 episode of this new show Fixed My Mix. It came from the old show Featured Artists Live which we were doing. I did a little experiment with some songs which hadn't been released, still works in progress and I decided to go with the format because it's so enjoyable and it's so useful. Thank you so much for being here if you're here in the live chat currently. Don't forget to say hello and let me know who you are and where you are and one of those people that is there at the moment would of course be Mimo Japan. And sorry, not Marlon, one of my guests is speaking with me on private chat and distracting me. Thank you Marlon. I'm off to a rocky start already. So this format of the show has been something that we've been doing for the last three weeks and I want to thank the people who have sent their mixes in because it's an incredibly brave thing to do isn't it to send your unfinished work to people. But it's a really kind of useful thing to do actually because one of my guests is so distracting me. I'm going to have issues but anyway I'm off to a really rough start today. So it's a really important thing to do because at the point when you've been mixing something for a while you tend to lose your judgment. Now I've heard the mixes for today's show but my guests have not heard them and that's really important actually because it's often that very fresh hearing of a song when you perhaps even haven't heard it before you haven't heard it for a while where you get that most sort of honest representation. I suspect that my guests will have a really good idea of what needs to be fixed in these mixes today. I shouldn't go any further without saying thank you to the sponsor of the show that is DistroKid just up above here. If you follow that link in the description that VIP link you will get a discount at no extra cost to you and I will get a little bit of a kickback for that so thank you very much in advance for that. I will bring my guests on very very soon and we'll move on with the show but I'm going to quickly say hello to a few people who are in here. We have Doug here good day Doug how you're going from Washington State always good to see you here and it's always extremely wonderful to see Jade Starr who I've just been watching Jade over on Pete John's channel not watching Jade but I've just been over with Jade on Pete John's channel Studio Live today where he was interviewing the wonderful Ricky T Brown. Now normally when I have Ricky T Brown on this show he's accompanied by a YouTuber who goes by the name of Lonely Rocker and I am going to bring that young YouTuber on the screen now to say hello to you. Good day Dan how you're good morning. The reason I've had to bring you in really so so quickly is because I'm you once in a while you just get those days you're fumbling over your words that they just won't come out everything just goes to crap and that's what's been happening in the beginning and Marlon's not helping with this. Marlon is not helping he's got the devil in him he is totally hidden him now I'm going to find a way to get my revenge on him now or at some point in the future when he's least you can say all the but make him say all the artist names today. I think that's that's a good start that's a very good start yes that's very um Dan how have you been you were on the show last week um I didn't I haven't told you this you were second choice that's terrible isn't it you're a standing we normally have Ed Thorne on around about this time on the schedule um he couldn't make it because he's very very lazy at the moment he doesn't do any work he doesn't really do anything constructive with his life and he's just been on holiday to the Dominican Republic to see if he can catch a virus for the third time I don't know he's on a mission but here's our blonde now so he couldn't be on the show so you're playing second fiddle to Ed there but um anyway uh so how have you been what have you been doing and you told me just before as you know when we were doing the pre chat here um you told me that you're just about to release a video so tell me what it's all about yeah well I can't exactly what it's all just yeah it's a brand new product uh it's a video for two notes audio engineering so one of the things that I love doing that I have evolved into in my studio is direct two-bamp recording so two notes torpedo captor x is at the center of that workflow and they are often releasing new dynamic IR pack so two notes does what they call dynamic cab irs where you can actually move microphones and change really really cool so last week they released the hues and ketner package and today they're releasing a very very cool uh back from the depths of a vault possibly the holy grail of cabinets and I got an advanced look and that'll be coming out just under three hours from now oh nice okay that'd be just close to my bedtime but I'll I'll take a look just before it snows off I hope it doesn't help me to snooze off Dan I hope well I am the lonely rocker so it's it may be a little loud but we'll see what happens okay cool um let's bring in uh young Marlon here from white noise this year I don't know why I'm calling him young I mean young but young young Marlon I mean he's young but he's not the best looking guy that's face it but there there he is he's here anyway um with his beard and his glum look uh and he's reading out all the names uh today on the show uh Marlon we were talking about you we were talking about you on Pete John's channel uh last week Pete John's studio live today yeah we were talking about you uh on his uh town hall creators town hall show I was on there as a guest and we had a total love fest for you Marlon it was just oh isn't Marlon Gray isn't here great guy isn't he he's knowledgeable and and he's had great success recently on his channel how's it going for you over there in white noise studio is this is it nuts for you are you getting phone calls from agents I mean uh supermodels calling you making advances what's what's going on over there how's it feeling for you yeah actually uh this is the last ever live stream I will do because this is becoming beneath me so but I obliged you to do this one by contract by you so so that's why I'm here okay I'm glad I really don't need to be I really don't want you to be on top of me that's that's the main thing I'm getting out of that well well it's good good to know I had my little spike uh last two weeks but it's all settling back to my normal sad you know a number of you so that's very very youtube's very humbling like that isn't it you you know you do that you think oh everything's going great and that's because finally everyone's noticed how amazing I am I'm incredible the world's finally noticed and then everyone yeah that's that happened for me and a lot of people during the seaward when it first broke um uh the virus that is um in 2020 and we all sat back going oh this is awesome everyone's at home wanted to learn about home recording and so those of us who kind of had established channels were like that and then after a couple months we went whoo and we had to get back to the hard work of trying to make good videos again and that's what it's about both of you guys make great videos I love both of your work it's very different in style but I really love it there are links in the description down below folks follow them make sure you're subscribed to both of these fine gentlemen's channels and watch their videos because that's the main thing you'll need to do if you want to see more of their videos that's what's going to come up in your feed check out the one that Dan just mentioned there and quickly from you Marlon what's coming up from you very soon uh I will release a video at five minutes after six tomorrow morning because the official plugin will be released at four minutes after six I learned so but I can't I can't tell you yet which one it is because it's on the NDA okay all right our lips are sealed we shall say nothing more about it okay so um uh Dan has been on this format of the show before but Marlon this is your first time to be on this format of the show well I can tell you guys if you didn't hear um the idea is to have unfinished work on it I think this is really useful because now we can really be critical we don't have to solve no but I guess the point is that these artists are expecting for us to be a little critical and and find what could be improved with the tracks okay before they go ahead and release it and I think um we may find that we enjoy these songs of course we may praise them but the most helpful thing I think we're going to be able to do is give them a few tips about what they could do with these mixes before they release and as I said earlier um I believe that just a bit of a heads up these three tracks are actually all pretty close to being finished but as we know that last five percent can be the hardest part and as I said earlier I think that's because you've usually lost perspective by that time you've been living so close to the music and the track that it's hard to be objective so we can be objective we can be the three objective amigos and uh have a listen to these tracks now I'm also not giving too much background info on these tracks the main reason the main reason for that is because I don't have much background info on these tracks because I haven't been asking people for background intro but that was that was on purpose because I just wanted to focus on the music rather than the story behind the music there is a little bit there's a little bit of story here and there but not too much this we're going to keep focused on the music so now the first one that we've got coming up here today I will tell you up front that I played this to Susie yesterday I played all three songs and I played this one last and I said to her oh you won't like this one you feel like one of these ones I've seen it's not her style she doesn't like this kind of music and she was like oh no this is really really cool I really really like this song so points already um now as we discussed it's going to be up to Marlon to read out the artist's name by the way the the artists that I picked don't know that I've picked them so if they're watching if they're in the stream or or they're watching on the replay this will be a surprise to them that I've picked these songs I haven't even let people know I thought it'd be more fun just for it to be a bit of a surprise so Marlon it's your job to read out in English please Joe Howard and Danny Thompson Kato and the King yeah Kato and the King indeed so just as it was Joe who sent this to me Joe Howard and he was saying this song is called Kato and the King me and my friend Danny Thompson just did I'm a musician also has a studio and cakewalk has been the door I've used since the DOS days that's DOS for disc operating system for the folks who don't know my primary music is more electric based than the attached track but I'm primarily looking I'm primarily a guitarist so some people associate me with tracks like Kato and the King it's going to be a relief for Dan to know that this is not electronic music because he hates electronic music with a passion he only loves things with guitars in there and there we go let's have a listen to Kato and the King I don't think we've ever had a song on any of these live shows of quite that kind of style there um before we talk about the mix I've got to say I found it rather invigorating actually I found that just there was a lot of energy in there I like the energy but I want to ask my favorite guest on on the show this week about this and of course his name is Dan the Lonely Rocker let's ask Dan that was like a shot of coffee for this early morning live stream where I live yes I quite enjoyed that you know I mean you know my where my musical stylings reside so anything resembling a real band there's always a good start for me but so so I found myself getting into it pretty quickly which is good so I have three very specific I actually took notes this time I learned my lesson from the last stream because it started disgusting then someone would ask me a question I completely forgot so three things that sort of came up to me and this is something I find myself experiencing a lot when you get into that last five percent of the mix is identifying where some of that mud is you know just combing through the mix a little bit I don't know somewhere around the lower mids I just found it a little bit muddy again we're all wearing the same headphones today but these tend to be a little bit boomy let's just show the folks at home that we didn't plan this ladies and gentlemen let's just turn around here guys but yeah we are all this show is not sponsored by Bay Dynamic whatsoever but it may as well have been I should have reminds me of when metallic all the guys in italica decided to get haircuts at the same time you know so so you were talking about the the mud the mud yeah well this last the last five percent of the mix I found was always a big hump for me I know marlin's more of a seasoned uh studio production guy mixing but for me you know self-taught working in home studios uh probably rooms are not super optimal you know you're kind of get to that point where you start guessing right you're like it sounds good and then I take it to the car and doesn't sound so good and then it sounds great and then tomorrow it doesn't sound so good that's usually because there are some conflicts on my building up and you just don't know how to comb it out so I'm hearing maybe lower mids it just sounds a little bit thick down there maybe to comb through there and see if you can clean it up a little bit also a bass guitar and kick drum that's also an always another challenge where often lower registers are really hard to hear properly in the studio so you're often fighting but a little eqing to separate the kick in the bass drum a little bit might might help and one thing you might be surprised to hear from me is I find that the vocals need to be a little bit more present a little more up front and they're very dead center I'd love to hear the vocals maybe exploring the stair make them a bit wider and maybe even you know finding its way around the spectrum a little bit it just felt okay felt very center and a little bit I think we can bump up the vocals a little bit yeah yeah I don't want to pre-empt Marlon but I'll say that was in my notes as well Marlon we we've now put you on a pedestal Danny already said that you're much more experienced than either of us so we're now listening to your final word I agree on the on the vocal part actually with that didn't he had an electronic background usually so yeah this is Joe Joe who's half of this was saying that he normally himself produces electronic music but he's also in this project where he plays guitar sort of thing yeah I can hear that in the mix that he is more electronic based because I find that the balance is of the mix is really more like electronic music based with a lot of low end a lot of bass a lot of drums with with a tune like this which is a bit of a rockabilly song I would say it's vocal first guitar second drums third and bass is somewhere in between so it's a different way of building a mix I would turn down the reverb on the entire track I think there's a lot of reverb it muddies up the mix I like reverb on a guitar but spring reverb or something like that one thing I notice is it is energetic but I felt that the guitar could benefit if it was actually moved back with 10 or 20 milliseconds just making more late back it was really up front and to me it was too up it was too was not late back enough it should be more late back especially the the guitar it's rockabilly like slow playing really moody so that was something which stood out to me and at first you can hear that in the first break in the song it really is really really ahead of it's really ahead in timing if it's more back you get a little bit more of a rest in the music it sounds more laid back it sounds more comforting to listen to it was a bit too aggressive for me for this style of music oh interesting that's really I like what you've said there it's funny because one of the things I picked up on was that I felt the drums were over compressed in this hit me especially with one of the early drum breaks I could hear I could really hear the compression and I hadn't thought of the fact maybe if Joe Joe who sent this in if he does come from that electronic music background then he's used to pushing drums really hard now of course in this style of music which I don't think is quite rockabilly it's more psychabilly but we can be corrected on that yeah but I think that of course the drums are really important that's what made this this music what it is but they're not they're important in terms of arrangement not so much in the mix they're not they don't they just didn't because they they didn't probably even have the technology to really push them that hard back there but um yeah so definitely on the drums I think we're all in agreement that the vocals need to come up a little bit so I think if you can get anything out of this Joe and Danny that would be it for me personally I felt that I've put here that it could do with a little more air so it sounded very low and middle to me and I just wasn't getting much of that nice airiness you know and indeed to some degree oh god it's funny sometimes you get too much separation in the mix yeah and we're trying to glue things together and make it this was almost like two glued together if that makes any sense maybe it was a little bit over but it all sounded very thick and in one place and I was like I want to hear each instrument sort of breathe in its own space just a little bit more that's that's that's not very helpful it doesn't give you any solutions because you know it's a very sort of broad way of explaining what I'm trying to say but plus I a great track actually just a good fun track and the writing was good and all that and I know you don't want any advice probably at this stage on changing anything about the composition but I'm I'm just putting it out there get a couple of female vocals on there and this becomes the b52s and it's freaking awesome there you go you may have showing your age Mike I'm always showing my age I just get up in the morning and show my age that happens but yeah again what a great start to the show though just great energy love that and I'll tell you all of the songs have got really good energy about them today but I will say that when I used to listen to this sort of music back in the late 80s or so and I was right into my psychobily and stuff back then it was much more difficult to release music you had to get a record deal in order to you know just have the funds to even record your song in a pro studio and then they they they usually ripped you off and you could not just release your music yourself unless you duplicated cassette tapes but things have changed it's much much easier to release music now especially because we have our sponsors distro kit around I'm going to point to them very very easy to do let's just see how easy you want to release your music by 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 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 I love it when people send things in which are like when they are kind of new to this whole game when people you know have perhaps been doing it for a year or two and what have you so this artist as I said not too much of a backstory but I will tell you that this is one of those people and this artist is new to writing and recording she's written around about 30 songs on paper in the first two years of doing this so being that very productive not become jaded yet obviously and and then she's gone ahead and she's recorded 10 full songs in 10 months and she sent me actually a couple of songs and this one I thought was the best of the two in terms of songs I just enjoyed it more um it's about anxiety and self-growth now I've perfectly not said the artist's name because of course I am leading leaving that to a good friend Marlon from white noise studio there you go Marlon oh dear Marie Levesque with pushback up I reckon you're on the money there I reckon that it's Levesque it's a good good very very good yeah it's French French Canadian maybe or maybe sort of a Latin American name yeah but could you say it again just one more time for me Marie Levesque and the song title pushback up okay okay because I thought the first time you're going to push back up I want to know why I told back up so again look I am going to pre-empt this and say I think that this is so much this is so almost there I listened to it a couple of times and I thought I like this song but what is it that's making it not quite there I couldn't put my finger on it to be honest with you so I'm going to let you guys put your fingers on it all righty there was a lot of conjecture in the chat there especially about the vocals people were focusing on the vocals there seems to be a little bit of consensus in the chat there that they but people felt the vocals were a little too dry I say what say you Marlon well I agree with that but you can also argue that the rest has too much reverb right there's a unbalance in the there's an unbalance in the balance between the vocals and the rest of the music for me this was a thin sounding mix where the last song was too glued together this one is not glued at all right really separated it's really isolated what I noticed particularly with the do you feel that particularly with the vocal are you saying you felt like the vocals just like in a separate performance of the band or not there are more issues with this mix and just the vocal vocals one part of it for instance when the song started the acoustic guitar or piezo guitar I'm not sure which one it was really was clashing with the vocal it was even louder I think than the vocal so that that's one issue and there's a lot of high end in this song of the top high ends like 10k and higher which makes it very brittle and high but in the meantime you have no substance in the lower mid-range there's a lot missing over there so that needs a lot of that needs to be worked on a lot you can also hear that on the drums by Stan you think oh drums need reverb so there was reverb on the drums which sounds very distant and thin then the vocals which are very dry and somewhat buried in the mix and acoustic guitar which is too loud it's an it's it's unbalanced at this point in the mix so yeah where would you sort of start with that I mean what's gonna be your approach if you were handed this mix at the moment what I would start with bringing up the vocal in this case just make it sound full bodied and vocal and then mixing the rest because the vocal is the main focus for this song instead of adding the vocal at the last bit of everything and then you find out you don't have any room for the vocal to blend in so I would start with that and just leave up all reverb make sure you can get a balance without any reverb or actually any EQ and then work from there it's interesting that you bring that up as a technique because it's something I didn't used to do and I suspect I want to focus on this moment because I'm sure me most people starting out because you've got your kind of temporary mix while you're recording your song okay and you may put some effects on different things just to make it comfortable while you're tracking you know so that you've got something nice to sing against but I used to then just go on from there but for several years now what I've done is just turned off all plugins on on on every single track and get the balance right you know I mean just a little exception at least get a proper balance don't overdo it but get a balance where you think okay this is something I can start working with and work from there automate from their EQ from there add effects from there but don't start with adding effects and then try to make a mix because you're fighting against all these effects yep I agree entirely with that it's an important thing because I think a lot of people will not only miss that but also effects are kind of the fun part of of the process and it's very tempting to just get on with using them because they're fun to play with especially delays reverbs and that kind of thing yeah I do have to add if an effect is an essential part of a sound then of course you need to have it on that's that's that's right yeah I mean I mean as I was saying you know you need amp sims on and you know probably in terms of arrangement if you're if you're you know sort of like the edge from you too then you probably do want that delay on your guitar because it's a part of the you know the song just as an example so yeah there you go Dan that's a lot isn't it that's a lot what's there left to say what is left to say I know this is a problem that the Ed and Marlon have with each other welcome welcome to being stand in Ed but yeah do you agree with Marlon on what he had to say there I do a lot I mean I think we all agree I mean everyone was focused on the vocal because it's I guess a lot of vocals and it's and it's dry in contrast to some of the other elements in the song I mean I felt there was a lot of energy just missing I mean there's a lot of dynamics potentially in the song and I love big sounds you know I don't care the genre I mean that that but something like this can feel big and it just it just there's lacking a lot of energy down low but something that I can focus on and maybe just to add to this conversation instead of repeating things that Marlon says I'll focus on the guitars there's a lot of guitar in here which I love I think that's great but I think there was a problem that was sort of corrected like from the beginning there was sort of the rhythm guitar and then this lead we're kind of sitting in the same area to me that because I love white sounding guitars that kind of got corrected I don't know I don't know it was just the way I heard it but then I started feeling it more wider in the stereo spectrum but you have that electric guitar which was very loud in the mix and then you had the acoustic guitar and the way I treat guitars like that sometimes I'll create two parts that are meant to work together to create a bigger sound even though it could be an acoustic mix with an electric right just broaden the sound so it's one part that's created with two different guitars or I'm creating two guitar parts that complement each other where in fact you know one might sit on the left think of in terms of a band if you've got two guitar players one might be here one might be here but they still need to complement each other I found that electric guitar coming in sometimes was like whoa it's like so present and kind of brittle sounding and then the acoustic guitar just sort of fell to the background where if I was mixing that I would probably favor one side for one guitar one side for the other guitar and watch the balance and let them work nicely together and EQ is really the key at this point because they don't want to occupy this exact same space right but create a little distance wider make them a bit wider sounding and work better better together but there's lots of guitar in there which I think is great just have to be very careful on how you place them to ensure that they're really complementing each other and decide if it's supposed to be one part or if it's supposed to be two different players and that's where the mindset you have to kind of be in to figure out what to do interesting and you've both you've given so much there then there is a lot to say about this song I'm going to give a couple of other different perspectives it was mentioned in the chat when the song was playing that a couple of people thought that the vocal may be a bit pitchy here in there now I normally pick up on pitchiness really really quickly I'm very capable of singing pitchy I can promise you that but just when I'm listening I'm normally there I'd listen to the song a couple of times before didn't pick up on it but this time I did just in a couple small ways if the artist is either here live or watching on the replay I wouldn't get too hung up on it it wasn't awfully awfully pitchy and I can tell you that let's pick someone I've listened to a few Adele songs for example where she gets pretty pitchy at times and it's still gone out gone out and been an incredibly successful track so I don't think it's that kind of pitchiness but if you want to look at it it may be worth looking at with a bit of melodyne as was suggested and I think one of the people that picked up on this was Keonra Music and I know she's actually a vocal coach so I'm going to trust her opinion there so there was that in there I'm going to get a little bit old-fashioned and in fact I know Ed Thorn is big on this and and I'm going to say what he probably would have said and there's a little bit of diction I want to talk about there I of course there's music where there's styles of music where diction is not important because the lyrics are not overly important there's some music say for like REM where you can clearly hear what he's singing you just don't know what the heck he means but in this case there was an actual message to this song which I could hear here in there and I picked up on this on my first listen and on my second listen I was like yeah it's like when I'm listening to it four out of five lines I can hear really really clearly and and I'm like getting into the meaning of the lyrics and then suddenly there's that there's the odd line here I go what was that what was that I just think Marie if you're watching and you get a chance to address this it may have something to do with the mix a little so it may be that you were kind of pronouncing okay and if you do you know lift those vocals up a bit it may be solved by that but I'm a little bit what's the word panickity about that I'd like to hear what she's singing I think she spent some time on the lyrics and and I'd like to hear them I will say overall you've got I like you'll get your vocal tone there's it's got a nice character to your voice which I enjoyed and there was a note toward the end which was really high and you nailed it you totally like it was a good performance moment in the song and you know often it's good to have that in a vocal the only thing and again this is not really a mix thing but I felt at times the song lacked sort of dynamics I felt it got up to like 90% after about 10 seconds and it stayed at 90% for 90% of the song and then right at the last minute there was some dynamics there was a bit where it all dropped down and and I think there could be some parts you know in in the song where you could just drop things out a bit just a very easy trick if anyone's trying this if you've got a very full band sound you know so you've doubled your guitars you've got your drums you've got bass you've got your vocals maybe you've got some keys and you come out of a chorus and everything's been on full if you just drop it down to say drums and bass and vocal maybe just a little guitar it can really like be magic for a song it's just an old trick people have been doing forever and ever but it can just make things feel very very cool indeed and then you've got somewhere to go for your next chorus you've got a place to go to dynamically so I felt that there was a good song good performance nothing wrong in those terms but it could just be slightly improved by those things I hope that helps it's just my matter of opinion of course um doesn't mean I'm correct but um but yeah if that inspires you then great now um I think Marie has done really really well for someone who's only been writing for a couple of years um she's recorded 10 songs um and I think she will be ready to release these songs once she sorts out some of these things and when she does release those songs I really hope that she'll use DistroKid because she'll get seven percent off won't she 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 seven percent 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, iHut Radio, Deezer and more. I love the fact that this show has been so full of guitars and drums and things like that it's been a bit of a pleasure for Dan I think especially on my point in the wrong way over here it's Dan the lonely rocker he craves this sometimes because once you get past around about the age of 50 you no longer enjoy new music at all and Dan is stuck in the past there and he's just being heaven in the show I feel it's been nice to kind of patronize an old fella really and give him a little bit of what he wants and so hit Dan I've earned it but in all seriousness I think I know that of course Marlon comes from a bit of a rock background as well and he doesn't he's shaking his head there I've heard some fair amount of rock music from what's your background then Marlon tell me about it weird music a lot of weird music just weird music no you're not totally off with the rock music but when I was a little boy I listened to well a lot of death metal but also drum and bass and prodigy and stuff like that so it's pretty broad and then my life got messed up when I discovered Frank Zappa when I was 15 I think I was about 15 when I discovered Frank and wow you know I was like okay quite amazing now listen we're going to be listening to a good old rock track to finish off with here and I'm very pleased to say that I just spotted earlier that the artist for this track is actually in the chat here so we're going to get together now this person is actually quite a regular in the chat of recent weeks especially I did not know anything about his music this came through I didn't actually happen to notice the artist's name and I thought well this is going to be an interesting one to have on here although Dan may take a little bit of exception with it because this I'm going to read out from the artist here this was in originally intended this song as a demo for this person's band the zombie economist okay that's the the name of the person in the chat and but realize I but realize I hadn't had enough practical actual bringing songs to completion so decided to see how far I could take this one so this was originally a band song Dan but now it has the likes of programmed drums on it that being easy drummer too um the zombie economist is saying the mix feels very close to me but I feel there's something missing that I can't quite put my finger on it's maybe that last two percent I'm I think I'm too close to hear it now at some point I'm going to have to stop fiddling with it who misses it's it's true that like just before we do listen to the song just as an old man talking try not to put your whole career if you like or your experience into one song okay like do realize that you learn and progress over time okay and maybe sometimes we've just reached the best possible point we can with our current abilities and experience for this song and it's always good to move on once you get near that limit and start on a new piece of work you can sometimes go back of course and and try and improve songs you know months or years later but I'm more of an advocate of forget the past move on past it um put it out there get it out there to the world let people hear it let them say good let them say bad um but just move on evolve uh past that moment so um I will say I didn't I enjoyed this song as soon as I heard it it yeah carry on that actually feels like like releasing youtube videos doesn't it just get them out there move on with the next one let it go it's it's very very true and and I'm glad you brought it up because I'll tell you that when I started um uh with youtube a little bit of a confession here um I you know I'm just a bedroom producer and I had about 15 songs of mine um sat on my hard drive which some of them had been there 10 years all right and I was always gonna I'll I'll get to that and do the final mix and uh yeah I'll master it and then I'll release it and and I had released some but to be honest with you when I started on the youtube channel and I needed to demonstrate things and I wanted to make sure that music was out there and published before I used it to demonstrate things I just went I'll just release it all I just that's it and it was a great feeling of relief and it's what I realized is that any writer's block that I had went away I was free to create new material I was just think mentally I just let go of it it's like my kids it's like I kicked them out of the house and I said you're on your own now I've done my job go away for god's sake no I try to do that with my kids but one is six so that's a bit seven's okay but six is a little to you now listen um as I say the zombie economist the song is called recovery let's have a listen to it now he's there in the chat let's be kind it's all been about energy this week on the on the show and I've got to say I've enjoyed it very very much um before we talk about the track I just want to quickly say if you want to send your mix in if you're there in the chat now if you're just like the zombie economist if you've got an opinion or two I now encourage you to send your music in and be brave as the zombie has been I think we we know him well enough just to call him zombie don't we that that will be okay um and I will say is very brave when you've been in the chat all these weeks and you know giving your opinion now you get to hear hear some opinion and um I'm gonna first of all allow young Dan the lonely rocker to talk about this this is a bit more up your street although more grungy than your your into but no no I I I can identify with this um and I've got some suggestions I think that would really if there's sort of wondering what's going on here listening to it I kind of feel like I'm leaning this way because the guitars great I love big guitars and the guitars are sort of leaning a bit on the left and the vocals over there on the right and I get it I get that style of mixing where you're sort of placing them but what I would do is I would take those guitars and I would go super wide with them I want to hear them in both ears okay and I don't know if he's done that what the way I would have treated that I don't we're past tracking I know we're fixing the mix so I don't know if there's what I would do with that guitar part I would have recorded it twice you know even simply just changing the pickup on one of them and just go super wide leading outside the edges of those speakers and I would have brought the vocal more to the middle that would have just make this song feel really big and wide that's probably the biggest thing that would really change the whole feeling of this song and make it feel a lot bigger from there and certain things are kind of hard to judge but I'm again that bottom end is it's a struggle for most people working in home studios and it's generally for the lack of ability to hear those frequencies properly because the room is not responding properly and how I've learned to circumvent those issues working in a home studio is using a spectrum analyzer so you can see what the hell is going on down there and midside EQing just to comb out all of the muddiness because I mean the kick drum's got to be there the bass guitar should be right beside it so you've got a little separation between the two and then you got to roll off those guitars so they're rolled off above those two right there will really clean up the bottom end and perhaps bring back some energy that's lacking but the biggest thing that I think is wrong with this mix those guitars make them wide and bring those vocals more to the middle and that I think will change the whole dynamic of the song okay good I think it's some pretty good advice and and if it helps I saw a lot of this head nodding from Marlon as you were speaking there as well which is always it was a good sign Marlon I mean I'm pretty sure you've got something to add but do you agree with Dave? I fully agree of the guitars right two guitars maybe even four but it's a bit much but left right big guitars maybe one guitar in the middle just lower in the mix to really make it a big wall of guitars get really get a push all recorded separately so not never duplicate record separately to have those little differences to make it sound big and wide right what Dan also pointed out switching elements really helps with that to get just a tiny bit of a different sound which helps in getting a bigger sound what I noticed I actually have a background as a drummer so I was somewhat distracted by the drums on this track first of all I really start to hear easy drummer I can really recognize those sounds now first thing I would try to tune down the snare a bit I think I thought it was a bit high for the mix if you tune it a bit more down it will get more beef which also helps with making the song sound bigger if you get a pretty high snare it will sound a bit wimpy if you get a lower snare it will sound bigger and better get even more power never never try never forget to try tuning on drums on the drums I think they were a bit all over the place to be honest I was really checking the bass drum in comparison with the bass guitar and they were not synced at all they were the bass drum was like let's make some nice drums but I didn't think they were musical to call it like that um they were making actions which the kick was not synced to the bass guitar is that what you're talking about or they were not playing together so you don't have to be in sync all the time but the drums were pretty free if I would have a relationship with each other yeah exactly if I would have a drummer in my studio which played like that I would stop the thing I would stop the session and work on the relationship between the drummer and the bass guitar to make it the tender to make it a unit I would love to hear one version of this song with a really simple drum kit like four really straightforward like just to see what that does simple things like a drum fill when you have a drum fill as musicians you expect to hear a crash with a bass drum after a fill right you don't need to do it but you expect that it was not having formalities sometimes yep it's a formality you don't have to do it every time but it's something you expect from time to time uh single crashes uh without support of a bass drum it's hard to pull off only vini color you that can do it but otherwise there must be something which is which supports that uh well all these little things in the drums throughout the track which actually distracts me of the rest of the songs I would really work on that simple make it very simple to start with see how that works for the entire song and maybe add in things which really support the rest of the track with accents with bass drums even snares and stuff like that I think that will lift the song to another level okay interesting well there's a lot to take I hope that that he's allowed me to call allowed us to call him Zombo I hope Zombo can get something useful from that um I have some notes here which one of these notes is um in contradiction to something that Marlon said I'll get on to that moment um but um I liked the vocal production in this it was it was very produced in a particular way in that it was that that that sort of very middly almost radio-like production I thought that was fine that was good could come up a little bit I think um sometimes for this style of music which I think at times was bordering on sort of nirvana kind of a style at times was maybe that's not always important but anyway I thought it could come up a little bit in general I thought um I've got notes here to say that I just felt it was lacking a little bit in the low mids now just listening on these headphones at the moment you know to a streamed song so maybe I'm just indicating you might want to take a look at that rather than definitely but I just felt it was lacking a little bit of body there not right at the low end but as I say the low mids okay um there was some interesting things in the composition I just want to mention that there was a middle section where things got really really messy um and I liked that I like that that now that reminded me more of Radiohead Radiohead were masters of that I went to a couple of Radiohead gigs and you went is this noise on purpose or by mistake but it was on purpose it's a fine line okay it's a fine line when you want to create a little bit of chaos in the middle of a track um but I think you pulled it off Zombo pretty well there I like that that part of it it's not an easy thing to do um again I'm just going to talk about dynamics a little bit I just thought could have been a little bit a little more I know there was some a couple of sections where things went a little bit different I dropped but I just felt that for a lot of the song yeah again drop down to you could have dropped down to just a um just the bass and uh and drums for a moment and it would have been magic you know um so where I contradict Marlon and I'm coming from a slightly different perspective I actually liked the drums I did put in I liked the drum programming but I think what I'm saying there is that it almost sounded like a messy drummer to me which was I knew there were programmed drums of course and there was an element to it like there was a bit of chaos in the drums but I do agree with Marlon thinking on it now that they it could have been more um there's there's a thing called a contrived mess yeah where it sounds like chaos but actually it's been created yeah we I don't mean chaos but energy you want it to sound like a band it doesn't want to it doesn't want to be too perfect you know but making certain elements work together like the the uh the drums and the bass is always a core of virtually any kind of music that we broadly call rock and roll it's it's just very very important indeed so um yeah those were my points on it but um overall love the song I loved all the songs that were on here today actually I thought they all had as I've said on other on other shows at least they're worth improving on you know some songs you might as well throw them away all three of the songs I reckon are worth the effort that you're going to need to put into them to sort of get them over the line um what say you Marlon any last sort of thoughts for us today um in regards of mixing uh learn to learn when to stop so when you're when you've done mixing that's even on a day-to-day basis when you're mixing there comes a time when you really need to stop and continue the next day or in a few days because that will open your ears we'll get a different perspective and we'll actually improve your mix you will get a little bit of distance you'll be more objective that's my thing there's something I alluded to maybe the beginning of this show and and you know you you often hear youtubers talk and you know people like us talk about the fact I'll take a break um but sometimes I think what we forget to say or at least listen in my opinion after that break like trust that very first listen of the song more than anything else like when you've had I'm talking about if you manage to get a week away from the song or something like that that very first listen right make lots of notes as quickly as you can because that's that's when your ears will hear you know exactly what's wrong with it and even once you once you get back into that second or third listen you're already starting to lose your perspective in my opinion like really really quickly especially if it's something you've composed performed and mix yourself it's it's a hard thing to do now there are people out there purists who say you should never do it don't do that I don't agree with them I've heard enough decent songs now but you know performed mix and even mastered by a single artist where I've really really enjoyed the music sorry to be out there and be a bit radical with that but I think that in the right hand it can it can be done you may disagree with Marlon what do you reckon I'm not Marlon Dan what do you reckon on that I mean you you mix um you you're the musician and I think you master your own music now your opinion may be skewed but going on other people's music you've heard do you think people achieve this well one thing I want to say and and I don't know if this ties more into the compositional side because we were just talking about easy drummer and again it depends what you do right like me I play bass and guitar I play drums but not good enough so I do when I'm doing my own music I'll program my drums but you could sometimes lose perspective when you're doing it yourself especially when you're performing your own tracks right sometimes pretty much always probably outlaw I'm being nice but yeah all the time but uh but one thing um I'll talk about in terms of let's say drums because drums are very important to me in fact I probably listen to drums and bass more than guitar even as a guitar player I take a lot of my inspiration from the rhythm rhythmical side of music but talk about easy drummer for example and this is something that a lot of I hear a lot in a lot of the composition side of the mixes is creating a drum pattern in easy drummer if you're using the compositional tool built into easy drummer it's very loop and grid based right yeah so it's like one two three four crashed on the one two three four crashed on the one two three four where if you listen to a real drummer you know even if he's jamming in like a straight four four sub like did a boom pop and he'll crash on the two not the one but he'll crash on the two so with easy drummer once you've got your composition done you can drop the whole thing down whatever you're using you have access to the MIDI notes right you go in there and make little edits just to think about like in visually you have an edit or you have a dissolve think of the dynamic if when you dissolve into the next scene sometimes it's not called for and sometimes it is but with drums it sort of removes that rigidness from a program drum pattern where I did a whole video about this it was bass and logic pro but the step once you get to the MIDI side you can make little edits in the MIDI just to move those crashes and find where the good emphasis should be catch a bass note maybe bass drum bass note on the two instead of on the one and humanize it a little bit and then if you've got and sometimes those fills that they throw at you like you said it becomes messy like what is that well that's what the program gave me but you can send it out you can you can you know there's a lot of editing you can do and and that's really the foundation of that track too especially I I've spent many many years using virtual drums and you know I mean this track I'm working on with it at the moment it's got real drums but before that many years since I worked with real drums and I I know that a lot of people will be in that boat but I will say this I've never ever used one of those grooves that comes with a virtual I've never used that in any of my songs ever I've always written all of the drum parts for the song I think it's highly important I've mentioned it before and what you were talking about the fills there reminds me that you know a fill isn't just a thing by itself it's there with other instruments it may be that it's emphasizing something that the vocal does as it leads into the next part or emphasizing something that the guitar is doing it's not I mean sometimes of course they do exist in isolation but that's what I'm saying is it you know the relation when you use pre-programmed loops of drums they don't have a relationship to this song they're a generic thing and it can sound very unsatisfying like Marlon said I mean great drummers I mean Vinnie Caliudas certainly one of the greatest of all times but some of the best drummers in the world were compositional drummers they weren't just you know smack and beat we're actually writing their drum parts and when they would perform live just like the verse and chorus they're playing their drum parts as if it was a chord and it belonged to that part of the song and that relationship that that raises a song up so much I'll actually add the name Lars Ulrich there there's most hated drama I think in the world but you can when you hear his drum parts you know what song it is and it's something which he does really good he's really compositional that's good well I mean it's really kick yeah I was going to say talk about drummers I mean Mike's gonna chuckle when I say this but Neil Peart from Rush I think he influenced all those drummers right and he was probably the ultimate compositional drummer because he would if you listen to his songs he never played the same part the same but it always fit as busy as he was it always fit the song well I must have said it about six times on different shows already but you know I never used the respect to him I'm going to say this but Ringo Starr when I really it took me years to understand kind of how great Ringo Starr was and very much the same thing for 99% of the time when you listen to his drumming he's playing the song he's not playing a drum pattern he's playing the song he's accenting certain things that the different musicians are doing and came up with some remarkably unique drum parts in the process as well which with what you're both saying there that there's some of them you could definitely identify the song just from the drums I love that and you know as with anything if we're going to have this conversation I think this applies to virtual instruments well I mean I know Pete Johns is in there at the moment from studio live today and he brought up he's just said here an interesting topic for sure what is real in 2022 you know the fact is whether we like it or not a vast majority of the people in home studios are going to be using virtual instruments and a lot of people come to have come to me and said you know why do you talk about virtual guitars on on your channel when you know you're a guitarist and and to be honest on it and I think I've probably made it clear I don't use virtual guitars on my own recordings I don't but I review a lot of products and I've looked at a lot of virtual guitars and that's because I recognize that you know people such as I think Mimo Japan is there at the moment are committed to using virtual guitars in their music so I just want to at least educate them about how guitars work and what's important with guitars and not just you know their different tones and their different styles of guitar but how they work even within a piece of music how that and it was interesting because I saw a conversation only today about this and a guitarist obviously was sort of dissing the idea and saying hey just go away and learn to play guitar you know and I thought interesting so if you decide to have a little violin on your song do you just go away and learn the violin or do you grab a violin library and if you want to you know whatever we use loads of virtual instruments we're not going to go and learn all these instruments and to be quite honest with you Mimo Japan's a good example he uses he doesn't even use a keyboard to input he uses the mouse to input notes right and he does a pretty good damn job of making it sound you know like a cohesive real real piece of music that's my opinion well it's because he tries right that's his I mean he's he's doing it because he has to but he's not leaning on it there's a difference and you know I know you always razz on me it's our theme about virtual instruments I don't have problems with virtual instruments I have the problem I have is people starting from the same starting point with a lot of the same loops and instruments and just using them as opposed to instead of it being a tool is a tool is a tool a tool can shape things right but borrowing pieces and using them as is that's not originality that's just not I don't want to hear the loop I guess what my point was sorry I didn't quite kind of finish that if you're going to use virtual instruments educate yourself about those instruments that is not just I mean educate if I'm not a drummer okay but I know something about the differences between different drum kits you know a gratch or or what have you that there's difference it sounds just through paying attention I try to pay attention to what real drummers do as you were saying earlier on Dan you know um and yeah if you're going to start to use trumpets in your music listen to trumpet players listen to what they do don't just grab the virtual instrument and just start playing on the keyboard there and then thinking oh well it's sampled it must sound like a trumpet no no no no it's about performance it's the performance element which actually makes it sound real I see Marlon nodding his head a lot there what what have you got to add there Marlon glad you agree well a lot of to make something sound realistic is in its performance and not per se its sound yep so if you mimic a uh cello on a guitar you have to make sure you play something which sounds a bit like a cello and not like a guitar because otherwise will sound like a cheesy cello instead of a real cello that's what happens you know a lot of time and and so yeah and it's it's worth keeping in mind if you're working on music up with that perspective that if you're finding hey look I've got this virtual instrument and it sounded great when I first tried it out of the box it sounded like you know again we'll go to trumpets but now it's in the music and now it suddenly sounds like a synthesizer look at the way you are using it are you really phrasing things the way a trumpet player would phrase are you using the range of that instrument or the realistic range of that instrument so yeah and then on from that as well just as a final point on that um treat it as if it was recorded in your studio and then eq it and compress it and if it hasn't already had that done to it of course you know but yeah any final words I'm going to let by the way thank you so much to everyone who's been here um uh in the live chat there um don't forget to like uh the video for you it's amazing that no one's really asked me about the big the huge thing that's coming up but anyway I'm going to leave the final word uh to put him on the spot um Marlon um I have one final sentence and that is Mike what is that I'm going to do it I'm I'm going to do it with Dan's picture up here by the way so Dan if you could just I was fine yeah Mike what is that big thing you have coming up as the actress said to the bishop well I just will clear up one thing um before we go about this because uh when I was talking about this in social media the last couple of days or when I put up a couple of little videos and stills um people are anticipating it must be a big new cakewalk feature so I will clear that up it's got nothing to do with cakewalk whatsoever not only I by the by the way there is a a program you can join um with cakewalk where you can sort of get a beta or beta however you pronounce it version of cakewalk um it's I think it's called the insiders program I purposely don't use the insiders program I will I always want to experience cakewalk as people are currently experiencing it with the um with the current version so anyway I don't know anything about what's coming out in cakewalk I don't pay much attention to that I just use it when it comes out because I'm just a cakewalk user um just like you guys but it's got nothing to do with cakewalk it's got everything to do with it