Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well welcome to Featured Artists Live. This is the second time recently I've done it at this bar me time. Well, not a bar me time if you live in the UK or Europe or Canada or places like that, but here in Perth Western Australia, it's 10 p.m. way past my bedtime. I've been up since 5 a.m. this morning, but I'm here for you now, ready to listen to some music from the community. I just want to point to our sponsor here, DistroKid. They make this show possible. Thank you to DistroKid. If you want to release your music as the artists have in the show today, then follow that link if you haven't signed up for DistroKid already. You'll get a nice discount thanks to following that link and I'll get a small amount of money as well. Thank you very much in advance for doing that. Great to see the people in the live chat. Maybe we've got some different people today. Maybe we've got the same people. We've got a few of the same people I can see right away. Nice to see Danny Gable in here. Well, Nick is not normally here, so nice to see Nick here. He's in the UK. We should have a few UK people here today. Mimo Japan is up late. He's in Tokyo there. I think he's maybe an hour different to me. Well done, Mimo, for being dedicated as you always are. And of course, Keonra is here in the same time zone as me. I know it's late, isn't it, Keonra? Anyway, now let me quickly explain what this show is all about because this is kind of a pilot. This is a bit of an idea... Hang on a second. Something's bothering me. Something's really bothering me. My banner is covering my head. It's making me look like I could be a bald guy. So I'm just going to do a little adjustment here. Oh, wrong way, wrong way. Sorry, a bit of adjustment. Thank you. Now, this show is a little bit different than what we've done before. I know lots of you join us normally on Fix My Mix. This is featured artist live on Fix My Mix. Myself and my guests very much focus on music which hasn't been released yet. And we advise people about what they could be doing to that mix before they release it. This is almost the opposite of that. These songs have already been released. I have handpicked them from the community because I believe that all of these songs have quite a lot of really good things going for them. And we're going to try and learn from that instead. We're going to all try and listen to that and think about what kind of techniques people are using in that music. We could all try and replicate sometimes to help our music. Now, the other thing that's very different is we're not going to be focusing just on the mix. The mix could be a part of what we talk about but we're going to be talking about the arrangement, the lyrics, parts of the music, the performance. Anything we want to talk about with these productions is things that we're going to talk about. We will be playing the songs and myself and my guests who I'll introduce in a moment will be reacting to them. And we may listen to some parts of the songs again as well, something a little bit different that we might be doing. But we are going to listen to the songs all the way through to begin with because I think it's really important to listen to a piece of music as a whole as well. Having said all of that, and I hope you're going to enjoy it, it's a bit of a pilot. If it goes well, then we'll do it again. And I've got a good feeling about this, I have to say. I think this could be good fun. And one of the best things about this show, this particular show, this episode, is I am being joined by... No, no, he hasn't been on the show for a while, actually. I am being joined by Dan the Man. There he is. Dan! I feel like I need to have my wings for this pilot. What do you think? Hey, I just noticed we both wore collars today. I very rarely wear a collar and we both got collars on. I'm hanging on to collars. We're at the end of our warm season. We're getting into fall now, so soon you'll see my sweaters and hoodies. So I figure I'll expose my arms while I can. Well, man, it's good to have you here. We haven't crossed paths too much recently because we've both been super busy. You've been busy with some projects apart from what you do with YouTube. And then I know that you've been quite open in your community that you're sort of focusing your YouTube channel a bit more than you have done in the past at the moment. Tell us about that. Yeah, well, I mean, it's funny. In some ways it feels like a shift, but I've gone through the history of my channel and it's not anything new. I want to sort of narrow my focus a little bit. I mean, I'm a home studio guy. I bought a home around the home studio, right? So home studio is important. But I'm a guitar player and the whole name Lonely Rocker, the kind of music that I like. So I just feel like I want to niche down a little bit or at least have the guitar more a part of the story more often. Even if it's something that maybe is not directly or guitar related because I have some really successful mixed tip videos and I don't want to get away from doing that. But I want the guitar to be more front and center on the channel and start diving into the creation of music. I've talked about time signatures and I've talked about different songwriting elements and that. So I really want to feature the guitar more and more on my channel because it's, you know, I find basically, as you know, sometimes we'll spend a long time doing a video. And if I do a video that has nothing to do with guitar, I find I don't play guitar for a week. So by forcing myself to do guitar related content, I actually get to play more and I get to practice more. That's something that I felt my playing sometimes gets... You've got a nice video recently. I watched the other day about songs in 7.4. And I was thinking about this and you've inspired me a little bit because the last couple of days I've been sort of composing something on the guitar in 7.4. And what I've noticed about it, really interestingly, of all of the so-called odd time signatures, I don't think they should be called odd. It's just another number, less common time signatures. 7.4 sounds really natural. Like you could write a song in 7.4 and never notice that it's an unusual time signature, I reckon. Yeah. I mean, sometimes the shorter ones or anything based over 8 sometimes will feel a little more jarring. But 7.4, as I said in the video, it's long enough that it feels like we're kind of doing it. We're just kind of throwing the listener off every second bar by a beat. It just adds a nice little skip in there. So it's good fun. It's great fun to write with as well. And it's always good to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Sometimes, although you do it like the last couple of days when I've been trying it, it's kind of a technical exercise in the sense I'm forcing myself to... Technical exercises are really good to push yourself into new territory, you know. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, 4.4 is, I mean, our heart beats in 4.4, right? We'd actually write music that way. But 7.4 definitely is a decision. And it inspires you to create different rhythmical things, especially, I mean, obviously. But even melodically too, because as you would typically build or resolve a melody, if you're working in an odd time signature, it forces you to alter that logic a little bit. And it could push you into areas that you've never been before if you've never explored. I think in odd meters, because I've been listening to that kind of music, like I literally tap out something, hey, and I don't even know what it is, and I record it and I go, oh, that's 13.8. That's crazy how that happens. But it's kind of music I've listened to for so many years. It's natural to me. But if it's not, it's not that complicated. And it's a really good device to push yourself into new territory if that's something you design. I've got a musical family member. His name's Chaz. He's my nephew. And we've recorded together quite a bit. He's got a wonderful voice. He's a good songwriter. He has no technical musical background at all. He might not even know the names of some of the chords he's playing or what have you, right? But he naturally skips beats, right? And I think it's because he's a singer, a guitarist. He doesn't play lead. So I think he kind of gets bored. So he just goes, screw it. Let's just move on to the next bar. I don't think he technically thinks that, but he just does that. And I'll tell you, it's a wonderful thing. It's just a really wonderful thing. And when I play with him, I'm like, man, what are you doing there? He says, I don't know. I'm just playing. It's very cool. Life is not that structured. I don't know why music has to be, right? So that's why it's nice to kind of get off the grid sometimes and be a little bit. That was the whole idea behind that video. Doug is saying that cakewalk doesn't like multiple time signatures inserted randomly. Not randomly, no. But again, you can do multiple time signatures. This is the thing with doors. They do have things which try and make music predictable. The grid, as we all describe it, quantising. And things like time signatures. You always, whatever door you're working in, it's like when you come to insert a different time signature, you have to read the manual. It's not just there. They're not expecting people to do all that. But the point is, is that so many of these things are possible to do, though, still in your door. It's up to you to learn their sort of features and work with them. I think sometimes the technology gets a little blamed too much. Well, if we took a poll, I bet 99.9% of the songs in the world were recorded in 4.4 at 44.1, right? Yeah, right. Because they all the dots defaulted that when you looked about the first time. You've got to change it because you can, right? Right, let's move on to our first song, Dan. Now, folks who are in the chat and people who have sent songs in, a little bit different. I've given our guest here, Dan, the opportunity to hear these songs before the show. Because normally on my other shows, the guests don't get to hear the songs. This is not about our reaction as an immediate reaction. This is hopefully us trying to give a little bit more educated opinion on what we think has worked with these songs. So just to allow people to know that. Now, the first song that we've got, I didn't create the captions. Oh, yes, I did. Yes, I did, in fact. Dan, I'll let you read that one out. Grizzly Habit, ATFL. So I will quickly do a little warning for people. This has got some adult language in it. If you are sensitive to that kind of thing, cover your ears or leave the show or whatever you want to do. So this is Grizzly Habit. Just a little bit of background. I haven't got a lot of background on this at all. Just a little bit of glean here and there. One of the things that this is is a demonstration to me of what you can do with no budget or gear that you've got at home. This was sent in by or not sort of submitted on the Facebook group, you know, by one of members in there. He produced it, I think, for his daughter's band. It was all done in Cakewalk. And from what I could see with the credits of the video, it seemed like there may be some other family members involved in creating the video. I'm not sure. He may be here in the chat so he could tell us about. What I'm getting to is this is very much a homegrown sort of product. And for me, I'm just going to quickly say, it kind of shows you what's possible with very little resources anyway. I think we should just go ahead and listen to the song, Dan. Let's do that and we can talk about it later. And I was sitting on the sink and I thought that I can't think it's kidding me. That's the wrong button there. Yeah. Alrighty. Well, Dan, how are we going to do this? Should we do one each? We'll do one each because I've got a lot of notes on this. I'm sure I have a few notes as well. I don't know. Let's see if we cross pass. Can I start first, Dan, do you mind? Sure. You've got a choice. This is my show. Eat my notes. Eat my notes. Okay. First of all, this is right at my street. When I last lived in the UK, it was the late 90s. It was right in the middle of Britpop. And I was also a fan before that of kind of 70s punk, you know. And this is right at my street. I like something that's a bit rock and roll, you know. And this is that. And I'm going to, I just want to point, first of all, at the most obvious thing and discuss it, right? Before we get into the kind of music. And that is the actual hook, the lyrical hook, right? Or the kind of the shocking nurse of the effing love. So good for this type of music. It's perfect. I don't know if somebody would know like swearing in songs or whatever. I think there's a long tradition in rock and roll, as we might call it, of being non-conformist and saying things we shouldn't say. And it's got that tradition in it. And I love it. Don't mind it all. You know, it's wonderful. But I want to say about that. It's more than just a swear word, actually. And this is why it's lyrically very, very clever, in my opinion. Because it's the contrast of the effing love, right? It's that harsh word with that soft word right next to each other, which bang, hits you in the face. And it's very, very good. Very, very good. The song could have been, you know, I don't know what to do with all of this love. And it still would have actually been a pretty good line.  Would have been a great... But once we get the eff word in there, it's like, oh, we all woke up and went, cool. It just sounds cool the way she sings it and everything there. I'm a big lyrics guy. I don't often get to talk about lyrics. Only I can. That's very cool. If you can get something like that in your songs, I'm not saying you need to swear every time at all. What I'm saying is that something in the lyric which just really grabs your attention. Not everyone's lyrics, people, I know, but something that just grabs your attention. Well done. Well done whoever wrote the lyrics for that. I don't think I'll let Dan take the next point. Well, if I can just add to what you're saying, that's one thing I did want to touch on because sometimes swearing is used gratuitously, right? Or just because they can.  I got no problem with a little foul language. But in terms of using it as a tool, I've always, even in comedy, you have some comedians that they just swear to swear. But then you have those comedians that drop it at the right time. And it works so well. I'm going to age myself, but Rodney Dangerfield was the king of the one-liners and he didn't swear that often. But when he did, he meant it. And it was a well-placed, you know? But in this case, everything you said, I totally agree with. And the fact that they're not hiding behind anything, they frame that word too. Because the music drops, right? It's so beautifully framed, right? And I think, and this can tie into the other things that I want to say about the song is that songs that are built on very real-life experiences are extremely relatable, you know? But one thing I have to say, because I listened to the music, I didn't see the video. And this is, as people should know, not only am I a musician and I produce my music here, I have a video production background and I actually used to own a music video production company where we would work with record companies and we won some awards and, you know, and all that stuff. So I'm very in tune with the music video and how important a music video is if you're going to go that route. Because when I listened to the song, the girl in the song, the character will say, was isolated. It was one girl. But to see the video to suddenly see two girls, it just changed my whole impression of the song. Now, that's up to whoever creates the video and how close they are related to the people who wrote the song. How do we want to present ourselves? Because listening to the music, I just hear her sitting in her kitchen. The room's a bit grimy.  But in the video, you know, there's two of them. They're kind of getting over it. They're having a party around it. And it's amazing how, you know, just the impression you get from the music versus the image that you have in your head. Because when you do a music video, and if you are involved, which I assume in this case, with indie style music, I assume they're very involved in the video that they produce, this is the image that they want to portray to the audience. It changes my impression. And it shows the danger of doing a bad video for a good song, right? Now, it went in a completely different direction from what I heard in my head, but it absolutely did not affect how much I like the song. In fact, I think I like it even more now. So good job there. But the visual is so critical because we are painting a picture in our minds, but in a music video, we're serving it up. So it's something to be thinking. If we are doing videos for YouTube and stuff, it's something to think about because it adds that next element to the music and then they become attached forever because you can't unsee that, right? So that's just something that wasn't in my notes, but that caught me by surprise. But I just love the relatable nature of the lyrics.  And overall, I just love the vibe of the track. And as Doug said, yeah, cool bass line too. Yeah, we had that very raw bass sound as well, which again, you see a lot of the stuff that was going on there musically was just so right for this genre, which is... Now, it's a tricky thing because it's about making it sound like a... I think you would call it a garage band, you know, but a pub band or something like that. For this style of music, it shouldn't be overproduced at all. And that bass had that really honky kind of thing going on. Really, really cool like that. Can I just point out something, a couple of things musical in here? I just want to talk about something. I will say in my defense, some of these musical things I'm going to point out, I don't know the technical names for them. So if anyone wants to correct me or educate me in there. But the first thing I wanted to... I noticed was a sort of a call-and-response thing happening. It was happening right at the beginning. I'm going to play the first few bars. I don't usually do this, so I'm new to this, guys. Let's have a look. Now listen to the guitar. So you hear how that's happening with... There's that... In between. So there's like the vocal, and then this is like... I think it's like a call-and-response, you might call it or something like that. Yeah, I actually had that in my notes. They do that with the guitar solos later on. They do it as well later on, exactly. And they're arguing with each other. Absolutely, yeah. So I think when the band comes in a little later on... I did have it in my notes here. Yeah, this system here isn't working as well as I hoped it would. But a little later on, definitely, when the rest of the band comes in, that kind of stuff is happening as well. So just for people starting out and they're getting to grips with sort of writing and arrangements, this is another little technique you could do. Because really the rhythm guitar is just doing a straight... And that could have worked. That could have worked, just leaving that gap. But I think it was better the way they did it to have this vocal and just a little fill-in with a little thing happening there with the guitar. Really, really a reasonably common technique as well, but really cool. Yeah. Dan? Yeah, overall it's... The only thing I would add, and this is not a criticism at all, it actually could work both ways, is I'm left wanting a little bit more at the end. The last hook comes in. And again, this could be by design. Sometimes I say, oh my God, it's over. I want to hear it again. That's a good advice that people have to listen to again. That dueling guitar at the end, that call and response, I almost want to feel like I wanted to hear the vocals come in and have all of them fighting each other at the end and give us that big chorus, but they drop us pretty quick afterwards at the end. And again, that's not a criticism. It's a technique that's employed often because I wanted more. The only way to get more is to go and listen to it again. So if that was the intention, I think it worked well. I was hoping for more chorus at the end, and I didn't get it. What I'm going to do is encourage people to have a listen by following the link in the description. There's some Spotify links in there. I had a few more points, but I think we kind of run out of time on this one. I just want to mention one more thing, because I've often said on the shows that if you're programming drums to listen to drummers and what they do, because often what people are going to do is write four bars of drums in their door and copy and paste them through the whole song. And although that maybe sometimes what drummers do, they very often don't. So folks, if you do go and listen to this, and I encourage you to do that, listen around about 1 minute 50 in. You'll hear, I think it's in a build-up to the chorus. They're using actually ride cymbals, and it all sounds very washy. It sounds really, really washy. And then when they go into the kind of main chorus it goes to the hi-hat and everything becomes really tight. Just that one change. If you didn't have anything else happening with the other instruments, that one change on the drums will make an enormous difference to the feel of a song. It's a common edge here in the chat and he'll tell you. It's a very common thing that drummers do. They may sometimes do it in the reverse way. When you go into the chorus go over to a ride and get off the hi-hat. But it's just important to understand the difference between what's happening there especially for me as a non-drummer. That feeling of tightness, everything, you get that with a hi-hat. When all the cymbals are going, it sounds great, sounds kind of more messy. That was my impression that they did that very, very well. It was real drums I think. I'm pretty convinced it was real drums on this song. Our next song, our second song is I couldn't tell if it was real drums or not. Really to be honest with you. We'll get to that after this short break. If you want to release your music via DistroKid there's just a couple of things you need. First of all, the music itself. Here's mine in my door, Cakewalk and I'm exporting it to an uncompressed WAV file for best results. What you'll need is some artwork. I just grabbed an old photo which I'd taken on the beach, chucked on some text here and that's what I call art. Then I went over to DistroKid and I just have to fill in this extra easy form. It's a no-brainer form. You get helped all the way through with little hints and things. You can't really do anything wrong. You just go ahead and confirm a few things about your music that 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. Okay, so full disclosure. The next artist is a friend of both Mayan and Danz. We know him very well. He's previously been a guest on the show many, many, many times. This is the first time I've actually played music from one of my regular guests on the show. I thought I would do it tonight for me. This is a song from the one and only Ed Thorn. He is here in the chat. Nice to see you, Ed. This is a song called Angel. I must admit although I was aware that Ed had released this song I hadn't actually listened to it. That's indefensible really but it's been a crazy few months. I think maybe I've seen him mixing it on one of his shows but I've really only listened to it for the first time yesterday all the way through. I've got a few notes. Dan, I'll let you go first. I've got a couple. Folks, if you don't know who Ed Thorn is he is a drama. He's a music producer. He's a writer. He's a YouTuber. He just looks for Ed Thorn on YouTube here and you'll find Ed Thorn does a great focus on audio interfaces especially and has some really good videos on that. But today we're focusing on his music. Let's have a listen to this song. It's called Angel. Here we go. Like a ghost in the night while we were dancing Will you take me I saw a demon I found myself making more notes there. I made a whole bunch of notes. I've got so many notes on this Dan. We're going to have to be quick. There's a lot to say. I'll let you go first though because I'll put on a nice phone. The one thing I'm going to start right off the top and everyone in this chat should pay close attention is that Ed really mastered easy drummer on this one. This is easy drummer at his best, isn't it? Wow. So anyways, everyone who knows me who's watched this show or similar shows I love musicians. Music is a part of the word musician to me. Right? Just in case anyone's wondering. Are they sponsoring this video? Karen, sorry. To me it's sad that we even have to have these discussions because I can boil all of my notes down to one word and that's dynamics. Why? Ed is a great drummer and it's a foundation of the song. Clearly he's a songwriter, he's singing. There's just so many positive things to take from this song, but if we really want to look at elements of a song that we can apply to our own music something that's well demonstrated in this song it's simply one word and it's dynamics to mean what a compressor does. Because the human element of music to me is so, so important to great songs. Not that we can't write good music. I don't know I want to sound critical, but here's an example where, as I said being a songwriter he's a drummer, so just the intensities, the way that things change and the moments just feel so genuine and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger it's not volume, it's expressiveness and that keeps building. Another technique that I really love in this song is how things sort of when they come around again like a verse, the first verse was done very stripped down and mellow and then the second time around there was more instrumentation and there was a little sequencer on top, there's a build up of elements and then right through to the end where there's a sudden drop right before the big ending it's just like take a breath and then boom hit you in the face again, that all comes down to one word and that's dynamics and that's something that's sort of lacking in a lot of homebrew music these days because people are just, we talk about the grid we just set up our grid, we drop our parts verse, chorus, verse, maybe a bridge but having a solo section on the keys there and there's just so many dynamics in this song, I mean you touched on something there which is something that you know, whenever I've been writing music personally and I hope it comes across my own music is although we could write the tab down or the chords to the song and it would look somewhat repetitive I always think right, I've already done that how can I change the arrangement or evolve it, evolution for me all the way through and that's what Ed's done there really really well I just really well I want to say first up this song is, it's sort of a silly point in a way but this point, this song is really a credit to Ed's production skills, I know he produces these things himself and some people perhaps don't deserve to have YouTube channels when they're talking about production maybe me, but you know he certainly give himself credibility with something like this, I'll say that first off because it's sonically and everything really really good like you know, no doubt it's a very very professional production I want to talk about dynamics as well and I think in a world where we so often focus about how do we make things louder, how do we how do we make things punchier I like to write the beginning of the song when everything dropped out after the intro I just want, I'm going to play that again, just listen to this it happens, we're about 14 seconds in I guess when it all drops down, let's have a listen we're tears from heaven now I'm going to say normally I'm a massive fan of, especially with a band of everything dropping out and then just the drums bass and vocal it can be so effective to do it Ed's even dropped the bass out of this right, it's wonderful don't always think in terms of more folks think about dynamics as less and more and sometimes the less actually also has this look it's about emotion right it's not about technicality it's not, oh technically that was a good thing to do, it's like did it like affect us, you know and I think that's so effective what's been done there whoever made that decision it was probably Ed, fantastic decision just also gives the song somewhere to go as well because if it continued as it was a big not big but a reasonably hard hitting intro right, there's reasonable energy and the song would have had nowhere to go from there so really really cool, I like that very much, your point next Dan I'll let you well I think, continuing this theme of dynamics is that often when people are writing songs they're focused on the part itself or the section of the song itself and how well the part is working but I think something that not a lot of songwriters think about is how does this part serve the next part yeah right it's like we talked at the beginning 7-4 and when I was exploring different time signatures is that a songwriting technique sometimes creating an odd meter on a time signature to serve up a chorus that is suddenly in 4-4 right, there's a purpose not only does it sound good but it serves a function really to serve up the next section of the song to make the next part of the song sound bigger again on that theme of dynamics it's not just the part itself, it's how each part rolls into the next one and sometimes in creating those parts think about why it's there it's not because it's there for itself it may be there to serve up the next section of the song and that's almost a lot of lost art in songwriting because people don't always think that way but it's always interesting to hear songs that have crafted something that in itself sounds great but has a bigger purpose sort of handing on the baton to the next I think going back to the first song you remember I was making that point about the ride symbols and the high hat that's exactly what I was thinking because there was a section where the ride is going swishy and it led into this tightness and it's the contrast of the two sections that worked there it wasn't that the part in itself was good it was the part in comparison to the next part had that contrast happening but we sort of have to make these points rather quickly so the next thing I just want to say maybe no one noticed this but I think the unsung hero of this song and Ed's is of course wonderful I've got a couple of things to say about Ed but the unsung hero of this song for me is the bass player because there was some big sections of this song where the bass was doing what it should do like a pretty straight four four dum dum dum dum dum kind of thing and then by god I've actually put notes on here so if people want to go away and listen to this I'd hope to play this part again but I've just realised that my player within our system here is not enabling me to go to sections I want to so I'm just going to say out now if you listen to this song listen around about 2 minutes 30 right the bass player is just then goes nuts so he's kept it kind of straight but there's slides going dum dum dum dum dum is really like all of the energy is coming from that bass to be honest in my opinion if nothing else about the arrangement of change the bass was just making it go crazy really really good if I could add to that point I mean I think again in a world and I'm guilty of this too I mean I have my lonely rocker concept where I play all my own stuff I play a bit of drums but I'm not nearly good enough for the type of music that I'm playing so I program my drums here but whenever possible I always try to replace it with a real drummer unfortunately I don't always get that opportunity but looking at a real band I think it's often said that a band is only as good as their drummer and then it builds up from there I mean if you have incredible bass player incredible guitar player, incredible vocalist well you got a supergroup right but there's a lot of really good bands that have amazing drummers and then the guitar player gets by the vocalist is good enough but if the drummer was just getting by and you had a great vocalist it wouldn't work and then now mixing some great bass part I mean that rhythm section like to me it's ultimate foundation for a great song that's what you know if you got a really good song it's a good song you want to push it up over the top well everything we've talked about today but you know solid drumming great rhythm section first and foremost and then all those great elements if they exist will just sound even bigger and more dynamic right and that's the formula I think for an overall great band if look at it as a band even if in this case it's not marketed as such but it feels like it to me now if anyone's taking notes and is going to listen to this song I'm just going to quickly say because I'm a little bit aware of time because I've got another live show to do but quickly just around about 130 there was quite a bit of a mixed up rhythm going on there it wasn't very straight on the snare and stuff and I think this leads into your point Dan again this was another example of where this change in rhythm was first of all it just kept the ears a little bit interested and then it went back into a more straight rhythm afterwards which it was that contrast again which worked also I just added in here just for Ed's sake I love the strings towards the end but I really want to finish this song by talking about the vocal and I want to preface this by saying that having known Ed I know he's not very confident about his vocals I think this is I don't know this I think at some point some friend or whatever is said to Ed vocals are a bit dodgy mate and it's stuck in his head and it's like he's gone around going oh my vocals aren't very good I just think Ed needs to just forget this idea first of all I really like the vocals and I like the fact that Ed sings in his own accent it sounds like Ed we've talked about in the culture of music where a lot of people adopt an American accent when they sing no matter what part of the world they're from I especially love to hear a British accent in a song I'm sort of proud of Ed for running with that but I just think his vocals are really good and the layering of the harmonies in this was tip top really really good and you know it can be a bit of a fallback and I don't mind saying that if you can folks layer up those harmonies because everyone loves a good harmony with you right Dan what do you say well again to hammer home what you just said and you know I know Ed's here in the chat if you think about any of the great bands in history many of them the vocalist was very unique and I'll avoid mentioning the band I always mention but you know that vocalist people love him or they hate him and his career was littered with criticism this is a good thing but this is it you know there's a band actually a Canadian band called Billy Talent I don't know if they made it across the ocean but you should definitely look them up I really didn't pay attention to them for a long time until recently but they're a really good band and the singer has such signature voice it's not like oh he could do jingles he could do no no he can only do Billy Talent he couldn't do anything else really but it works so well because the voice is very signature and you know Ed has a very specific way of speaking he does it in his videos unlike other people and his singing comes across the same way that's his voice and I think Ed does need to just accept that's what it is and it works within the context of his music and that's what it should be designed to do it shouldn't sound like anybody else it definitely sounds like him and developing your own style is a hard thing to do for a lot of people because they're trying to mimic other singers but in this case he's being himself and I think that's what adds to the genuineness of what's you know really a big production it doesn't sound like a big production but it still feels real. I mean it leads into a point that I'd like to make about don't be afraid of a good section of listeners hating you right I think there's nothing worse than mediocre in music it's mediocre is the worst thing I'd rather the music that people were producing was somewhat divisive in that there's going to be a I'll use Bob Dylan as example there are some people they're just never going to like Bob Dylan they hate his style of singing right but people who love him will love him so much right so so I would rather hear Ed singing with his voice which is quite distinctive to me and have a whole bunch of people say I don't like the voice very much because they don't like that style or whatever I'd much rather that than have any kind of mediocre karaoke voice that you know we could hear any day of the week planned but I actually think Ed's got a good voice and he's obviously in this song taking a lot of care to produce it well and as I say you know all that lair of harmonies and everything it's all work it's all got to be done you know it's not just singing along the phrasing is there you know and I know I sing as well and I sing with Susie you know phrasing is really really important you know you get this splattering of backing vocals that weren't phrased in quite the same way as the lead vocal and it can get pretty messy and not so good pretty quickly so you know there's a lot of effort goes into that I think he's done a great job of the vocals on here really really good enjoyed it very much so not that Ed really needs an encouragement and I don't know why I've been so complimentary he's so nasty to me most of the time but no no obviously we're quite biased Ed I really genuinely like I love all your music every piece of music I've ever heard by Ed has just been really really good so good stuff I think we're going to go to a short break before we move on to our third song what should I go for here oh yeah that one admit your music to the Distro Kids spotlight feature it gets entered into this competition where it gets played alongside other songs and people will vote for which of the two they see on the screen is their favourite now the better you do in this process the more likely you are to appear in one of Distro Kids playlist on Spotify and that means your music's got a much better chance of being heard so you simply go ahead and select one of your songs and then you've just got to select a 29 second clip the best part of the song it would be the best way to go with this and you've got this nice sort of interactive feature here to do that you simply then select the connect with Spotify button and you're away okay now I did quickly mention earlier that I am doing another live show it's going to be kicking off in about an hour and 10 minutes from now in actual fact over on my new sister channel which is called Studio One Revealed and I've got Ricky T Brown another Studio One user on the show with me and we're going to be reacting I haven't got the new copy of Studio One it doesn't get released to anyone before it goes live so we're going to be watching their live broadcast me and Ricky and we did well it's been a little bit of a leak so we do know some of the new features but we don't know all of them we don't know the full content so me and Ricky are going to be responding to that over on my sister channel Studio One Revealed look that up I don't think I'll put a link to it in the description but yeah that's been an hour and 10 minutes time or so and I just want to I've done Studio One videos on creative source before so I need to do a little bit of reassurance the cakewalk users don't worry I'm not abandoning cakewalk okay I've I've used both cakewalk and Studio One for many many years now my cakewalk videos aren't going anywhere okay calm down calm down okay it's all good now before we talk about our third song I just feel and I know Dan hates it when I explain too much about the song because he thinks we should be purist and he's right we should react to the song but sometimes I think it's worth explaining to people because they may not be in a little bit of context and the only bit of context I'm going to give this song is not a parody song but it has a relationship with another song right there was a song called Stacey's Mom Stacey's Mom a few years back trying to think who it was by can't remember who it was by it doesn't matter but it was like Stacey's mom has got it going on and it was about I assume a teenage boy who fancied Stacey's mom and it's very positive about Stacey's mom this song is the reason I've said that is because this song is from Kevin Burgess member of the community it's called Stacey's Dad and without going into the lyrics you'll have to listen to the lyrics but it's almost like an opposite theme to Stacey's Mom I think it's worth explaining that a little bit just so people in case they are not familiar with Stacey's Mom as a song they may not get what this song is all about let's listen to the song and give our feedback Stacey's Dad not even Stacey's Mom there's nothing new to say about Stacey's Dad for the toilets you may never need and don't go does he always have to yawn so loud so round Stacey's Dad Stacey's Mom Stacey's Dad sometimes there's not enough things in this life that make us smile if I'm finding myself smiling then I'll let you go first on this one something that might be obvious to everyone but using comedy in music is a skill because we all try to be funny but we're not all very funny so I'm thinking of that we think of bands like Weezer, Blink 182 the President of the United States of America Tongue and Cheek Flavor to that and those bands did it really really so this with that more Brit pop punk sort of attitude it's clever good comedy it has to be clever simply the idea of doing if you want to call it a rebuttal or a sister song a popular song there's a technical talking it wasn't done people have tried so blatantly it's horrible just because they're trying to feed off this song it doesn't feel that way it comes across as extremely clever I think it could exist by itself as a song without the context that I gave it beforehand the whole garage sound of the band there's again I always look for that in music whether I like the style or not is it genuine because if it's genuine it's going to resonate with an audience of people who love that kind of music and I definitely feel that with the comical nature riffing off of an existing song we're doing it in an original way and then the element of comedy that's well executed in this song is certainly a good vehicle for music that people call forward of course I think that has got that garage band again sound this one even more so and I actually think that it's very necessary that it did have that if this was overproduced if everything was too tight it just wouldn't be right I don't know it just wouldn't be a good feel for this song I'm glad you mentioned the comedy aspect of it I think that as soon as you do go right I'm going to write some lyrics which are comedic they better be good you better deliver on that promise you know and I just think that Kevin did here we just listen to it I mean there's a lot of fun going there's not sophisticated but there's a lot of fun going there I will say for me just as a person who loves lyrics it's just like oh yeah that's the one and for me it was no one's in love with Stacey's dad not even Stacey's mum you know how the lyric will stand out nice well think about something like the offspring right when they came out that time keep themselves like it was so bizarre that song is that one funny little lyric that was to punctuate what you just we also had another example in this I'm not going to play it but for those who are going back to listen again around about a minute sorry 42 seconds in again we had this sense of a dropout before a build up so there was contrast a little bit because there was this nice chorus in there and you need some way to go you know you can't just have everything get louder and out louder you need to this is dynamics isn't it Dan this is what's so really really important I also I just want to mention in my notes that again this loose feel to it was quite good the drums had a loose feel about them they were nowhere near a grid and I think it really really worked well but whilst we want to sometimes produce this idea of like what I would call a pub band or a garage band don't I don't think fall into the trap of thinking oh yeah we just record this like we don't care I believe these things are somewhat contrived they're contrived messiness right we'll give you an example you know some of what was going on with the rhythm guitar work was actually layered there was two or three guitars happening and they were playing different roles in your traditional band there would be league guitars but you don't have to just completely mimic what the band would be doing in the garage you can use your studio to create some interesting dynamics in the songs but yeah overall I think that if you go down the road of taking a don't care approach then you'll get a don't care result and it won't be good then it needs to sound like relaxed but yeah I'm offing on just want to mention finally towards the end there was a whoa whoa whoa whoa never underestimate the power of a whoa a song some of the best lyrics ever written and especially in this kind of music I don't mind it at all so yeah Dan anything else to add to well yeah just to put a bow I think on what you said I don't know this is where you know Ed's song I sort of boiled it down to the word dynamics and this song I think the term of craft because all the other things talked about the garage nature garage band nature of the song it was done by design it wasn't done because of any lack of skill or effort yeah right and that comes down to craft being again being genuine to something you know this this style of music a little bit of tongue in cheek there's a lot of craft involved in being able to execute that well I don't play guitar very well I could write a song like that we'll go ahead and try because there's a lot of artistry there's craft in there and then it doesn't matter the genre of music there are all types of genres and then there's less who can do that well right and this was definitely I hear the the artistry or the craft and the creation of this song and that's extremely important when really evaluating or being able to connect with the song because there's just a lot of good happening in there one of the comments we've got here is from midnight blue movies nice to see you here now the lead guitar has intonation issues some notes in tune some slightly out must have been a Gibson but yeah yeah like definitely you could hear that and again there's a point there's a one of those things there's a point where you can get away with this right and it actually can add to the feel of the music you know there's a point where it can go too far and it can be nausea it can be really disturbing and annoying but yeah I actually kind of felt that in this again they got away with it I noticed some of the high hats got a bit messy here and there on the drumming they were again I was just like yeah well that's fine it's okay you know yeah what a great show I really enjoyed this show Dan isn't it just fun I mean I'm so like it makes me feel bad because I don't feel like my own music is half as good as the music I use sometimes on a show but I'm really pleased to hear it I'm really like inspired by what people can achieve in their studios at home and you know what we get to hear from our communities really really amazing I think I'm gonna do this show again next week you know what when you presented it to me my first like I didn't process the well there's no rules but sort of the concept and then when I started listening to the song I had to go back and listen to your notes of what you were expecting from the show and at first I was like oh my god it's like okay we got full productions here we got to because I was so used to picking things apart but then when I went back and he said you know what you know what do we enjoy about this you know what are things that we need to highlight I said like right away I smiled I said that's such a refreshing conversation because you know being constructively critical can sound negative you know we're trying to offer constructive points but focusing on things that are working you know giving people some takeaway you know they go home and say hey that's yeah it's something like I say about you know my reviews on the channel you know I basically only review things that I probably yes beforehand that they're going to be at least of a certain standard of quality from companies that I know produce quality and I've got a rule on my channel that if I receive either a piece of software or some hardware which I think is below that level I simply won't review it and I send it back or what have you you know anyone who approaches me about sending me something for review on the channel I always tell them this if I don't like your product review it I'm not just going to agree to review it but part of the reason I do that is because I don't think that my community is really going to gain by me continuously telling oh this is rubbish oh this is no good because at the end of the day you know you need to know what you are going to use what you are which microphone is good for me to use or you know which piece of software which plugin is good to use you know which is I would prefer to give people guidelines as to good directions I think they should go and this is a continuation of that really it's not just about being nice I think we've shown even on Fix My Mix and some of the other shows that you know we're prepared to say negative things about the community's music when we think it's necessary but this is more about us all inspiring ourselves you know I mean I'm going to learn things through this will remind myself of things you know musical techniques production techniques we can steal these ideas steal them put them in your own music you know be inspired by them that's what it's all about you know I I'm waffling on a bit Dan but I don't often make purely musical posts and I was in relaxing a couple nights ago with Susie and we decided to chuck on some Karen Carpenter we were talking about singers and we both loved just the tone of Karen Carpenter's voice yeah I mean sometimes the music can be cheesy the production was cheesy some people are blessed with a tone they are born with a tone right and and so for Karen Carpenter particularly her lower register I put a post on my Facebook group about hey what music do you go what voice do you go looking for you know and what I loved about that post I got so many responses with people talking about you know it's Freddie Mercury or it's this thing or it's that thing and some singers I'd never heard of and I googled them and looked them up and I learnt some things but it reminded me about why we're all here because at some point in our lives probably when we were kids music just grabbed us right and we went wow I love this music thing it's because of that person that person but you right it was a guitarist probably that you used with I know your dad had a big influence on you but there must be an artist at some point down tell me about it who you went wow I want to do that yeah the band that I talk about all the time I mean I was Rush was a huge influence on me and I have memories of being in my bedroom tennis racket you know Rush is moving pictures there's a song an instrumental called YYZ and I used to you know just sit there with the tennis racket and it was so compelled that I wanted to do this I wanted to learn how to do this and it was like I had taken some classical guitar lessons but I wasn't inspired to play because the music I was learning in those classes did nothing for me you know as soon as I got into rock and roll and I was like you know I heard Rush and ACDC and all these great rock bands I felt compelled to want to emulate this and then I got my first guitar I didn't even have an amplifier and I would be in the bathroom and I'd rested on the counter so I could resonate and record it onto a tape machine I was recording literally my first weeks absolutely it just pushes you in that direction so that's what it's about it's about recapturing again that sense in us of oh that's cool I want to do that I want to try that out that's cool so what we're doing we're going to be doing on the shows is listening to music from our community and going that bit's cool this is cool you know people don't have to agree at least we can try and get some inspiration going the world needs some positivity right now so it's good to feed that that's what we're going to do we'll be back in an hour on my other channel with Ricky T Brown there'll be some other positivity of a different kind there just going to go away and play a game of chess on my shirt all the way thanks Mimo for that but Dan's been lovely to spend some time with you man we haven't had too much time to chat recently so yeah really really great and enjoy it very much I hope you'll be back on the show any time always a pleasure don't forget to check out the Iraqi YouTube channel folks there should be a link in the description for that down below thank you so much for being here in the live chat folks we'll see you probably back at the more usual schedule time next week but yeah you all take care and we'll see