their own harmonies and things like that which can be good but i also think yeah whenever you can get a slightly different character to the harmony yeah well yeah i mean queen was good but how many freddies were on each of those tracks um but yeah that they had the both they had the benefit of both they had like you can have 14 tracks of freddie and then you can have the other boys just sort of throwing in a few harmonies here and there so yeah no it's it's worthwhile and again if you don't have the family members around communities online communities you got the the facebook groups you got the the discords you got places where you can collaborate with you got band lab which i just did a show about uh shortly before um you can collaborate with other people and you can get that and i did a track recently where i got my whole viewership about 34 people to record this one big gang vocal and that sounded amazing because i blended all those sounds together and all those different male and female vocals some were up and octave some were down a vocal it's amazing sound so uh yeah utilize the fact that we live in the future and you got people you can collaborate with online it reminds me of a question that will come up once in a while about hand claps you know how do you record hand it seems like the most simple thing doesn't it we're just surely you just clap in front of your microphone but yeah you find when you come to do it it doesn't quite if you want to do like by yourself make it sound like there's 20 claps yeah you're going to get away from the mic for some you're going to get close to the mic one of the tips that i've seen is get some of those rubber gloves that you may use for washing dishes or something they apparently make it sound more like a hand clap than an actual hand clap and mike's got a hundred pack of ancill rubber gloves by his bed for some reason so he's always got them handy for his hand that's what he says he's like susie i've been clapping all day that's why i went through four pairs that's right always need that next to your bed tissues i think we've been talking for too long mike i think two hours of uh each other's company just uh we go down and encourage each other don't you didn't swear on this show which i so nice of you didn't i i thought i thought i thought i saw one s word in there that's okay i think we're gonna end this thank you so much we've had some love with some great people in the chat today really great contributions in there thank you so much for being here ladies and gentlemen don't forget to send me your music it's not enough to be in the chat who can i see in there who hasn't sent me their music there's so many people in there you need a thomas christ someone here come on thomas christ a great artist hey thomas christ haven't i had a thomas christ i think i did on featured artists i might have back on featured artists back in thomas we need to hear your music um uh mimo go on send in some more dug let's hear those mixes danny come on come on but yeah we thanks for the people who did send the songs in today don't forget to follow the instructions in the description down below so you can send me that your your mixes um we'll get them on the show and i will have another wonderful guest um sometime soon um or maybe not i don't know i'm not over my guess not me again i've been twice in two weeks you can you can piss me off for a few no i think i could have you here every week to be honest with you i don't mind at all yeah i don't want to um some of the others i mean go the other guests i have i mean you wonder don't you what i think of it you know that that lonely rocker guy no wonder he's lonely is that right am i right am i right they'll never watch this they'll never watch this far no exactly they're not watching it's fine we can say what we want no no no one's watching at this point this is the last five minutes of these shows we've lost since i started saying goodbye we've lost four people oh but a thumbs up by the way while while we talking about oh yeah crap do all the new things please like the video yeah i always forget about that my mods people like keanu remember to self yeah please like it helps out a lot um yep we'll see you all same time next week for another interesting show don't forget to tune in also to pete johnson studio live today the hour before this show um where he has his creator town hall talks about really interesting topics i'm sure he'll have an amazing guest on there next week who isn't me uh the thumbnail couldn't match up to the one that was so sexy hey i thought that's a good-looking fellow oh hey guys oh i'm gonna hit the end