 Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you are welcome to Episode 18 of Fix My Mix, the show where we can listen to some songs from the community and using our, I was going to say expertise, let's just go with experience though. Using our experience, we're hopefully going to be able to nudge you in the right direction with some mixes before you send them out to the world. I want to say a quick thank you to our sponsor DistroKid who I'm pointing to now. If you follow that link in the description, you're at 7% off. I'll get a little kick back. It'll be everything will be good and you'll get your music out to the world. I want to say quick hi to some of the people who are here in the live chat. Always good to see them. We do indeed have Rocky here. Nice to see you Rocky. We have Thomas Christ over here. I've just been watching, thinking about Thomas Christy. I was just been watching Pete John's show. Pete John's show. I don't know. It doesn't matter. That was good show over there. That's my sales watching. I was listening while I was brushing my teeth and having a pee. Things you do while you watch Pete John's show is good though. Good guest on there, a cakewalk user, which was nice to see. Robbie Maroon. All good stuff over there. Nice to see Jade in here. Thank you Jade for being here. I've been watching some of your shows recently as well. I don't always make myself known in the comments and things like, I'm there. I'm there being a fan. The Zombie Economist. Thank you for being here again and quickly. Let's just say hello to Kamikaze Shots as well. Now for those of you who don't know, on this show, we do listen to some mixers from the community. I want to thank the people who do send in their mixers. As I say every week, it's an incredibly brave thing to do to expose yourself to the world and you can get arrested for that. To expose yourself to the world with sort of unfinished work, because it is unfinished. It's not quite there yet and you may feel that people judge you. But look, we're in good company here. Everyone here, I feel who's here every week in the chat is really constructive with what they do. And it's really important that you do contribute in the chat. Love to hear what you're thinking of the mixers going along. If you want to send a mixing, follow the instructions in the description down below and basically you'll find out how you can email that to me and get my attention with it. And we try and include everything. Not quite everything gets in on a show, but eventually most things filter their way through to a show. We do through every week. So yeah, we'd love to hear your music and if you'd like to get some feedback. I normally have some people who are much more expert than me, I have to say. And talking about that, I have to kind of start off with a little bit of an apology, because one of the artists who sent their material in this week, in fact the first song that we're going to be playing today, had said to me, he loves the show, he watches the show, was again sending his song. He said, I do have a particular request though. He said, he said, could you please, when you review my song, have the excellent Dan, the lonely rocker, and Ricky T Brown on to review it? Because you know, I really value their opinions and their constructive input. And I have to apologize, Doug, because unfortunately I've got this bloke instead. That whole build up, that whole look at that. I love it. I was just really glad because I thought you were going to get the track. You can play my song as long as that Pete bloke isn't on there. So at least they didn't not request me, they just requested other people. So that's fine. I would rather listen to Dan and Ricky T Brown talk to myself, Canadian in the UK, come on. I thought you were going to say I'd rather they were here than me. I mean, if we're going to get right into the weeds, there's a root to the situation, Mike. I mean, it could be watched in the hockey right now, but no, it's a pleasure to be here, mate. It always is. Although your music, your 59 seconds of countdown at the start there did put me to sleep. So I did have to have some no-dos to wake myself back up because it was so zen and calming. It is, isn't it? There's a few things I need to update with this show. I don't get time because I'm making so many review videos. Yeah, you've been excited about so many, I was going to almost swear that, you've been so excited about all the boxes arriving with question marks at your house. I've been this excited. Can I do a... No, I look like I saw a ghost. I can't do it. I can't do the YouTuber faces. I'm sorry. Yeah, I got to point at things. I've copped a little bit of crap in the last week with my YouTube. I shouldn't say that. Constructive criticism. One guy had to go at me on Facebook and he didn't do it so politely and I think was asked to leave by the Facebook group over there. A peculiar. Someone was a dick on Facebook. So then he headed over to YouTube and proceeded to tell me, it's not your facial expressions in your thumbnail that's the problem. You'll always have a small YouTube channel because your content is so unoriginal and boring. To be honest with you, that's what he'd said at the point I read to because he'd written three whole paragraphs at that point. I was like, okay, someone's having a bad day. I do agree. Somebody else, I won't say their name, privately messaged me yesterday and said, hey, look, I'm not going to say this in public because I know your fanboys will attack me. He said, I don't always enjoy your thumbnail facial expressions. Right. Now this is an interesting thing folks. I'm saying this for a reason because obviously the first person didn't really get much air time from me. The second guy was very constructive when he messaged me about how he thought I could perhaps adapt some of my thumbnails. And although he may or may not be right in that we had a really interesting and constructive conversation about it and it's about you, how you approach people sometimes, isn't it? It really is. And yeah, it's about scrolling past sometimes too. Sometimes it's not for you. I've been on this round lately that it might not be for you, but you don't need to tell everyone that it's not for you. Or like you say, discreetly and privately tell the creator and they'll either say, you could have said, look, bugger off. I'm doing what I want to do. Or you can say, tell me what you think and either way would be acceptable. But I just think that people think that everything is for everyone and it's not. My channel is different to yours, which is different from Dan's and Ricky's. Everyone's doing their own thing and no one's going to be as good at you as you, Mike. No one would want to be as, no one would want to be Mike. A lot of people have tried. But you know, it does, it's one of the things I'm really proud of the guests that I have on the show, yourself, people like Dan, people like Ricky, Ed Marlin, Chris Salem. I'm going to miss out some people. But what I'm saying is, is everyone I have on the show, Jade, sorry, as well, and Ron as well as another. Everyone that comes on the show is just so constructive and we don't just have positive comments about people's music, but everyone is able to deliver it. I've never, I don't think I've ever had a person who's sent in a song who's got upset by some of the negative comments that they've heard and I think it's because they delivered in a way which is constructive and that's very, very important. It all just comes down to constructive and you can very quickly see, there's a very easy to see behind the veil of someone that's just trying to be a troll. I'm going to trouble this week for saying, for basically saying people shouldn't be trolls and stop trolling people on the internet and someone said, oh, but you're just saying that anytime anyone says anything negative that that's being a troll and why can't we have conversations anymore? Why is everyone so delicate? It's actually got nothing to do with that and it's just people that go out of their way to get a reaction and it sounds like you had two people. One was trying to get a reaction from you about what they were saying. They wanted their 15 minutes of fame. They wanted to be the front and center attention of your mind and the other person wanted to help you and that's the difference. That's why I think this show works so well. Now there is another thing about receiving criticism as well and I'm just going to play folks. This is an interesting conversation. I didn't plan to have this conversation in fact, but so we'll bore you with it for another couple of minutes. But the interesting thing was when this chap was saying to me, he was saying, you know, I think it was one of the latest thumbnails, you know, where I was really overreacting. I'll say to him, it's just bad acting on my part. I'm thinking for me in my mind, I'm going, but the thumbnail is going. A couple of weeks later, I'll look at it. I'll go, oh, Mike, dial it in a bit. Anyway, but I was saying to him, here's the struggle that they'll have. On that particular video, I had 20,000 views in a week. I had folks watching. There's a thing called click-through rate on YouTube and it's just about how many people click on it. It's got one of my highest click-through rates of any video. So although I respect the person's opinion, it may not change. Yeah, and it's a struggle. I was chatting with Robbie Maroon, you just mentioned, I do my Cradetown Hall show and we were talking about promotion and there's the thing in Australia called the Tall Poppy Syndrome, which is where, you know, you stick to your path, you do your own thing, you're humble, you don't big note yourself, you just stay the course. And people that sort of go out there and do things that are what are conceived to be brash or arrogant or bigheaded, they get cut down like a tall poppy, cut down. And I think that's the same sort of thing that happens here. And I must admit, I've not done things more often than I'd care to admit because of what I thought a small portion of people might think, as opposed to doing the things that I know will work for me in the channel. So if anything, I am too conservative on my thumbnails because I don't want those one or two D words to come on to my chat and ruin my day into the comment section. But I really shouldn't care because 90% of people either don't care, don't have an opinion either way, or just accept it as, hey, that's what you do. It's like ads. I didn't run mid-roll ads in my YouTube videos for a long time. And I was chatting to folks like you and to Patrick over at the GarageBand Guide and you said, mate, people expect it. People are watching a 30 minute video. They expect to get one or two ads in there. Like don't cry in a minute every two minutes because people stop watching, but it's expected. And people don't care as much as you do. I must admit, I always manually adjust my ads. Do not let YouTube do it. If you leave it to YouTube, it's insane. Oh my God, that would just plaster it. Folks, as creators for those watching who may or may not be interested in this, we do get the option. Look, if we decide not to run ads or whatever, YouTube may run them anyway. We don't have complete control over it. But when we upload a video, YouTube will automate where the ads are and how many of them there are. But we can intervene, which people like myself and Pete, and I don't know whether Jay does or not, but we can intervene and then go there. So I like to, I have a bit of a rule of thumb. They're going to put them at the beginning end anyway. If it's over about, say, 12 minutes, I may allow one in the middle. If it's up to 30 minute video. And I think that gives people an opportunity to have a wee and stuff like that. Exactly. But the reason I bring this up is not to make it all about me. Of course it is all about me. It's my show. But it's about criticism, about receiving criticism, giving criticism. And I think that it's interesting because we are about to give our opinions about people's music. And I think we've got to be careful how we give opinions and we've got to be careful how we receive them. Once in a while, folks, you may watch a show like this and send a song in. And we might say, oh, you know, there's too much bass in that one. But you've got to follow your own heart at the end of the day. If you're not sure and you think, okay, I appreciate that advice, but if you really strongly feel no, I think Mike and Pete are wrong about this. They've got it wrong. I want that amount. Then go with it. You know, you've got it in the end. It's your, you have sovereign ownership. I don't know what the term is. Yeah, I know. But I always say it's not a democracy. It's a dictatorship. When it comes to your own music, your own show, your own channel, you is the one party life where a dictatorship is actually fine because you get to have 100% control over it. You can take on advice from other people, but yeah, don't have to take it. And the loudest voice doesn't have to be the one you listen to. Absolutely. Robbie Maroon was touching on this. Now he has, he had a view that he likes to work alone. He loves to work alone because he doesn't have to really put up. I got the feeling he was saying, I don't have to put up with a crap from other musicians. He said it very nicely. But yeah, it was exactly that that he said that I asked, did you play in bands? And he said, I did, but let's just say I have my own way that I want things done. And there was not did the collaboration wasn't there. So now he, now he does what a lot of us do and he goes on five or he gets a session musician and he plugs him in and makes his music and he sounds great. So more powerful. I think there's, I think there's two sides to that story. I think there's, you know, obviously people, if you collaborate with them, and I know you collaborate, for example, with Jade, often and things like that. So people are going to expand you beyond what you naturally, what you naturally do. But I don't miss, I don't miss the band rehearsals where the bass player rocked up and he obviously hadn't rehearsed his part, which you'd agreed upon from the last one because he'd been too busy partying or shagging his girlfriend during the week. And why did I say that? Anyway, but you know, and you go, come on, and we're all here, you know, you know, and then it devolves into, I don't miss that. I don't miss that. So obviously when you deal with a certain class of musicians, perhaps you don't have to put up. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Yeah. Once you get to that level where they're actually a professional and you can kind of hire and fire them, it's a little bit different. But yeah, the old band days where it was like, we're even worse if the bass player came up with their own song and they're like, we should play this. When you're like, yeah, that's going to be the next number one. Sorry, bass players. Sorry, bass players. We'll pick on drummers later. Yeah, music. Let's go on with the first song. Yeah, music. Yeah, that was a warm this up. I didn't even get onto the subject that my mum arrived yet last night from the UK. She's just down there in the kitchen. Nice. And yeah, I've got someone else to tell me off there. Very good. No swearing today. She'll watch this. If you swear, I'll get hit. You know that, don't you? There you go. Sorry. Sorry, Mrs. Mike. I'll be good. All right. So first up, let me put the name up on the screen here. A regular, in fact, a moderator. No preferential treatment. It's been a long time. I haven't played anything by this gentleman. He's here. And I was not fully aware of his music. I may have heard some bits and pieces before. This is the first time I've really heard a piece of music. I'll let you read it out, Pete. It is the one and only Doug Kitter with a track. Leave it behind. I'm excited. I've been seeing Doug around your channel for months and he tags out over my channel now too. He's crossed over. So yeah. Doug, I apologise because I've used up most of the show talking about myself and YouTube. So I'm going to quickly read some bits of the email. But this was a song that was written quite a long time ago, actually 2011, originally recorded 2011 on an older version of what we'll call Cakewalk, but it was Sona, Cold Sona at the time, Pro 6. And he was using an old Matu interface. And in 2017, after acquiring platinum addictive drums, I decided to go back and fix the drums. At some point, I accidentally deleted, accidentally deleted the original guitar solo. I've not had that happen too often, which was much better than the one that's there now. And you can't replicate it because you had that moment of magic. Yes, yes. Now, I know that Robbie Maroon says he just writes everything down. Doug, I'm going to say you should have backed everything up. You should have had servers, you should have had CDs burnt, you should have had additional hard drops. Don't listen to Pete John's on this. You're using Apple, it would all be an iCloud just quietly. Anyway, he's saying that then he had some issues with his hands, but he thinks maybe his hands improved and things he might possibly re-record this guitar part. So I think he's trying to get us prepared for the guitar part here, I don't know. Anyway, he dug this out of a dusty vault because it's a good song. He dug it, I know, I know, he dug. Yeah, we're not even kidding, are we? We're off the rails already. This is fun. Anyway, yeah, God, now I've got to read this bit of the email, Pete John. Dustin, it's a good song worth the trouble. The song is about suicide with the message. You never know how tomorrow can be so much different and you can't leave it behind. Great concept for a song, by the way, Doug, and very cool. So let's have a listen to this. He did compliment me a little bit later on saying how inspirational I've been and everything. I'm not going to read that part of the email out, of course, because I'm very... You just read it to yourself every night before it ends. I appreciate your words, Doug. So let's have a listen to this song. Leave it behind from Doug. Yeah, righty. Thanks, Doug. Thanks, Doug. Nice to hear your music properly finally and thanks for sending in. I'll go over to my esteemed guest, Pete Johns here first off. Pete, you're a man of the 90s with a bit of guitar rock. Oh, yeah. Yeah, right up my alley. As I always say, you try to be subjective, but when it's the sort of music that you dig and you listen to naturally anyway, it makes it really easy to like. So I kept just jamming and getting into the groove and then they're like, oh, I better actually be critical and try and think of some things to say. But no, I really like the guitar. I thought the guitars worked really well together. I liked the combination of that nice clean acoustic that came at the start. I think it was acoustic. It was a clean. And then the muted guitars in the background had a bit of that sweet home Alabama sort of style. So I think I love a sound like that where you bring those two together, you get the nice resonance of one guitar and the nice sort of muted darkness of the other guitar. I thought that worked really well. The drums, if you told me that that was a live drummer, I'd probably believe you because you talked about, you know, you redid the drums with addictive drums, but there was some care and some love. And I know Mike, you and I have talked about this in previous shows and listening to tracks that it's very easy to just plug and play your virtual drums and just use the loops and the patterns that they come with. There was all sorts of guy. There was splashiness in those. There was side sticks. There was rim shots. Like there was a lot of care. You could hear the care that's taken and someone that not listening and zoning in on those drums probably would just go, oh, it was just a cool drum feel. And you could probably, like someone listening to them might criticize and go, oh, it's a bit of a loose feel on those drums. I actually thought it worked for the style of music in my personal opinion. I like a drum like that. I've been a Wolf Mother style drum that's like a little bit, it just occasionally just drifts a bit and it's hard to do that with a digital world. So I think Doug did a good job with that one. I like the guitar. Man, if the other guitar solo was better, that was a pretty hot guitar solo, I must say. It sounded good. It worked for the track. It sounded good. And what I really like, my favorite thing of that was after the set. So there was a little solo and then there was a slightly longer solo. Really liked that progression. And then after the second solo, the lead guitar went back and behind and it was a really good mixing to actually bring to, to pull it back. So it was still there, but it wasn't overpowering. Some people try to put a lead guitar part with a counter melody over a chorus. It sounds all built up. Whereas Doug was able to do that. Only things that I would talk about is, yeah, look, the loose feel. If you wanted it tighter, you could tighten up on some of that stuff, but I personally wouldn't. But some people may listen to that and go, it was a bit loose. I think it kind of needed to be. It's a rock song. It's rock and roll. It's not supposed to be perfectly on the grid all the time. And the other thing was that the vocal tones, I didn't really talk about vocals. Amazing vocals, really good, really clean vocals. There was a lot of sort of nice verb on there. I would have loved to hear a bit of delay on those vocals. Like in the choruses, especially when you hit that big rock, like even a bit of slapback, but some sort of delay that just give it that because there was lots of nice reverb there. But yeah, I mean, I'm a sucker for delay on vocals. So it's a personal thing of mine. But I reckon in those choruses, or even in just the last chorus, just really bring it home with some like slapback on those vocals just to really sort of grind it out. But that was an impressive song. Really enjoyed it. And look forward to listening to more Doug music if you're continuing to produce. You pretty much stole my notes there. But I will say, first of all, it's so strange, isn't it? Sometimes because, you know, Doug's been a very active member of the community for a long time and I've seen him around and I appreciate that very much by the way, Doug. But you know, then sometimes you go, oh, you're hearing this person sing. And I've got to say, Doug, I really like your voice. It's always going to be a personal taste thing. But for me, I really enjoyed your vocal delivery style, especially I mean, the tone of your voice and everything. I was just really enjoying it. I was a bit like, oh, Doug can sing. I mean, why wouldn't Doug be able to sing? But you sort of, you know, you've sort of seen this name in this person around so much. And then you know, you're like, that grumpy old bugger can hold a note into all right, can't he? What a surprise. So that was the first thing. So I really enjoyed the vocal style. I loved the sound of the acoustic at the beginning. It was really, it's that sort of sound again. And sometimes I'll say, that's the sort of sound that I'm aiming for when I'm recording acoustic sometimes and don't always get there. So that was really good. Again, I'd mentioned the drums. So these drums, for those of you who are new to this, this is the difference to me between, you know, really taking care and attention over a virtual instrument, because virtual instruments, I think get a bad rap sometimes, because they're used badly. Yes. Yes. Mimo Japan politely contacted me two or three weeks ago about one of my songs and pointed out how I was not using the B3 organ in the best possible way and gave me a couple of tips, which I've yet to put into practice, but it was really good. So I was using the instrument badly, you see, I wasn't using it as well as I could do. So, you know, this is so that the amount of effort gone into it. Now, somebody said in the comments, I can't remember who it was that they thought made perhaps the drums were a little bit, I could do a little bit of repair here and there. So what I'm going to say, Doug, is I see why that person said that. I can't remember who it was, as I say. So for me, these drums are brilliant in this. Somebody said they're chaotic, that good word for them. And they were suitably chaotic. And there's a lot of effort goes into making virtual drums. Just here and there. And I think maybe two points in the whole song, there was just maybe one or two hits where I thought, oh, you just went a little bit far off the grid for me. They probably disagree me a little bit here. But just a tad, it's going to be a matter of opinion. So Doug, take or leave that, go back and have a look if you like. But overall, really, really good. I did feel that sometimes there's Doug, there's this guitar riff in there, which was coming out in between the vocals. Sometimes I felt that area of the song lacked a little bit of a little bit of punch when it came. Now, it's one of those things where I don't think I'd know the answer to that unless I had the multi tracks in front of me now and I was able to quickly experiment. So I'm not sure about this. But I think maybe those distorted guitars playing that riff, Doug, perhaps a little bit of automation on that, just lift them up a bit during those little breaks where they're playing. And I felt, I've put in here, I felt they need a little bit more edge, a little bit more sizzle, a little bit more mids probably, a little bit more crackle to them. That's what I felt about them personally. And that was the only thing. Maybe the low end of the mix could do with a tad tiny, tiny bit more, Doug, not much. So again, that's going to be a matter of opinion. But you may want to experiment with that. Overall, great song. Love the song style. Nothing wouldn't complain about the song. We've talked about this, Pete, with my guest recently quite a lot about repetition. How much repetition is too much repetition? When do you not do enough repetition? For this style of music, I felt the balance was really good on this. Yeah, really, really good, just in the pocket. Yeah, it was. Yeah, that's why I mentioned that first guitar, because I've listened to that first guitar, so it was only two bars, I think, well, not long at all. And then I was like, was that the solo? But then it kind of repeated and did it again. It was really just a little break in the middle there. So yeah, it was enough to keep your interest the whole way through. Again, you had the theme, you had the hook that was playing again and again. That's why I just said the only thing that I'd say is like that final chorus. I'm a big, let's give everything in the final chorus, like that final chorus will bring it all home. So that's why I think, like you say, maybe maybe you want to make up some of those grungy guitars, maybe bring your vocals out a little delay or some other sort of processing or double or triple up again. But yeah, again, these are all things that are just style and taste preferences, as opposed to, hey, you need to fix your mix. You may want to enhance your mix if you choose to. If you bundled that up, mastered and stuck it out today, I wouldn't complain. I'd say yeah, good stuff. Yeah, absolutely. Now, this is a point in the show where I normally go to a little segue about Distro Kid, of course, and I've got the same four adverts that I made months ago that I play every single week for my crash commercialism. Anyway, but last week, Happy Ron was on the show, wasn't he? And he spontaneously made up a song about Distro Kid. Have you got your guitar there, Pete? Have you got it? Oh, I do. Would you like me to sing a song about Distro Kid? Grab your guitar. Folks in the chat, let's just suggest a key for Pete to play in. Let's not do B flat, because no guitarist really enjoys the B flat or E flat. Let's not do that. No one's suggesting anything in the chat there, Pete. Let's go for, look, I don't want it to be sad. I was going to say A minor, but I don't want it to be too sad. Let's do G. I'm going to suggest that which feature shall we talk about, Pete? One of the great features of Distro Kid. They've just launched Distro Vid. So let's do a Distro Vid. Now, what's the key components of Distro Vid? So Distro Vid lets you release your music out to, should I do this in song form or am I just telling you? No, just tell me, because we're going to write a song together here. So Distro Kid, Distro Vid, it's like Distro Kid for videos. So if you want to get your music out there as a music video and you want to get it on to all the social platforms and you want to get it on to YouTube and have like that Vivo, like a lot of people are putting stuff out that if you want to legitimize that, so if you're going to the effort of releasing, you can actually now do that with your videos as well as your music. Awesome. Well said. All right, so let's get the word platforms in there. That's the only thing I'm going to say. It's got to be in G and you've got to have the word platform in there and go. All right, is my guitar coming through? Yeah, yeah, perfect. Beautiful. We don't care. That's good enough for this show. That's what we said at the start, wasn't it? Good enough for this show. All right, so the platform, the platform show district. Yeah. Okay. If you want to get your music out on every platform in the world, you want to use DistroKid. Even for your video, there's the platform of choice from Mike from Creative Source. Oh, nice choice and source. The way you got choice and source, that's bravo. Oh my God. I thought Eminem was one of the most creative rhymers I've ever heard until now. You choice and source, right? Because they don't, but you made it sound like they do. They do, if you show them the right way. That's good. Honestly, folks, I gave Pete no clue that I was going to do that. In fact, I had no clue I was going to tell Pete to do it until about 30 seconds before I did. Wait for the second and I'm going to make up a rap on the spot. Turn your reverb off. We're not in the alcohol. There you go. Sorry. My mix minus, I had it off on my channel, but I didn't have it off on your channel. So you were hearing me in a wonderful burn. Good stuff. Good stuff. Let's go on to our second song. This is from a gentleman called Mark Wilkins. It's called, or the song title, is Few Weeks from Extinction. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a few weeks from Extinction. I just copy and paste from the email, so it could be a few weeks from Extinction. I can't say the word. Is there words that you sometimes get to that you can't say, Pete? Is there a favorite? I can't remember off the top of my head, but yeah, there's a heap that I can't do. It's usually F F the words. So someone else, solid state plugins, something like that. If you've got any propensity towards a list, which both me and you do, then it will come out in extreme form when you're trying to be doing something on YouTube. So just say SSL console. Exactly. So my worst one, I can normally say if I'm not thinking about it, that folks, if you've ever watched my videos and you see this word, no, that even though you see me say it once, I had to say it about 50 times before I actually got there. And that word is synthesizer. I see I said it then. I said it then, but when it comes to Monday morning and I hit record on the camera, it becomes the fifth of fiber. I usually just say synth because I've done that. I go, I'll just do synth then. So I'm a synth electric piano. I'm thinking, what other words are there for this? I'll go to the specific model name DX7. There you go. Problem solved. It's hard being a YouTube. What are we doing here? We played music. Mark Wilkins. Sorry, Mark. A song called A Few Weeks From Extinction. Let's put it up on the screen. I'll let you read it out. Mark Wilkins with A Few Weeks From Extinction. Yes. So you didn't give me much information. A one line email. This song is called A Few Weeks From Extinction. And it was my first attempt at working on a crossfade at the end. So there you go. We'll be listening out for that. Let's try and give Mark some useful feedback on this. Let's go. Done. All right. So now I understand about the crossfade. Yeah. Yes. And it sort of put me in mind if I thought my brain went, oh yeah, I remember hearing that in some 70s sort of records and things. Yeah, anyway. Interesting. Wow. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. What's that you, Mr. Jones? I listened to that and I'm like, I got to the end and I don't have very many notes because I was, it was so interesting and intriguing in the structure and in the songwriting and just listening to the, like, I would have to listen to that three or four more times. And I know that sounds like an excuse as to why I'm not going to have much good input here. But it's the ultimate compliment, I think, that if it distracted me to the point where I wasn't even able to listen to the parts, it just, everything came together. I did try and get a few things. Love the fade in. Love the fade out at the end. Yeah, it does kind of remind me of, like, some songs that have almost like a bit of a reprise at the end. They almost fade into, like, the intro again. So it kind of went end to end. I loved that. Super interesting percussion, like, not your traditional drums with the percussion throughout. I thought that was really good. That pots and pans style percussion really worked well for the mix. Really balanced mix. Like, I thought that all the instruments kind of sat in their place and was really well balanced. I wasn't, I wasn't listening out for anything in particular. Nothing kind of overpowered me at any time. One of the best touches I liked was the the ooze. So this is probably in terms of fix my mix or and how we talk about songwriting and arranging a lot as well as the mixing side. But in terms of mixing in those backing vocals, they were nice. They could hear them. They were nice and full, but not overpowering. So it was mixed in well and it made some differences. So they were slightly different each time. So I don't think the ooze were there on the first chorus. They were there in the second one. And then they kind of came in in, like, the pre-chorus and towards the end there. So it was used in a unique way. It wasn't just every time we do a chorus, we have some ooze and arse in the background. So it created some interest with their, the bass line was actually really well written. It was very subtle, but just moving up. And I think, again, that the tip out of this one is, I know we're not talking tips, you did that a few weeks ago, but the tip of that is a lot of people think you only work on that first octave in your bass. Like if it's got to be between E and E, because your bass has got to be your low instrument. I think some of the best bass lines in the world are the ones that actually go up the neck a little bit and do some fun things. And play a little bit of harmony rather than a root note sometimes. Yep. Right, exactly. Still managed to sync in there with the percussion fine, but created enough interest there. And I just thought, yeah, a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. Really interesting song like that. That's all I got because I got to the end of that song. And all I thought was I want to hear it again right now. So that's a good sign. Nice groove and stylistically quite sort of late 70s, in my opinion, not a bad thing. If that's your intention, Mark, then you achieve that really, really well. So the only sort of thing I'll say about the vocals, I liked when the harmonies and stuff came in, plenty of good stuff about the song. I was a little surprised. But with the vocals, I felt that we talked about this repetition thing. And I know this is not a mixed thing. Again, we're talking about song structure and arrangement more than anything. I can't remember the exact lyrics, sorry, but here's the way. This is our judgment day. It'll end there. Which is good. There's a little hook there. I personally was going just towards you and I was going, I'm craving something alternate here. Maybe even, and if your voice can do it, Mark, keep that one maybe an octave up. Or at least, you know, a harmony a little higher and make that harmony the melody, if that makes sense. I just needed that, just that one bit of variation in there. And that's an arrangement rather than a mixed thing. There's not a lot in the mix for me to talk about here. This is a good drum song, again, by the way. I enjoy the drums. I don't think they were virtual drums. I think they were real. But if they were virtual, then again, like Doug's song, they were really, really well done and nice. I think, Mark, the best that we're going to be able to offer you here is you're heading in the right direction. You're pretty much there. If anything, go to DistroKid and get it released. And that's the thing. You shouldn't keep your songs hidden away from the world. I'll be back. I feel it's my turn. I think it's 100% your turn. So do I have to... Now, my guitar is tuned for a specific song at the moment. So it's detuned at the moment, I think. So I think we'll have to be in the key of D with Kappa on the second fret. I like it. We'll have to do that. So give me some key words, I guess. A little bit fokey. Well, yeah, well, DistroKid is... I was just thinking about this. It's like one low yearly fee and it's unlimited. So I think you need to talk about the fact that you are... It is limitless. So I think limitless is the word. That's a nice songwriting word. It needs to be all about DistroKid's limitlessness. DistroKid. It's a mystery kid. The mystery kid. How they do it, kid. With no limits, no limits. Pete said it. There's no limits. There's no limits. There's no limits. Now we're going to rap by Pete Johns. Yeah, he's gonna rap it, yeah. DistroKid is really ace. They put your music in every place. For one low yearly subscription fee, you can be cool like Mike and me. And when he says every place, he doesn't mean every single place. Because that would be rude. And let's face, it's Pete Johns. Would never be rude. Would never be crude or lewd. So the thing is, I was going to say, DistroKid are either going to be really grumpy or really happy. And I know the people at DistroKid, they're as quirky as we are. So I think they're going to enjoy that. I think that the last two weeks of this show have been some of the most unique promotions that have ever been done in honour of our friends at DistroKid. If you do it long enough, eventually you're going to come up with a hit song. That'd be cool. They wouldn't like it, though, if we released songs called DistroKid and then we got the search engine optimisation and no one could find them anymore. They just found our stupid songs. I don't think they'd be impressed. Let's go to the last song. I haven't even screwed it up. I was so busy. I've got a question for you, a related question. People have asked me because they're really impressed with your visualisations that you're using when you're playing songs on your show here. So how do you create those? Because those are awesome. Yes, it's from, I just have to remember where it's from, called Render Forest. Now obviously for me, I've got a reason to sign up for one of their more expensive plans. I think I pay about $50 a month or something like that. But you can get plans that are not so extensive. If you just occasionally need a video from it, yes, it's good. It's good. It's just, if you just, like I have been saying to people here and there, look, there used to be a time on Facebook years ago where you could easily, you'd pop in your SoundCloud link and it would actually play it on Facebook itself. It had a little widget and blah, blah, blah. Facebook have gone away from all that kind of stuff now. They just want to own everything. Anyway, I digress. So I reckon if you're going to share some music on Facebook, upload a little video and lots of people, that can be a bit of a hassle. This kind of thing is really cool because you can just really quickly get a little visualisation happening. And yeah, people can watch it there on your Facebook page or what have you without having to go off to another platform. Of course, for us, we want you to go to another platform. We'd much prefer you came over to YouTube because Facebook doesn't really pay us anything at all. Is it, what do they pay you for? It's zero for me. They pay me for anything. They want it all. Zero. They keep asking me for money to advertise with them. So it's minus money if I wanted to pay. And not that it's all about money, but no. If you've got a choice, where would you go? We do have rent. I have rent to pay, you know. And anyway, yeah, very cool. And we'd be remiss if we didn't say that if you don't want to go to that f at DistroKid, have their video generation service called Vizzy, which if you've released with DistroKid, you can literally just throw your song there, pick a format, and it's about $12 or $13 per video. So if you don't want to go, if you want to test the waters, you don't want to pay a subscription fee, go to your DistroKid homepage and go to Vizzy Video Generator and you can generate your own cool visualizations with your custom songs. So cool. So so so so so cool. So let's move on to this final song for the show today. I am going to rushing off afterwards and I'm going to go grocery shopping with my mother, which I don't think I've done since I was about 10 years old. It's actually quite exciting, I have to say. So Marmite and Teabags, how have you done? Marmite. I can't stand that stuff for any English people watching. It's like Vegemite but worse somehow. Vegemite's wonderful stuff. I love Vegemite. It's a diet. When I'm making videos, it's like, yeah, give me some Vegemite. Vegemite on toast, nothing better. Make another video. I'll make six videos in two weeks, all reviews. I can do that. That's why your face is so happy because you're a happy little Vegemite. You know, your thumb doesn't. So it's unavoidable. What do we say about doing a quick show today, Mike? Oh yeah. So moving on. So the final song, the final song is I like people that send me short emails. This one might be too short, I'm just going to say, because I know this is from Diana Roscoe because that was the person who sent me the email. The song is called Love is the Light because the only content of the email was Love is the Light. The file name said Love is the Light. So if you could just send me a little bit more information, folks, when you send a song in. I do like to, I want to listen to the song anyway. And I just want to remind folks also, first of all, thanks for being here for this show. You've been wonderful in the chat. It's been great to have you here and do send your music in. We would love to hear it. And as you can hear, me and Pete ourselves are quite capable of writing some pretty terrible music. Savings from ourselves. Yours is bound to be better than anything we can come up with. So let's have a listen to this song from Diana Roscoe called Love is the Light. I muted both of us this time. Yes, you did. I'm going to go first on this one, Pete. I think I'm going to offer it to you. I'm like, do we get to go last? And that's not fun. Yeah, I know. It's my show. I should go first. You should go first every time. You should barely let us speak at all. I know. I know. Just have you as a pretty face. I mean, if you could put some makeup on, it might work. Anyway, here we go. Diana, often we talk about, you know, not just me and Pete, but everyone who talks about music talks about the value of a good song. And, you know, you can't fix it in the mix and so on and so on. But you can harm a song with the mix. And I have to show you, I think this song underneath this mix is a decent song somewhere. And I think it's been greatly harmed by the mix. And I'm glad you've sent it in, because I really hope that you can take some constructive criticism. I'm going to give you the riff, the main sort of riff that appears in between the vocals lines of some dispute over what instrument this is. It sounds like a, maybe a synthesized string instrument, if that makes sense. A virtual instrument being, it was way too loud, like way, way, way, way too loud. We're not talking little increments here, just way too loud. And it was very harsh sounding. I made notes to say that I even wondered if there was an, because he sent me an MP3. I even wondered if there was an MP3 export setting issue here. Because if you get the bit depth wrong, for example, it wasn't quite eight bit, but there was some real harshness here. When I put the song on, I immediately had to hit the volume and get this down to 70% of what the other songs that we've been playing, because it would, it sort of did hurt my ears a little bit. Nice singing, nice vibe, all that things going on. I even think you could lose that riff potentially. I reckon if you took it out, it could still be a better song than it is at the moment. You need to address it. It was just simply way too harsh and way out of balance. If I'm going to talk percentages, for example, I'm going to say it needs to be at 70% of where it is now, even that low, maybe coming through. But I actually maybe think it might not be a great choice of instrument as well for the riff. There was a little, there was a couple of comments from people that say the riff might be a bit too repetitive. And they did have some variation in it actually. It wasn't the same all the way through. But yeah, there's an argument to be said there, but I think it's not going to feel quite so repetitive if we can just fix that. That's your main thing with your song actually. A lot of the other things about the song were probably good, but it was so overpowering for me that that that out of balance riff that it made it hard for me to even sort of hear the other things and be yet to really evaluate them too much. But I think that's the only thing it needs to fix. Have I taken away all your notes, Mr. Johns? A lot of them. But yeah, first of all, when I first heard that, there's two songs that use a similar riff. There's the song Hal Bazaar by OMC, do you remember that one? Oh yes, Hal Bazaar. Do you really do? Yes. Hal Bazaar. And Sugar Rays every morning. Every morning there's a halo. It just reminded me of that. I don't know why. I first heard that and I heard that. Good pick. Yeah, I like it. And look, I'm not saying that's plagiarism. It makes there's 12 notes in a scale. So don't worry about that. Everything's going to sound like something. So I was down with that. And I did like, I thought it was an interesting drum sound. I thought the drums were a bit repetitive. Like that was a loop that was just played throughout the whole thing. And if that's, if that was the intention, that's cool. There's some very cool songs that have been made that literally just use that kind of old organ drum machine kind of tone, which is absolutely fine. But yeah, a little bit repetitive and yeah, the volume issue and the EQ issue. I think that either it was an export issue where it was thing, I think it might have been limited. So I think that there was some pumping that I was hearing sometimes. Like if you're here when the roof came in, yeah, it's sort of, I had that on my notes. I started to drop, but I felt there was, that was the other thing I felt about the whole song. It was so compressed. It was like, you know, I think it was just washed, right? You need to, you need some, you need some breath in that some dynamics in there. Yeah. Yeah. So I think there was some over compression and some over limiting and perhaps in the mastering process, maybe, you know, sometimes you press that auto master button and it just crushes it into a sausage way form. And that can cause a lot of that sort of pumping. And yeah, the treble end, like, I think you're right with the choice of instrument. Given it was a kind of like an island Jimmy Buffett kind of feel at the seagulls at the start, I was hearing like more of a steel drum, like a softer. Or even like marimbas or something. Yeah, marimbas or a celesta. It's like something that's more natural sounding. I think the harshness of that sound, it just sounded too artificial. And the rest of the track was going for a more natural kind of island vibe. I thought well said. Yeah. Yeah. It distracted from that. Yeah. So drum machine was a little bit repetitive and the cymbal crashes, my goodness. I don't know what was going on with those cymbal crashes, but every time towards the end there, every time the cymbal crashed, like the song crashed. And I'm like, it's sad because it just sounded really tinny and really top endy. And I think if you've got a better sample for some of these drum sounds, then it's going to really help things out. And that's pretty easy to do to just find a decent crash sound. Because it was right, like it was right. So the timing of the song was good. The songwriting was good. As you said, it was actually a really fun song. I actually really enjoyed it. And I think you rise that if you did a few little things to there, then you'd be able to do that. The vocals were good, like super smooth and well sung. Nice vocals. Yeah. And ironically, I think, unlike everything else, they probably needed a little bit of treatment. Like I didn't, they were very dry. So there was no real reverb or delay on the vocals. So I wouldn't mind adhering a little bit more reverb on those, on those vocals. And I think, yeah. Did you say reverb? I said reverb. After all these years of my pronunciation. Reverb. Reverb. Now you've gone to reverb. Yeah, carry on. But I've been talking for three hours and got up at six o'clock. I'm losing the plot here. But no, I think everything else has been said. Like there was a lot of actually really good feedback. If you're watching Dana or Dana on the replay, go back because folks like Kevin, the parent who said, yeah, the riffs are a bit repetitive. There were some other really good bits of feedback from people as the song was playing. So I think you could use a lot of that, not just what Mike and myself said, but what a lot of the folks in the chat here said, which is why it's so good to have a live audience here giving their feedback. But again, good song, good song writing. If it was a crap song, we'd say, hey, it's crap song. Don't bother recording the fact that we're going to this sort of level of care and attention to tell you some of the things you might want to try. I think you could turn this into an amazing recording of a really cool fun song. Absolutely. Yeah. So in summary, Dana, I think it's been most of your time on that instrument, either change the instrument or adjust the level of the instrument. And think about some reverb on the vocals is the main thing, I guess. I guess a little less compression and Lummeting. Not so much limiting. We've gone New Zealanders. New Zealanders who just take mouth impressions? They just take vowels, don't they? In New Zealand, they go, how should we say this vowel today? Oh, you are such a duck, Mike. Better than being a complete duck hood. I simply can't any more. Oh, there's the edge, Pete. Anyway, I've had so much fun with you, Mr. John's today. It's always a pleasure to put an old pair of socks or an old pair of underwear. So just to recap, folks, Mike started by saying that people didn't want me. They wanted anyone but me to be on the show. And then in the end, he's compared me to an old pair of socks. So could someone explain to me why I keep coming back on this show? I love my socks. Nothing better. It's winter time here in Australia. Yeah, no, especially old ones. Especially old ones with no hair. Wait, the analogy's just lost. Socks, eh? Whereas when I was a teenage boy, I used to call them dream catchers. Yes. Michael, I'm coming to your room to tell you anything. Not yet, Mum. Not yet, Mum. Why is socks not soft anymore, Michael? Not yet, Mum. So I can't believe we went there. No, for once you started it, I usually come on here and I'm horrible on your show. Folks, it's been lovely to have you here in the live chat. We promise to behave better than this next time. We didn't intend to do the things we've done. We just fell by the wayside. Guitars, they're evil instruments. We got our guitars out and they're always, they're evil instruments. They lead people. Every time I whip it out, something bad happens. I'm not even going to leave you to end the show because I'm terrified. I know it's waiting for Michael to throw me under the bus here, but I think he's, you know, it's better than that. Absolutely. So why don't you say everyone should give a thumbs up down below and share this with someone that they think is cool. Now listen, what I want to say is this to everyone. Thank you so much for joining. So if you're watching on the replay, thank you so much for watching the replay. Now we've got a routine happening here. I know some of you are aware of it, but just in case you're not, every single week Pete's got a show before mine. Okay. And it's a great show as well that the town hall creators think and he likes the thing. And he has some good guests on there sometimes. Sometimes he's by himself. It doesn't matter. Either way. It's good. And I believe Jade has a show. It's like the middle of the night before you as well. So if you want three hours of interesting talk about music, music production and things like that, start off with Jade's. Come through Pete's and then climax over here at Creative Source. And we repeat and rinse every Thursday or Friday, depending on where you are in the world watching it. But yeah, so there's a little routine we've got ourselves into now. And I'm very grateful to Pete who sends some folks over my way. I'm the meat in the Mike and Jade sandwich. You are. Pete the meat. Pete the meat. To me, Pete the meat. It's my nickname in high school. It wasn't really. You don't want to know what mine was. Why is it that there's parts that are always the weirdest part of the whole show? I swear, we need a show that's just the last five minutes of the show for an hour. I think it'll be a lot of fun. So folks, thank you so much for being here. It's been a pleasure, Pete. We're going to head off and enjoy our Fridays now. What are you doing for the rest of the day, by the way? We know I'm going shopping with my mum. Yeah, well, I have Saturdays off now. So I can't clock off for a bit of a day off now. So I'm a big ice hockey fan. So there's a hockey game that's one period in. So I'm going to go watch a couple of periods of ice hockey. And then I'm probably going to do a bit of poets because here in Australia, it's poets. Piss off early tomorrow Saturday. So I'm going to have a few quiet beers and a bit of a relax time. And that's about it for me. And you're off to the grocery store. And you fully deserve it. You fully deserve it. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you, man. Thanks to everyone in the audience. We are going to say it all of why.