Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. Welcome to another edition of Fix My Mix. I think this is number 15, although we've had a couple of weird editions, which I didn't number, but anyway, welcome and thank you for being here. If you're in the chat already, I see a few of you already here. I'll be saying hi in a moment, especially to those of you who have just come over from Pete Johns over there. He's been having a great interview over there. Really interesting stuff. Thank you for coming straight over here. I have a special edition of for today's show. I'll explain what that is in a moment. But first of all, I'm going to say thank you to our sponsor here, DistroKid. We'll be talking about them throughout the show. And if you do sign up for it with DistroKid, follow the link in the description. That's this one up here and you will get a little discount and it's well worth it.  So all good. Everyone's a winner. As I say, it is a special edition. We'll talk about what that's all about in a moment. But I first of all want to say hi to the good folk in the chat. I see some regulars in here. Of course, Conor Music never fails us. She's always here. Also another regular Danny Gable. Nice to see you Danny. We have Mark in here and we have Pete Johns. He's come straight over. This man just does not like to rest, does he? He's always working the whole time. Great show over there today. I actually really enjoyed watching the end of that. And of course, we have the wonderful Doug Kidder in here. It's usually the first one to arrive these days. It's a good time for you now, isn't it Doug? Thank you for everything you're doing in the community. You and my other moderators, including Mimo Japan, who I haven't seen here. He's been very busy actually, to be honest with you. He's been busy releasing a video with Mark Fahey, who is also here. Nice to see you in here, Mark, with their song that they collaborated on. Also nice to see Craig. Hi Craig, how are you doing? And I think I saw one of our previous, somebody who's been featured on the show previously. Gone here, but Kevin, I think, is here as well, who was on the show two or three weeks ago. Or his music was on the show two or three weeks ago. So we've got three tracks lined up. We're going to be listening to their mixes together. We're going to have some fun with that. But I decided that today I wouldn't have any guests on the show because they talk so much.  But anyway, they just sort of, you're trying to talk about mixing seriously. And then they're just there. And then they just talk, oh, hang on. Oh my God. Oh, I gave one of them a link. Oh my God. What a lovely intro. What a lovely intro, Mike. Thank you. Thank you very much. Nice to feel appreciated. You should have heard what I said about you on last week's show. I hadn't intended to have any guests. And I was having a chat with my good friend, Ricky T Brown here earlier. Well, it was earlier this evening for him. It was very early in the morning. And he said, would you like me to pop in? I said, you know what? Yeah, let's do that. Because I was a little bit concerned. It might just be me, me, me, to be honest with you. Yeah, if I'd known what you was going to say, I'd have left it to it, mate. Yeah. I think you're going to be able to take part brilliantly in what I've planned for today. A little bit of, we normally have chat in between the songs, but this is going to be a little bit more constructive, we could say. Because I've got a plan to talk about three mixed tips, Ricky. These are things that I kind of wish I'd known before I started mixing. And hopefully, I think they're fairly direct pieces of advice that people can take away with them and put them into action right away. And I'm hoping that you'll be able to give your wise words of input as well. If I can. If I can. I'm sure you can. And by the way, thank you as well, Ricky, for doing this. Because what time is it there now? It is, yeah. Five minutes past one in the morning. Do you I was apologising to Patrick Baird from GarageBrand Guide yesterday, because I was saying since I've started having these shows at a regular time, it rather excludes people in the UK and Europe from joining the show, not just viewers, but my guests.  You've been on the show like four times now when it's been like two o'clock in the morning. Yeah, thanks for that. Yeah. Does it mess up your day afterwards? No, the truth is I'm normally up still up about this time. So yeah, it's true musician keeping myself awake to do this. No. Well, thank you anyway. So the first thing that I wanted to speak about before we get into our first song, and this may be food for thought for the first song, in fact, who knows? My first mix tip is about balance. Now, this seems fairly obvious, doesn't it? We want to hear things that, you know, where things seem like they're at the right level in terms of volume. And I feel that people worry about this a lot if they're beginners and they sort of think that, oh, God, that's going to take a lot of practice and hard work. But I have a slightly differing opinion to that. I think that if you're an adult, you've actually been preparing for this for many, many years. You've had many, many years of practice of listening to commercial music, where generally, things are well balanced.  Or the guitarists are a bit loud. Most of us actually instinctively have an appreciation of when things are in balance. And then when we come to mix our own music, all the years of experience we've had of listening to music, which is about, seems to go out the window. And I guess a well-known phenomenon, and what I want to talk about with this is we lack objectivity. Why do we lack objectivity? Because we've just been tracking the song for days or weeks or what have you, and we've been hearing it a lot. And then the longer we mix for, and I hear people in the community telling me that they spent weeks or months on a mix. The alarm bells start to ring for me when people say that to me, to be honest with you. But we do lose objectivity quite quickly. My theory is, Ricky, and I'll let you nod or shake your head, my theory is we lose objectivity after about 40 minutes, probably something like that. It's not after a week or a few days. When you're listening to the same thing over and over again on loop and different sections of it, you very, very quickly start to second guess and lose objectivity. So my particular trick, and there's no right or wrongs in mixing as we know, you've got to find your own way. But my particular thing, which I only discovered later, was to mix very, very quickly, was to not think about it, just push those faders up and push them around and just say to yourself, simple sentences, vocals too loud, down a bit, snare drums not loud enough, push it up a bit, whatever it is, think quickly, respond quickly to your instincts. But, and here's the reason why, for me, it still takes sort of weeks, months. No, it takes a while, is that in order to do that, in order to work quickly, you have to be very organized. And I hate to, this is not very rock and roll, but I'm going to tell you now that this is just the truth. If you want to work quickly with your mix, which I think you should, you've got to be prepared, your tracks have got to be named, colouring's helpful. If you've got something like Cakewalk where you can put the image of each track in, that's visually, you can see what's a guitar or a drum, they do that on GarageBand as well, and I think Logic as well, you can put little icons in there, then use those things.  Clip gain, get that done as well. If you look at, for example, vocals are very typical for this, but it can be any instrument. If you've got bits of the vocal passage, which were much quieter than the other, or bits which are louder, get some sort of balance before you start, because otherwise you're going to be riding that fader all the time, trying to get that mix right, and that's going to confuse you. If you do a whole bunch of preparation like this, and you're really well organized with your mix, then I think for most music, you can get a static mix in a very, very, very quick time. Now I'm not talking about the refined parts of EQing and pulling out parts more subtly with compression and EQ. I'm just talking about basic balance of your mix. That's my first tip. Be organized, prepare before and, like I did, obviously, and do it quickly. Spend about 30 minutes, 40 minutes, then walk away. Forget it. Walk away, make yourself a cup of coffee, do something different, listen to some different music, come back again at some other point, and then anything you do, do instinctually and quickly. You won't be able to do that if you're not organized. If you're going, which track was it again with the basses? Oh, I didn't really label that track. It's a bass, I think that one. No, you can't work like that. Don't do it, be organized, be a square. Ricky, that was a lot of waffle, wasn't it? Do you disagree with that or do you agree with that? No, I don't. Just like yourself, if you wind the clock back a bit and thought about how you worked a decade ago, let's say, I was less organized than I am now. The steps that you've underlined there, absolutely. That's pretty much what I do now. It's only the actual mix part. Yeah, I can't mix fast. I just can't. Yeah, I'll work on it for a while, and then I think it sounded good, and then I'll leave it alone and come back and say, no, that's all wrong. I have to do it again. I eventually get there. I guess what I'm saying is, your experience of being on this show, for example, is that you listen to a song, and the guests on my show, folks, by the way, have never heard these songs before when they come on, and then within a few seconds of hearing those songs, they offer you advice, and they'll spot things very, very quickly, and I know a lot of people follow up with them afterwards, in fact, and say, hey, can you help me some more? My poor old guest. Absolutely, yeah. But you know as soon as you hear. Now, if you imagine yourself, Ricky, rather than just being dispensed that advice, you had some faders in front of you, and you could adjust that right away. Now, there's an idea for a show, isn't it? If you could adjust that right away, do you see what I mean? That would be your instinct to just working in that moment, and that's what I'm trying to suggest to people with trust there. Most people, I think, have a sort of a decent idea. Anyway, that's food for thought. I've got two other tips coming up which actually sort of follow on, relate to that in some way. Let's have a listen though, Ricky, to our first song. Okay. This week, interestingly, somebody sent me a song which is in three, four, having me, me having made a video recently about how we don't use enough time signatures in music, and then dropped into my inbox that was this song in three, four. I'm going to let you read out the person's name here, Ricky. I didn't plan to let you read the output. Here we go. The artist is reread, and what bloody, oh I can't even see that. And the song's called Issan Waltz. I like that. I think it's Issan, but I only knew that because I've listened to the song, and he pronounces it in the song. So anyway, so not many notes on this song. In fact, the only thing that the artist reread put in the email to me was I wrote an easy listening song, three, four Waltz using Cakewalk. So there you go. That's all the information you really need. Now, I will say that Issan, oh sorry, reread has sent me a video, a YouTube video of his song. I just want to say to people, if you're thinking about sending your music in, you can follow the instructions down below. You don't need to have a video for it. These little videos that you see on the show each week, I make those for the show. You just need to send me the music, and I'll make a quick little, I say I. I don't actually make them. I compile them using a service, which I think is worth, I can't remember what they're called now, Render Forest or something like that. I don't know. Well worth it. $50 a month. Make as many videos as you want. Anyway, I digress. Quiet. So yeah, you don't need to make a video, but reread has in this. So I just will challenge people who are in the live chat now to perhaps keep in mind my first mixed tip and think about balance as you're listening to this piece of music. I'm glad you're here, Ricky, because that means you get to go first. Okay. Now, as Mike says, you know, the focus this week is on balance and listening to that track. Yeah, yeah, there's some, yeah, I like the chord movement on that. That was nice. And yeah, the three four time was a nice change. And it's gave it a light, nice, light, nice feel to it. The thing that I think upset the balance of this particular track was the lack of bass. Because the chord work was really nice. And but the element that was missing was it was like an audible bass line. Now I've seen a couple of comments where they've said the bass has been a bit a little bit uneven. I couldn't hear it, to be honest. It's like, where was it? I think that that would have helped to balance the track a bit more and maybe not leave the the the vocal as exposed as it was. Because I mean, yes, you could hear what he was doing. But but for me sonically, there was there was like a whole octave that was missing from the track. So the balance there I think would have been better had we had a bit more of it. Interesting. Somebody just was saying Alan was just saying in the comments there maybe us just a bit more of a spread there with the instruments. I probably agree with that. And also, there was some harshness to this mix. You know, there was there was a certain amount of harshness that was coming from several sources in my opinion. The there was a ride cymbal which was playing a lot the way through. By the way, I needed to hear more velocity changes in that ride cymbal was a little bit constant and a little bit too exact. Something I'll tend to hammer on about on this show. And then there was a sort of a I think there's a nylon string guitar sound in there as well. There was a little harsh added to the fact and I don't it was nice to see someone singing by the way in the moment actually actually singing in the track. But I did notice that and I don't know how representative the camera angle was of what was going on. I did notice in that shot I can hardly see the microphone in there, which indicates me that he was quite a long way away from the microphone, probably like this far away from the microphone. Now a lot of people might make the mistake of coming up here a bit too often which is a little bit of a mistake because you don't have to move much at this distance to get a lot of change. But you do want to be a bit closer than he was and that would have added a lot more warmth to the vocals. I'm going to say up front I think that I'm not meaning to be unkind here. I think the artist is not very confident about their singing and probably needs to sort of find their space a bit more with their vocal is probably the best way I'm going to say it. However they weren't being helped by the tone of the vocal. It was very sort of exposed as you said maybe a little bit more reverb on there but I think it wasn't being helped by the microphone being quite a long way away. In my opinion I could be wrong about that but I think that the starting places for this though for reread if he's watching is exactly where Ricky said in my opinion. Look at the low end of this mix a little bit and then look at I actually think some of that harshness will disappear with a little bit more of a stereo spread as well. That was why I was glad to see that comment because it just seemed a little bit too much in the middle both mix-wise like in terms of the width and also frequency range as well. It was so much of it in the middle so I hope that helps a little bit but in terms of volume balance I'm going to say this wasn't a million miles away from where it needs to be it was just a bit rough it needs to be refined a little bit of tweaking here and there. Okay I'm just going to have a quick word from our sponsor DistroKid of course you can point to them for me Ricky can't you? Straight up there straight up there this is what will happen if you follow the link. If you do follow the link in the description down below it's going to take you to a special page on DistroKid with this yellow banner at the top that banner is letting you know that you're going to get a further seven percent discount of your first year if you sign up here and let's face it it's already very cheap if we scroll down we can see that year's membership is $19.99 per year for an unlimited number of albums and songs and so long as it's your own music there are no extra charges and you get to keep all of the royalties from the various platforms platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, Pandora, Amazon, Instagram, Tidal, iHut, Radio, Deezer and more. Now before I talk about the next mix tip I want to kind of let Ricky you've recently become a YouTuber but you've been involved in the audio community to a very high degree especially on Facebook there but you've also got a long history of it as well and I wonder if you've noticed this phenomenon it's not really a phenomena but it's something I think is secretly the case and that is the old YouTuber who promotes himself as the expert on all things audio shows you the the saturation plugin which has just come out he goes listen to this listen to this doesn't it sound fantastic and there you are at home and you're feeling really insecure now and very inferior because you're thinking I can't hear any difference what happened with saturation it probably happened with compression as well if it's subtle compression if you're watching look I do want to address this there's probably a little bit of fear from some people that if they admit that they can't hear it then they've invalidated themselves and they no longer look like an expert you've got to see through the egos sometimes don't feel bad if you can't hear some things but a little tip about hearing things from my perspective is to hear them in comparison to other things sometimes we can't hear something but then when we compare it to something else suddenly we can hear it yeah the bypass which can be very useful for that um and that brings me on to my second topic for as a mixed tip and that is reference tracks I should be watching this show regularly and reminding myself to remember to use a reference track so the purpose of a reference track for those of you who don't know is to take another piece of music usually that's going to be something commercially released um and it's going to be something that um is going to help you compare your mix to um this other mix now this is where you know relates to the first topic a little bit where I talk about mixing fatigue where you lose object objectivity um and it's amazing that you can be deep in that mix and you think I'm not quite sure now what's what I should do and then if you use a reference track a reference point really you can go oh now by the way it doesn't have to be someone else's material it could be one of your own track you may be looking for consistency for example on an EP or an album and you might use one of your own tracks as a reference track but they are very very useful um in in this set so now a lot of people will message me and say to me which reference track shall I use and that's probably missing the point because the you need to choose your own reference track I can't tell you which reference track to use but here's some tips choose a similar genre there's no point if you're mixing a lovely little ballad uh to um you know bring out bat out of hell or something like that it's it's not it's probably not going to work if you've got your little piano ballad okay so you want something similar in genre and that really what I was alluding to there as well was similar in arrangement I'm listening for something which at least if if I've got you know acoustic guitar drums um bass and piano I'm going to be looking for something which has got a similar arrangement to that no there's going to be variations in that that's fine but for example drums are important if you happen to be recording a song which has no drums in it don't use a reference track which has drums in it it's going to complete it's going to throw it's such a different mix when when you get into the so something with a similar arrangement is important okay now the last thing I want to point out about reference tracks before I let um Ricky have his input here is do remember when you get your reference track that it's been mastered okay there's a couple of things sonically that can make some difference it shouldn't make a whole big bunch of difference but it does mean that you need to make sure that your volume match at least so what I do is I grab my if I'm in cakewalk I'll grab my reference track and I'll put it on a spare track in the door where I can easily you know solo or mute it or what have you now if you're listening to something which is as we know the phenomena of when things are a little bit louder or a lot louder they tend to sound better we want to avoid that so just make sure you adjust the volume of your reference track it's very very important to do this so that you're not listening to two things which are a completely different volume that's a very very important in terms of preparation okay you don't have to use one reference track I normally do you could you know choose one or two for different for difference a bit um Ricky do you make use of reference tracks are you like me do you forget to do yes yes and no I think um in my earlier days I was probably more likely to to um you know have a reference track um available to me to compare the piece I was working on um too um but I find over the years um what tends to happen is I already have a reference track because when I'm when I'm composing it's like right okay I want this particular track yeah I want it to kind of feel like well yeah George Duke yeah for example and um yeah the vibe on this one's kind of um Brazilian love affair yeah so having already noted what the makeup of that track was and the instrumentation and that kind of thing and even the mix not in not in an obvious way as in doing a straight a b with Brazilian love affair but if I was going to do a Brazilian kind of track that's kind of like my template for doing that kind of thing so yes in invariably I guess I do end up um using that as a reference it's a particular song rather than just a genre a particular song how did that make me feel what constituted that mix and what were the levels in that mix so it's become a subconscious thing on the way that I work now but certainly in my earlier days yes you're absolutely right that um if you want to get close to that production sound if you like you know you've you've got to listen to it um analyze it put it alongside what you're doing and then make the adjustments to bring it the closer together it's very valid actually yeah to have and I want to say to people watching we're not sort of talking about copying things here we're talking about being inspired by something and and thinking of the like the feel that that mix gives you you know when you listen to it and you're kind of aiming for that um so yeah it's really good point actually ricky kind of having something in mind while you're in the creation process of the piece of music yeah really really really really good idea and I do that sometimes myself I also do this sometimes for individual instruments so I'm not using the whole thing I personally um really love um if I was going for acoustic guitars I love the sound that Damian Rice has on on his acoustic guitars um another example would be James Taylor I love the sound of James Taylor's like acoustic guitars and and it's more for perspective if I'm if I'm fiddling with it I've got that acoustic there I've recorded it and perhaps I'm e-curing it and then when you have those days sometimes you think I'm not it's not happening here it's what's what I'm I mean then just having a quick listen to somebody else's something else as a reference again I'm talking about this idea of we can sometimes hear things better by comparison than we can by just listen to them in isolation um and and so I find that a little bit helpful as well but yep so make use of reference tracks the difference I love Ricky's input here as well like you know perhaps have something in mind at the creation process and when you've done it for many years as well then you may not need to actually physically bring a reference track in to listen to because you're so familiar um with that sound so um thanks very much for that Ricky now the next song which we have here for Fix My Mix um is this is always interesting to me I love it when people tell me that they were just using some basic equipment there's something about this which is just this is our age of recording this is what it's all about this is the age we live in we should celebrate this it's great that in the 70s and you know 60s 70s 80s they had these massive studios with great big desks and everything and great sonic qualities and things in some of those studios but also we we're going to look back at this age and go this was the age of the guy in his bedroom with a little scarlet 2i2 who made magic right so I love it when people tell me this um and uh anyway the artist name here Ricky you do this so well I'll pop it up here okay the artist I'll go ahead with that the artist thing is Coco Pelli and the song is Deja Vu cool um now I will tell you that that's a stage name and so I'm just going to break confidence here I hope the uh Brent like Alexandra sent this into me um and what he said to me is um uh this is uh his first song after nine years away from music uh recorded on in cakewalk with a focus right scarlet 2i2 I always smile at that but it's it's what's what's what do they say about the the key of g it's the working man's key or something like that or the key of the people or something like that I don't know it's a guitarist thing you know um but I think the scarlet 2i2 yeah it's it's it's it's the most common audio he'd face on the on the planet apparently so focused right tell us quite often um and uh it's it's pretty straightforward and basic I'm going to say um it's not many bells and whistles on it it's reasonable price works for people they make music with it he also used an s e bluebird mic so I haven't actually used one of those to be honest with you I've got a couple of um uh s e why do I why does the full name elude me now but anyway c electronics l s s e electronics of course um got a couple of their microphones but I haven't tried the bluebird uh telecaster an alvaro's acoustic I used to have one of those nice guitars and um he says he's doing everything alone um he said he suspects he's lost his ear's objectivity much appreciation I should also mention that um he's used addictive drums too I think um so now look this song is five minutes long when I see songs come in to me in there five six seven minutes long um I go okay I'm going to judge you now do you hold me for the five minutes you know I'll play it I'll play them all but can you hold me for five minutes I'll let everyone in the chat be the judge of that let's have a listen to this as we say um from Coco peli deja vu Ricky yes no I was five minutes that was just I think it was just over five minutes yeah sometimes I I really want to go first sometimes but yeah you go first it's your show man you go first if you want to go first well the music is is we can sort of talk as if we there's facts about music sometimes but the reality is it's so subjective isn't it it's so um there's so much personal taste goes in there and all that kind of thing and I think all of my guests are really good on the show when something comes up which is of a genre that they don't normally listen to or or they don't normally like um then they sort of say you know um gotta declare this you know and then we try and use uh we try and be as objective as we can to give a balanced opinion but I can't be with this one I really can't be with this one because first I have to say that I like I really do like this genre of music very much it reminds me of many many things that I listen to um and so I want to speak directly to Brent who sent this in because I think after nine years of being away from music recording just on a Scarlett 2i2 with virtual drums and a few instruments there just want to look him in the eye and say mate thank you so much I'm it's actually in honour to me that you say you listen to the channel watch the channel and get something from me because I would be extremely proud of that mix maybe it's just the song which is doing it for me so I just didn't care about the mix I loved it so much it's one of the favourite pieces of music that I've ever had on any of these shows I was just off in a little dream world there I was loving it I was loving your voice I was loving the harmonies I was the the uh the break which came a little bit later in the song did something different um I love so many things about it because there was so much heart in it for me I was feeling it just as a person listening to a piece of art for me that's my opinion and it's it's very it's not I know that some people in the chat that I was watching found some things in the mix here and there um which they were not like in maybe the bass end um you know I didn't hear that to be honest with you though I was it was sounding good to me you know I will say one thing about it though and I guess I'm looking for something to uh be constructively critical about there was a very interesting break in there a moment of silence a moment of silence quite a big long break with a kind of a bit of a crackly it sounds like a guitar about to come in in there I loved that little break but you did it twice could have done it once in the whole song would have been cool didn't need to be twice and that sort of brings me to my final point there's a radio version of this song there's a shortened version of this song for radio where you can chop a couple of bits out and it still is a very very very good song I don't mind the five minute version on an album because I just love to the song and I could have listened to it a few times to be honest with you already I just really enjoyed it but if but for some people you know um Brent you you perhaps um could shave a little bit off of it um but everything else for me was fine I know people look Ricky might have something different to say and and I think it's lovely if he has of people who've got a different opinion because this is what music is about to me we all love and respond to different things like we all love different partners in life and we all we all you know love our children differently no we don't do that we love them equally don't we Ricky I'll let you talk now because yeah I just yeah okay right well my view is a little bit different um to to yours Mike I mean first thing I would say about it is that I love the production texture of this track um it really does take you somewhere you know the atmospherics of listening to it it really does take you somewhere however um that my I mean I feel bad about saying it now no no don't no don't feel bad listen look it's just listen if you're watching it's just my opinion okay it doesn't mean I'm right it's just my opinion my opinion um where I think this song didn't do everything that it could have was in the arrangement because you know texturally and you know the vocal was lovely texture really intimate yeah it's all great but I was waiting for the hook and with a song like this for me it makes it more complete if it's got that element in there that gives it single long ability because I'm thinking about the punters I say okay then what will make this song more memorable than than how it's been presented and I think that's the one key element that's missing because if you want to make the song over four minutes kind of thing you're going to need to have something in there that keeps the listener engaged and I don't mean that from a muso's point of view as in you know oh that was a wicked solo blah blah yeah it's not that it's not that but you need to give the listener I think something that they can go back to so it's not when you ask somebody about a famous song and what do they go for they go for the hook didn't they now I will say as you say that I take your point I mean I think when we look at these types of let's call it a piece of art again that there's a context that has to be had you know so is the context you know radio play or is the context one of those tracks on the album but I will say though that this as you were talking I thought I was thinking of examples of this things with a similar texture but do you have a hook and I'm going to go to radio head song I don't know if it's actually called this by title but the main lyric is fade out again or so is it street spirit or the name of lose me somebody will tell me in the chat but there's well there's actually a couple of radio songs like this where there is a hook in there even though it's got a very similar texture to this but Michael York's voice is is is there did I use no I'm getting my words muddled today but anyway um Tom York's voice even Michael York you see um um you know but yeah I'm going to get copyright claim or something like that but yeah there's a hook in there so you're right sorry street spirit thank you very much Luke Smith for telling me about that you know what I'm talking about street spirit um it's somewhat of a similar vibe to this but does have a hook in there look I tried to stay open when I was listening to it you know because after a couple of minutes it was apparent that you know the song wasn't constructed that way as in you know having a hook you know you're going to go back to however I think if you're going to do this kind of song you need to if you're not going to use a hook it's got to be built into the arrangement itself um kind of thing because there's a section there where say the drums come in um I think it's for eight or 16 bars it comes in and then once it's in for me it's got to stay there yeah you didn't like the fact that it dropped off I liked that I liked that man no it's got to stay in there man because but by keeping the drums in there don't listen to anything you say and you're raising yeah you're raising the intensity of the song kind of thing so you're bringing it to a crescendo and and as you said Mike um uh the the pregnant pools um it worked once but don't do it twice yeah because it's like you're waiting for something and okay what was I waiting for um it leaves you feeling that way so um if you're watching this and listening to what I'm saying please um I'm really trying to be helpful um there you are to be helpful with my comments kind of thing the song itself was with what you had available to you was beautifully done as I the first thing I said was I love the production um and let's reflect upon that at the moment let's reflect upon that at the moment that I I I'd like to play again but I'm not going to but but if you people watch the replay of this and and I've got to say he sent me the wave version of this as well this has obviously been squashed down to sort of an mp3 format and then streamed but I had the wave version this was very very nice production just in terms of the sonic qualities um you can hear that and as I say recorded at home with a scarlet 2i2 you know not not an expensive microphone and and I want to say as well talking about that little break that came in I'm going to admit this addictive drums was used I actually emailed um the artist and I said what what was the story with the drums on this because I was a little bit second guess myself I was thinking are these real drums or are these programmed drums I'm not quite sure maybe I've listened to programmed drums for so long and so many of them that I've started to believe that's the real sound but I thought they were very well programmed drums in this there was a lot of subtleties in there there was a lot of oomph to them when they came in um just really really well done so why would I play a song like this on the show anyway if my opinion is like this sometimes it's to say to other people this is what's achievable with the small amount of equipment that you have um sonically whether you agree or disagree with Ricky and me on the different aspects of the arrangement or what have you we're all agreed on the the sonic qualities were there with this song so um anyway we'll move on from this but Brent if you've come back after nine years and this is the first thing you've produced well done let's hear some more music from you man I definitely want to hear it anyway um moving on let's just have a quick word because one of the one of the things unfortunately we have to be involved with um after making this music and mixing it and mastering it is then we're usually exhausted aren't we get it out to the world this is it's all I can do to make a facebook post about it and get my mum to listen I can't be bothered by that by the time I produce the music so yeah I mean it is useful to do things like get on playlists on Spotify and what have you and there's a fun way to do it if you join up with DistroKid one of the ways to actually get your music heard on Spotify is to get onto a playlist now DistroKid offers a really fun way to get onto one of their playlist with their wheel of playlist feature simply head over to your DistroKid account go to the top right where it says goodies then go down to wheel of playlist and then you start off simply by selecting a song something you've already released and then click on connect with Spotify now obviously the further up a playlist you get the more likely people are to actually hear your music and enjoy it so what DistroKid do here with this feature is they give you three chances to spin a wheel a kind of a wheel of fortune type of thing going on here now the best result of those three spins determines your number in the playlist and as I say the higher up you are the better so on this occasion I achieved 1088 you can try every every day if you like so maybe that's something you'd like to do to actually get your music in a playlist on Spotify so talking about mix tips um here's my final one like I could give so many mix tips couldn't I but here's one which I think is important I sort of chatting with Ricky about this before and I think we look at this in a strange way um and I wanted to the one I want to talk about is automation now I've heard this saying I may have heard it from Warren Hewitt first I don't know um but it was this saying which was um the difference between a good mix and a great mix is automation no it wasn't Warren Hewitt who was it oh I can't remember Chris Lord algae maybe said it doesn't matter who said it somebody said it of great wisdom and uh and they're right uh I think it's actually pretty hard to get even an average mix without automation is my that's where I differ from them um there's some really good reasons for that but the first thing I want to say about automation if you're thinking when you're starting out oh that's a kind of an advanced feature which I'll learn about in years to come I would not do that whatsoever and the reason for that is well it goes to another mix tip which I haven't discussed here but sometimes people start to say to me you know where should I start mixing a song which part of the song because I used to make the mistake years ago Ricky of starting the beginning the reason I say that is because a lot of my songs and it will depend on what sort of music you do but a lot of my songs would typically start off with a single instrument a piano or a guitar and a vocal and then they would build and I would bring more instruments in for the arrangement for the chorus but I always found when I start at the beginning oh that guitar sounds nice now I'll get that vocal imbalance with it that sounds great and then it builds up into perhaps the second verse where a few other instruments come in I'll mix them and get to the chorus oh it's all over the place now because there's so many more things at work right I'll get to a point with this in a moment but what I do recommend now is don't do that because you'll find yourself pushing the faders up and up and up and up as you go through the song you've got nowhere to go so what I say starting the loudest part of the song there's normally going to be a chorus it doesn't have to be doesn't have to be the very loudest part of the song but just a typically you know towards the end where there's a lot of things in there you will then get what what I call a static mix but a basic mix a basic balance for the song you've got all the instruments or most of the instruments which are going to be in the song in there you build that up you've got the hardest work done okay you've done that it's fantastic and then you go to your first verse again where there's just that guitar and perhaps a little bass and a vocal it's good it's not going to be right that vocal is not going to be right now in comparison to that guitar it's going to be wrong for that section of the song and for the bridge and for the outro so that's why you must have automation because you need to have balance across the whole length of the song from the beginning to the end we talked about balance is the first thing automation gives you that now I would recommend if you've not done much automation and you're just sort of getting into it if you're going to focus on anything I'd say nine times that attempt for me if you're going to automate anything vocals vocals absolutely so so important to automate generally in contemporary music not always but generally in contemporary music we like to we describe the vocals as being on top of the mix all right what we're really recognizing is that's where most of the general public focus their attention and we want to make sure that they're audible that they're there that they're being able to be heard they are kind of the solo instrument but doesn't like I say I don't want to have definite things here different genres of music don't always have the vocals with such higher regard but but generally anyway whatever it is but vocals for most of us is a good place to start automation now and another good place to start is just with the fader automating the fader fine but I'll also suggest you that eq is a very interesting and important thing to automate I'll give you an example going back to my typical example where I will have that acoustic guitar at the beginning of the song and then the acoustic guitar is still there when all the other instruments come in the the bass the piano the drums right but it's got a different role in terms of frequencies at that point at the beginning of the song it's the only instrument so the low end of it for example it's covering a little bit more if we want it to have a little bit of warmth whereas now when the bass comes in and the piano there's a lot more crossover with other things we want it to get out of the way of those things so I often eq my acoustic guitars which I use in a lot of my songs that they'll they'll have now sometimes it could just be eqing in terms of just a bypass kind of a thing but I do I'll also graduate it sometimes and the other thing you can think about eqing for example is reverb reverb can be used to um make the presence of something more or less to give it more or less presence can be also be used to make things sound a bit larger um for some parts of the song as well so that would be something that I would typically um automate as well I see happy ron in in in in the chat here he's got a lot to say about these eq brings happy sorry automation brings happiness automations where it is there's a few things that you could print on a teacher there from happy ron but I want to hear what ricky t brown has said what what do you think about all the stuff about automation what do you automate ricky um well well some of what you just mentioned that just went because I I ain't doing it cool you picked up some tips on me however what what I do use automation for more than anything else is um is automating the the levels of groups and individual tracks um certainly things you can group together like you know if you if you've got your backing vocals um you and you found what the balance should be then right okay um we'll group that up and when it comes to the mix itself then you're moving the men and out together so you're not having to say oh what okay I've got a four part harmony here shit what am I gonna do um no you've got them all together um the the other thing that that that you know I was thinking well while you were speaking about you know the whole idea of automation absolutely with certainly with vocals absolutely essential essential but then again it depends on what genre you're working in because you know you can you can use automation as a creative tool in itself um if you want to create atmosphere and and certainly when you start talking about cinematic stuff and then you know you've you've got your strings and then they come back out again kind of thing so it's yeah a swell kind of thing you know and yeah there there are a couple of ways you can do that I mean yes I guess you could program it but um for me I'd write the part and then when it came to the mix it said okay then I want to create this feeling here and automation is is your tool um for for doing that kind of thing you know so it's not it's as Mike is saying you know um it's the wrong approach I think to just okay you think you've got all your levels right and you you kind of leave it there and yeah it kind of does there's more to it than that you know so if you want your your music to come alive I think automation is the key tool in um making that happen yep awesome well just a quick by the way as well something I didn't mention but a little bit of a little bit not a lot for me but a little bit of automation during the mastering process if you do decide to master your own things um I only do it a little bit but I have heard people definitely talking about just when say the chorus kicks in automating a little bit of a volume boost you know the first few beats of a chorus or something like that I as I say I've done it a little bit I like it but I don't always do it you don't depend on the song whether you think you want to or not but yeah so automation I hope that people have found that um helpful inspiring and feel like they they wanted Thomas Chris who was just hey Thomas thank you I just enjoyed watching you actually over on Pete John's over there um and yeah automation great stuff for uh like filter cut offs and things funny enough I was just talking about that during my video this week when I uh reviewed the the new V collection from Arturia and I was looking at their new augmented strings and augmented vocals which I'm really really loving and they have those uh they sort of knobs on there on the front there's and and I was I think I might have said in the video but I felt oh this is one of those instruments where you don't just want to be loading up that preset and using that you want to be pushing those things up and down automate and you know the morph control and and stuff like that and you know I think another great sort of it's it's it's a little bit of a different kind of an automation because we're talking about sort of midi automation here in in other words we're all recording sort of midi events normally and with virtual sense in this um whereas the other automation I was talking about was sort of audio automation if you like but it's the same principle it's the same kind of thing and and again it gives movement to the sound in a synth doesn't it especially when we're talking about filter cut off and things like that it just gives this feeling um not like you were talking about swells with strings and things that's a volume change but this is a texture change which happens and yeah you can use it very very expressively in the same way a guitarist might use you know certain techniques on a guitar to to change the sound as he or she is playing um great input there thank you uh Thomas for that by the way Thomas you should come on this show sometime I reckon you're a great guest over there on Pete's show always looking out for good guests aren't we Ricky? Yeah indeed so um look I hope that people have found those tips sort of useful um I if you'd like me to include these tips from myself or perhaps even from my guests as well in future shows then um would very much like to hear from you do a little thumbs up on this video now let me know in the live chat or let me know in the comments if you're watching the replay now I did a I did talk about guests there I'm going to have a new guest on the show in a couple of weeks time not the next show but the one after um and he's actually a gentleman who I've featured his music on the show before um and in fact when I when we did the uh feature the what was it what was the show I used to do I can't even remember the name of my own shows how's that featured artists live um which we used to do um and then I did a bit of a rundown of the year that I picked this I picked one of his songs as my number one song um he's in the chat right now and I think his his partner's in the chat right now I saw it early on as well was her name Carla and I did I get that right I'm useless with names but anyway happy Ron and his partner is he's here now Ricky I noticed earlier you were a little nervous to criticize um the song which I thought was wonderful in fact I'm going to say again I think it's one of the best songs that I've personally enjoyed on the show because I can't say it's the best song or one of the best songs I can only say for me personally that's the only thing we can ever say about music really um but uh yeah and and I have been a admirer of happy Ron's I like his writing style um I sometimes have popped in on his youtube channel um uh here in there and watch him do different things I've listened to a number of his tracks anyway he's going to be a guest on the show in a couple of weeks time and he did actually submit this upcoming song for me to have listened to now again I have to sort of declare something about this up front um I've not had any involvement in the song but the subject of the song um is a little bit uh close to my heart you might say and one of my children um they describe it now as being on the autism spectrum um so one of my one of my kids is on the autism spectrum um and and I guess it was more typically in the past it's a term they don't use anymore but Asperger's syndrome um it's something so this is a subject which this is the subject of the song um which happy Ron has sent in it's called thank you for being my friend so um I'm a little bit coloured in terms of when I was listening to it I noticed I kind of wanted to like this song before even do you know what I mean I had a positive thing going on there however um as Ron has submitted this um song in to fix my mix the fix my mix show um I have to warn you Ron that you are open to the same level of criticism as anyone else who sends their music in and um me and Ricky will not hold back if we think there's something a miss especially Ricky of course if there's something a miss we should have had Dan on here shouldn't we we should have had Dan I know he's worse than me you're joking yeah that's right I'm the good guy I was speaking to him earlier and he's actually had he's had a tough week and he's had a tough couple of weeks before Dan um and and I actually didn't say to Ricky's coming on the show come on Dan if you're watching sorry mate we haven't left you out for any other reason than to give you a rest you poor bugger and I know he's trying to produce the video at the moment as well but anyway I digress um Dan would if he was here he would definitely give you a hard time Ron but uh Ricky has shown his true colors tonight he's prepared to criticize why am I saying all this no there might be nothing to criticize but anyway you've been you've been warned Ron you're going to be open to the same level of criticism as anyone else despite the fact that you're still going to be um a guest on this show in a couple of weeks time which I'm thoroughly looking forward to let's have a listen to this song it's called thank you for being my friend from happy ron strong hope they'll love your story for being you know life's best won't seem real until Ron is going to be a guest on this show in a couple of weeks time looking forward to seeing you Ron uh but now it's time for a baptism of fire oh well um oh look look look look if if if you've been doing music any length of time as as soon as you hear the first eight bars of this um you get a feel for for what it is and um you know the parameters are set for how you should judge it now um if I were going to judge this on the basis of you know what I might think is or isn't commercial then I'd be saying something different to what I'm saying now I guess but um I love this song you know I just I just love this song because um there's there's not one ounce of pretentiousness about the way it's being done um it tells the story it tells it gives the message in in um a manner that you cannot miss and um I have to congratulate the uh the the keyboard player um the who your man on piano he was good I really appreciated that being a keyboardist myself um but getting back to the song I really can't fault it you know um it's just one of those things that you hear and and it it is complete and there's there's um trying hard to to think of anything that I heard that was oh well you know maybe you could have had a little bit more of this or nothing you sold the song mate that's all I'm saying it's so much so that I can't can only hear what you've presented and it's a lovely lovely song lovely song that's all I gotta say now well now you're gonna make me feel bad aren't you now you make me feel bad it's all lovely all right okay Ron well let me speak to everyone first of all the some uh performances writing delivery don't actually require such a higher level of sort of all the um technical you know technical stuff mix mix and all that sort of stuff simply because the um yeah just the the the the piece of art itself has drawn the listener in so much so much that the brain just says I don't care about all that other stuff I'm listening to the song so that's a good song now I want to talk about vocals a little bit I think there's something to say if we go back to the very first song that we listened to um which was from uh reread and and and happy ron's vocals here I think there's a comparison to be made here um that they both do not have that typical or classically regarded lovely sounding voice right tonally and pitch wise and and all that stuff right yeah um the difference is reread I'm talking to you is Ron really owns his voice he completely runs with it he owns it and he says this is me warts and all stuff you I'm singing whereas I can hear reread a little bit of not so much confidence in your not so classically perfect voice and that's a that's a mental position I'm afraid which I'm not I'm not a psychologist I can't help you with but we all suffer from that by the way I'm not criticizing you not criticizing you we all suffer from insecurities and um unfortunately if they get strong enough they they can be heard in every moment of the performance vocalists guitarists other instrumentalists if you're not really if you're thinking I'm not very good it's gonna it's gonna be heard so I will say that I think Ron probably knows that he hasn't got like a typically I was gonna say Mariah Carey of course he's not gonna have a Mariah Carey voice Mike you idiot no but let's let's have a think of another male voice I can't I can't you know brilliant male voices are eluding me but anyway um Ron knows he's not that but he knows what he is and he owns it he knows he's a good lyricist I know he's not big-headed he knows he's a good lyricist that he's got a message there and he runs uh with it so he's not he knows he doesn't have to be bothered with having a perfect yeah he's just said it there I sing uh happy Ron style and that's it love that about it yeah so I like the song I like the feel of the song um there was a couple of bits here and there where I was trying to be super critical in my mind and and again I'm just gonna go back to there was a little harshness in this mix there could be a little bit more stereo spread but probably the harshest thing I've got to say is the hardest thing for me to say Ron because I do love this song just like Ricky um yeah and the reason this is so hard is because normally when we're listening to songs we listen to an awful lot of songs with virtual instruments in them so the addictive the addictive drums drum the addictive drums is not going to be offended um so I mean this and I'm going to say this very very gently because I know I'm going to talk about the drums in this song and I know there's a real drummer involved a person and and um and you know I don't really want to offend them but I felt I'm not going to talk about mix here I felt the drum performance here well there was a couple of bits where it went a little off time I'm not so bothered about that it doesn't matter on a song like this it was very slightly anyway I just didn't feel that the actual choice of rhythm was the best it was a little bit louder the mix and I thought this could have been halftime so it was more like I thought it could have been just my opinion take it all leave it I could be right I could be wrong interpretation yeah that's just so that's just all I'm going to say there um but that was the only thing that I was thinking oh I'd like to hear those drum drums with a slightly different emphasis or something like that sorry to the drum I don't know his name uh sorry I don't want to offend a single you out it's like the only bad thing in the song that's why it feels so terrible about saying no but yeah you tell him that I thought it was all right because I was chugging all the way through that so that that is definitely an opinion thing um there but Ron you know I love your music so much and I love the reason why you make music and the whole messaging behind your music is is you know what I really like um so there you go um I think a number of other people seem to be really enjoying that yeah it does bring up a sort of little it's one of these topics that we will talk off off-air normally Ricky um but why not just put it on air for the last five minutes of the show we talk about mixing on a show like fix my mix as if hey if you've got a great mix everything's going to be good but it's not true is it it's just one element it's one element I think this what this reminds me of is and I know it's a cliche you know I think it was Quincy Jones who was quoted when they said what's the three most important aspects of a release and he said the song the song the song um and and I subscribe to that I think without a decent song you've got absolutely nothing to work with you've got nowhere to go but um I have occasionally heard a good song crippled by a bad mix I personally think it has to be a really bad mix to distract you away there's something in the mix which is just so awful distracting that you can't even concentrate on the song I think a good song can survive an average mix very very well indeed um what I'm not going to waffle I want to hear what you think about this Ricky yeah um I agree with pretty much everything that you've said there yeah I mean um you know I do a few instrumentals but the the songs um for me they've they've they've got to have depth in the ideas that they they explore you know because there's nothing worse than you know you hear the first line and you know what the next one's going to be you know too too much of today's music for me is is that way and the the art of songwriting seems to have been lost in certain genres you know um it's important to me that the the song has a message even if it's a basic one um you know there should be some attempt to actually present a common theme differently you know do you know I was actually going to do something on this show do you remind me of something now let's just pretend we're not on air okay I was going you know we see these awful adverts probably I make some money out of these adverts because they're probably showing on my videos but I don't care you know midi chord packs and all that sort oh yeah yeah well there's a new one which I saw today and I had my phone I thought I want to screenshot this or record it and have it on the show because it's so diabolically awful now I can't remember the name of it but it's like a lyrics thing and if you've seen this I think I saw it on Facebook today just make sure you give it lots of thumbs down and leave lots of horror it's the worst thing ever it's basically a guy in a studio with a rap artist and he's doing and this guy's going oh your lyrics are terrible your mother wouldn't even listen to your lyrics you need whatever this app is called lyrics help or whatever it is and then this guy goes oh yeah and he sings these lyrics and they're all going yeah this is fire man and you go oh my god is that what we're coming to and literally the the lyrics they use and is as an example sounded like a bunch of words yeah just squished together with no meaning and people are supposed to believe that's like folks there's no shortcuts learn your craft I was I was really annoyed by it rubbish anyway Mike you know you know something you remember the last show I was on with Dan and you know we've got that recurring theme of no you got a master and instrument kind of thing to call yourself a decent musician and the retort is you know my usual retort as well you know what Dan I'm a little ambivalent about all of that I mean however you want to make it you know if it's creative it's creative end off but I have to say that that last time and then a post that you put up on Facebook I think it was a couple of weeks ago last week I think it might have been and it really got me thinking you know because the the the amount of creativity that you can put into your music where you can sidestep things like that stupid website with you know readymade tracks readymade lyrics and all of that and it really made me think about that and I have to admit I've come to the conclusion that you know what you're gonna find me agreeing more with your perspective in future because I don't know I mean look I mean danger of sounding like a right oldie here yeah but I've come to the conclusion that to to exploit the potential of anything that you're doing you need to have a human input into it somewhere even if it's just one instrument or whatever but something where you are expressing your musicianship and your even down to your spirit as a player you cannot do that with a computer I don't agree with you I'm sorry you can't okay so I don't agree with you coming back to what you're saying there come back to what you're saying you know the manufactured lyrics and and over here it is on a plate kind of thing without somebody working on their craft honing their craft to the point where they can do something like what Ron's done yeah you're not going to get to that or anything like that if you're using that same set approach that you just mentioned look where I disagree with you a little bit and I know you think you're agreeing with me but where I disagree with you a little bit I don't want to be quiet that guy I don't want to go quiet that far I would more say I think it's helpful if there's a human element involved but and interestingly enough Mimo Japan has just arrived here better late than never I guess don't worry Doug's been holding the foreword but Mimo Japan's what I'm reminded is because when I think of Mimo Japan I think of someone who has refined their skill level with virtual instruments to a very high yeah yeah yeah yeah so what what I think is it's not so much whether there's a human I think it can be achieved without humans involved I don't think could be achieved by just pressing the button and using the preset and and that's where that's where I draw the line that's what all these midi packs and all that thing that's what they're doing but if you're fooled by that then I think you're missing the subtleties in this case with lyrics you're missing the subtleties in human language and the way we put phrases together it's not just the fact that the sentences are there and they've got cool sounding words in them great lyricists have a little turn of phrase you know I mean I'm a big fan of Billy Bragg does anyone even know who Billy Bragg is in the chat I'm a massive fan of Billy Bragg yeah here's the turn of phrase Paul Simon in some of his lyrics an incredible turn of phrase people will often quote Bob Dylan I'm not a huge Bob Dylan fan but I can see why they quote him a wonderful way with words um yeah I'm at the moment I don't think there's a computer algorithm that can do that now I'll say that at the moment because if this um little advert that I saw for this lyrics thing had happened to produce some amazing lyrics then fine because I'm sort of a little bit with you you've expressed this the end listener they care about the result not what was put into it right yeah if a guitar solo is good the end listener doesn't care if it was inspired in the moment and it took you two minutes to come up with it or whether you worked on that guitar solo for a year to perfect it it's of no consequence to the listener they just like the guitar solo or not right well can I challenge you on that my I think it is of I think it is of you know consequence to the listener yes if it's good it's good so yeah I agree that this is gonna like it if it sounds good right fine and they may not care how you got there but I guess the point I'm making is in order to get them to react to it in that way the players or player has to have put something in it something original in it to make it memorable to them at the end of the day so yes you can do all you know completely computerized stuff and listen you know I'm not for a moment I'm taking a pop at people like Mimo because I think he's he's flippin genius with what he does no calm down turning he gets too much praise already calm down this is my show it's turning you know his use of plugins but what he does with that is that he adheres to the I guess if you could call them rules of real playing so you've you've got the intonation and the arranging skills that's involved you know some people like me I've taken that to a new level so whatever I might be saying about you know the over reliance on the computer doesn't include people like that because they're clearly taking it to a level where they can include all those nuances when they don't have to because you know there's a trouble with music now it's too generic and copy paste copy paste yeah copy paste copy paste but you know listen I think I've earned I think I've earned my right to say all that because see I use the technology as well I use the technology as well but um you know I still think that it's it's going too far and and as tempting as those packages might be to youngsters it's if I can do anything is is to try and influence and people away from that kind of thing because you know the music business there are no shortcuts and they ain't going to make your journey shorter by using that stuff and people will apart from anything else you know your success if you if it's success that you're chasing right yeah it's not about it's not you don't get it through chord patterns anyway it's not they make out and these adverts are you're going to have these four chords and you're going to make a billion dollars out of it because you've got these four chords it's chord progression we've given you there's so so much more to it than that it's one of the elements for sure sometimes but but I also think um it leads us away from music a little bit for me and let me step back from this again because you said a moment ago you used one of those phrases where I said you do sound like an old man I can't remember what you said but music these days or what have you and if you remember in my video I was a little bit careful to steer away from that it's not about young and old people you see we make a mistake here I I think and and I'll say it wasn't very scientific but I've got a couple of teenagers and their friends I said my observations showing me that they're just as likely to be enthralled by a piece of music with many textures in it with many layers in it with variations in it as we were I don't know what I sort of look at and also I just want to talk to my fellow old fellows which and I know they're a high genre I know there are some females in the audience as well but my demographics tell me that 97% of the people who watch my show are men not necessarily in the same age group as me and Ricky because there's plenty of 20 year olds who watch the channel and what have you but there's a reasonable portion of people in in the audience who will be like myself and you in their 40s and 50s etc and I just want to caution you that you are not going to get anywhere with a young person when you say in my day look at that and your music's all crap and that you're not going to get what's going to happen in that communication style when you talk to people like that they're going to shut down from you they're not going to listen to you and say that old bloke doesn't know what he's talking about so I just even if that's in your head and I get tempted several times a day to express myself in this way be careful with that because in communication of course we're trying to be heard and and hear and people are going to stop listening to you as soon as you start to speak at them in that way about their music their music which they feel passionate about and they love and you come along going as someone said earlier in the chat get off my lawn so I encourage constructive conversation also listen to today's music a little bit you know do yourself do that before you just start criticizing it beyond what I did in the video the top 10 on Spotify because there's a lot more music out there but understand it's not there was terrible music in the 50s 60s and 70s as well there was some really awful music one thing they don't have today which we had was gimmick songs what was that song about star trekking star trekking across the universe I mean it was fun but it was crap wasn't it I wanted to use the example in in in the video but it doesn't translate across the Atlantic very well but British people will remember there's no one quite like grandma I'm sure you will agree postman pat for god's sake was one of the songs in the charts they we got rid of all that crap disco duck thank you I did use that in the video thank you and and there's one of the clips I'm surprised I didn't get any fack for it I use a clip of Herman's Hermits in there uh but and I thought oh someone would come back and say hang on Herman's Hermits weren't too bad but the actual song which I didn't play for copyright reasons was um I'm Henry the 8th I am I am my oh my god we don't have all that drivel in the charts anymore that absolute garbage rubbish music we don't have that in the charts anymore um but then again we've lost a lot of other things as well in the mainstream in and I do emphasize in the mainstream anyway my I think let's have a little pledge with each other rather than attack the younger generation let's just try and encourage them and inspire them and when they do something which is stretching the boundaries give them lots of praise and let them know yeah they've done a fantastic job um I can be a bit of a get off my lawn person at times so I'm not criticizing people in that sense but you know I'm trying to learn at the error of my ways and be a bit more positive about this and I want to see I want to see more growth in music that's that's what I want to see you know by the way there's just one other danger with this which I caution against we talk about the 60s 70s and 80s all the time oh they were so great that doesn't mean they should come back I'm a little bit over the reunion tours durand durand spandale ballet madness I prefer to listen to your old tracks to be honest with you because when I hear you singing now I'm like oh god not quite as good as it was sorry I've been horrible now but we don't need an endless stream of reunion tours in this world we need new music we need new things oh whatever you say about new music um it's it's actually not that often you get new music because um you know having gone around the sun a few more times than some others um you hear things again that you've heard before it's just been uh represented so genres I find our our cyclic you know because I mean look ever you know we've talked about 70s and disco and all that I mean disco came back right yeah but it came under the the the guys of um house music I mean yes yes yes it's it was four on the floor the only difference this time is that it was done with machines as opposed to you know real players um kind of thing you know so it's one of my beefs about um sort of I'm going to put them under one blanket but r&b hip hop stroke rap right one of my beefs about it is it seems to be one of the more recent forms of music that was introduced into our culture and yet it's been around for 30 years I'm a little bit over it I just want to hear some something different I know there's different versions you know my son's always educating me but dad there's mumble rap and there's there's this and that but I know that but they're just little slight variations really on the same thing and honestly I know I'm going to offend people upset people I'm so sorry this is just my opinion but the subject matter of the song is so when I used to listen to rap uh years ago there was there was music about uh you know the usual things that we were seeing about love and falling in and out of love there was also social commentary um there was political commentary there was people talking about the they could just now I understand that people are still talking about that but honestly in the mainstream it's just I'm the best rapper I'm better than that rapper aren't I so great look at my gold chains look at my Mercedes yeah great that was so interesting the first couple of times someone did it but it's so your now I'm so over I'm so sorry I'm going to get people hate me so much but I'm so over it that's what makes me I'm bored you've bored me with your subjects that's just a hard thing to do where are the songs about things about other things please Ricky come on join me on this one please back me up you sure you finished there you you sure you've dug a hole for myself see the answer my number of subscribers just dipped down below 100,000 again in just two minutes there you go you know on that subject I mean look I agree with pretty much most of what you said um you know um please don't let the fuck the baseball cap fool you yeah because I into it however right and the the reason for that is that as Mike says yeah um it meant something it was innovative at the beginning but once gangster rap took over I stopped listening because it was just negative negative negative negative and the the the the music form managed to stereotype itself with every new release and I switched off it as well so you know in more recent years so UK side you know you had um yeah of course you know you've got like drill which to a large degree is adopted the American standard for um you know if it's about rap um same thing and then if you're talking about R&B um personally I think um R&B died in probably about 2000 and actually yeah about 2007 it was like after that it died it stopped being R&B because R&B came through with like Motown and then you got the Filly label and all of that great great great music songs musicians singers all of those and it was all all okay it was developing nicely and then in about 2007 2008 it died because um especially with that stupid I'm sorry I'd said it really old now yeah that stupid sound effects um um you know I can't remember the name of it now because I just blanked it from my brain um it's it's it's on every record and I'm thinking where's the creativity gone you know we're all influenced by others except that but but you know it's it's it's like people are using like you know you know the old carbon book if you wanted to copy something you just write in a carbon book hey presto I've got a new track look I don't I don't want to I don't want to fall into the the um trap of saying oh some of this music so easy to produce I know Dan uh talking about Dan he did a video once probably a year or so ago where he tried to make some sort of R&B record so no one fall into the trap of saying oh I could just go and make it one of those one of those hip hop tracks just like that you know tomorrow I don't want to fall into that track but however it has to be said that the if we look at the actual generation I was listening to that top 10 as I say and I was listening to the drum parts which have so little variation in them I know that those drum parts can be produced with you know whatever drum library created one or two bars copied and pasted for the rest of the song there may be some side but honestly the drum parts in a lot of these top 10 songs you would produce them in less than 20 minutes I would say literally 20 minutes now gets us back does the listener care no the listeners doesn't care but who does care the producers care I'm not talking about the producer in terms of the record producers but the record companies the labels right the cost of making the track is low low low low low easy quick immediate and they're going to encourage that because there's no not much investment in time or money from them because somebody can literally make it on a laptop that's what I believe has happened is that the commercial forces are way more they've always been important in in music but they're way more like out of whack with the creative forces right what is commercially desired a repeatable reusable formula to make people listen you know is is all they are interested in and funny enough just before before I let you talk funny enough I was listening to an interview from Paul Simon from 1982 and he was saying exactly the same things I just said go Ricky yeah um that's that's true everything that you're saying there but you know but equally there's there's like you know there's an inverse response to that as well and sorry somebody's just said have I checked Bruno's latest albums um sonic silk sonic yes they are the real deal yeah yeah yeah that is what it's about so I totally agree with you yeah lost my trade with thought now but anyway anyway there was a counter argument to I just said yeah there's a counter argument yeah because see see if you if you're really analyzing or what is the market doing who were the top people at the moment or any at any given point in time the the people at the top are the ones who have come with something a little bit different absolutely everybody else is jumped on the bandwagon to try and sound like them so um I don't think we're we're devoid of any great artists out there or great producers or great writers they are there is a great example there lady gargo you know for as well you know yeah just lots and lots of talent yeah lots of talent so so if you go out to be if you know if you stick to your creative principles and you say look you know this is what I do this is how I do it yes you need a certain number of stars to line up to to you know crack it and and you know big time but the people that make it are the ones that have comes with something different and everybody else who's jumped on that bandwagon yeah they'll be saying yo well well this is what we think they want but you're too late because the original is the one that cleans up all the cash yeah absolutely you I've been watching I've been watching a um a few quite a complete off topic I've been watching quite a few videos of um Billy Connolly the last few days and uh and he describes those people I'm going to use his term but I'm going to call them beige if you just rock up and copy everything else you're just going to be a very beige artist not very memorable yeah you might have a little bit success here in there but you won't stand the test of time you'll just be beige I'd rather what we don't get a lot of on on this show from people who send their music in whatever level it's at and people are at different levels of mixing ability performing ability writing ability but I don't hear much beige-ness it's funny isn't it out there in the in the very commercial world um there's a there's a lot of beige-ness going out in the top 10 of Spotify but at the ground level with what I'm going to call sort of real musicians everyday musicians people that have day jobs and all that but they just love to record music they don't sit there and do beige they they do interesting things with their music that's what we mostly hear on here well and whether they've mastered their ability to produce it well or not at this moment is very this is normally the things that folks that we do talk about after we click end show and me and Ricky and Dan will have a bit of a chat and we always say oh we should include that in the show and today we've had we have included it in the show which means we've gone well over time in fact we're 49 minutes past the hour that iron changes but it was interesting if not a bit of an old folk bugger's rant a little bit but it's the subject which is always worth pursuing um but we've got to start stop pursuing and start doing haven't we get out there and make your music folks and please me and Ricky make it really interesting and delightful we'd love to have your input follow the link in the description down below if you'd like to submit your song to fix my mix do remember I don't mind songs in foreign languages absolutely okay I don't mind music which is not only not from different genres but also things like film music or game music if you want to send that in it's there's so much more music outside of the three and a half minutes of uh pop songs that we we we tend to think about all the time um if you've got an acapella group send it in if you've just started mixing it's your first song send it in if it's your hundredth song and you still need some fresh ears to listen to it send it in I want to hear your music we want to hear your music because we can all learn by listening to these mixes by listening to each other's music it's a great exercise for people as well who have been here in the live chat um and if you do join in the live chat you get that opportunity like us to hear a piece of music for the first time and kind of figure out hey how could that be improved a good exercise for your ears and your listening abilities thank you so much for joining us in the live chat we've been lovely and if you've watched the replay then do leave your comments down below love to hear from you on that i'll be back next week with some different guests and i'll be back the week after that with happy ron thank you happy ron for being here and everyone else who's been here and ricky i'm going to leave the last word to you okay thank you all for sticking with us for the length of this uh this episode but uh it wouldn't be the same without you so let's hope we all turn up next week okay thank you


Hi everyone, this is Robert Gephardt and today I wanted to talk to you about a way to use websites to your advantage. Basically, how you can start earning more per hour based on the websites you're using. By websites I mean like pros.com, translators, cafe, Upwork, whatever you might use to get your job because you can use them not only as a translator, but as a client as well. I think the best way to explain this is by an example. Once upon a time there was this translator who translated from Italian to English and that's all he translated it. That's me. I'm that translator. What happened was I could do these and every now and then people would ask me, can you do this Italian to English? I'd be like, yes, I can do it. I can do it. But every now and then I get requests for other things like, oh, by the way, do you also do French to English? I'd be like, no, sorry, I don't do that. Do you do Italian to Spanish? No, sorry, I don't do that. Do you do English to Italian? No, I don't do that. I only do Italian to English and that's it. But I would get these requests for other types of languages. And after a while I kind of had enough and I was always on these forums, on these websites. I knew other translators and, you know, I kind of had been chatting with them and knew them on the internet, let's say. So at a certain point I got asked by a client who was already my client. I'd already done translations for them and I got an email saying, oh, by the way, can you also do this French to English translation? So I said, what the hey, sure, I can do it. I charged them, you know, I gave a price that's a bit higher than what I usually charge. And I asked for more time. That was my main thing. I want, you know, I wanted to make sure that I could get this done. And so as soon as I received the document, I sent it off to one of the French translators I've been talking to, basically through the website. This is through pros.com. And, and I look, I was honest, I didn't pretend to be, you know, an agency or anything.  But yeah, you think this is something you could work on? Obviously, I'll pay you. And they're like, yeah, sure, no problem. So, so I got the translation. I think a day or two before it was due. And then I was, I was really paranoid because, you know, I hadn't translated it. So I wanted to make sure checking it was fine. But, you know, I'm not a French English translator. So I ended up sending it to someone else to proofread it and edit it. And then it came back turns out it was fine. And so then I sent it off to the client. And the client was happy, paid me for it. I ended up paying the translator and the editor more than I got paid. So I lost money on that. But it did show me that I wasn't limited, just based on what I could do personally on the Italian to English translation. I could, if it made my client happy, and if they wanted other languages done, I could get that done myself. And I, and I liked this because I felt like it put me ahead of the curve, right? If, if they're dealing with two different translators, one who only does one language and the other who can provide a couple other ones, then, you know, they might go to the one who's more of a one stop shop for a couple other ones. Now the client knew that I wasn't doing the translation myself. I wasn't sure at the beginning. So I worded it all weird. I was like, I could have that translation to you, you know, from French to English rather than saying I'll do it. And anyway, I'm still, I still work with this client. And so when I did talk to the client, they're like, no, we know, it's not you. But as long as it's the same quality that you've been sending us, we don't care. And in the end, it was, I mean, that's why I was so paranoid that I ended up losing money on that first translation because I wanted the quality to be good. So you can't skimp on quality or stuff like that. But what you can do is that when you receive requests that aren't completely in your expertise, you can try to find other translators who can help you out and who can work on it. So I would do this and I'd be completely honest. I'd say I'm a translator as well. You know, I'm looking for a translator who can work on this, that and the other. And, and then they give me a price code and send it back to me. And then I'd send it to the end client and usually try to make some money off of it in exchange, you know, for the extra that I get, I do project manage the different languages for the client. So it's not like I'm sitting back doing, doing nothing. But what I like about it is that you're not necessarily paid just for the time you put in translating. Over time, if you start doing this more and more, then you can get paid not based on your time, but on how much you have going on at the same time. And this was a big reason why I transitioned, or I am transitioning now, into being an agency. And that's what I'm trying to do with my agency is, you know, to be able to not only have to rely on my own hours of work, but be able to use other people's work and basically use that to make money. The thing is anyone can do this because everyone has access to pros.com. Now, obviously, you have to make your client happy, you need to make sure they're good translations, you need to work well with the translators, and with whatever editor goes over, you need to make sure it's good quality, like there's a lot you need to do, and you need to make sure and these are in languages that you don't know. So you need to be sure of what you do before you do it. Actually, I say that I wasn't sure at all, but I did give myself time, extra time and extra leeway with the price, even though that wasn't enough at the beginning, to make sure that I had enough margin to make it right. So if you get a translation from Russian to English, and if you don't do Russian, then, you know, you might not know where to start when you have to look. So the best way would be to find a translator. If you use pros.com, you know how to find a good translator because you're on it all the time, you yourself being a translator. So you find one, have them translate, find another editor, an editor pretty much gets paid to find mistakes in the translation. So through them, you can usually, you know, spit out a good quality document, and then you can send it to the client. This takes a lot of work, especially at the beginning. But once you start doing it, and you keep doing it over and over, and you kind of get a flow, and you work with various translators, and you're happy working with them, then it can be very good. And look, it's good for the translators. They're, you know, because as being a translator, I can tell you, I'm very happy when people come to me. And I don't have to go out searching for new jobs, and people come to me and want to keep working with me. Of course I am. And the client's happy because the client gets something and that's good quality. And I'm just kind of a middleman, but I'm not just sitting there twiddling my thumbs. I'm project managing the whole thing in these various people and parties. So if this is something, if you want to basically stay ahead of the curve, and if you want to be able to use these websites for all their worth, especially something like pros.com where you're paying for membership, then this could be a good idea. And if you do get a request from someone says, hey, by the way, do you think you could do this or that in the other, then try it. And also, by the way, this doesn't have to be limited to languages. Maybe someone's happy with a translation and they say, hey, by the way, do you also do transcription or do you do coding? Can you also do this coded up so it looks nice on our website or something like that. And I've mentioned this in other videos about diversification. And this is a very simple way to do so. If you get a request yourself, then you can say, yeah, I think I can work on that. And let me check or else, you know, what you can do is before replying, check right away, see if you can find people who are good at that. And then and then see if you can provide something like that to the client. It's always kind of risky. So I would say always give yourself plenty of margin, especially with time with money. You know, if it doesn't work out, worst case, you lose a bit of money. But if you don't deliver on time to the client, you know, very often, they don't want to work with you again. And I'd rather it cost me a bit. And then that way I know, at least I won't do it again, rather than risk sending something late to the client and risk them never contacting me again. So anyway, it's just something to keep in mind a way to leverage these websites that you're already a part of in order to get more out of it and to get more out of them and to be able to find new ways to earn money, especially for those of you who maybe aren't getting much work on your language or if you have a rare language combination or something along those lines. Hopefully, this can help you out to earn a little something extra. So I mean, that's pretty much it. Like I said, I kind of just went into there almost by accident. But I did find it useful. So hopefully you find it useful as well. And if you do, please click thumbs up. That always helps. And also, if you want more videos like this, feel free to subscribe and get more videos for help with freelancing, freelance translation and stuff like that in general. And otherwise, I will see you on the next video. Thanks. Bye.


Hi everyone, this is Dennis from Problab. I try to speed run my tiny presentation. So we as Problab were running the nut hole punching month. So first of all, thanks to everyone who participated. So what were the project's goals? And so net hole punching in general, we want to have full connectivity among all nodes of a Lippie to Pee network despite nets and firewalls. And in general, this specific project, because we wanted to gather information that guide protocol optimizations or also some implementation details. And we got a lot of data for that. The measurement campaign ran from the 1st of December until officially until the 1st of January this year. I analyzed the data that we gathered until the 10th of January. So a little more, we had almost 300 API keys generated that could, in theory, have submitted data. But after some deduplication and so on, I'm pretty sure that with this 154 clients, so we had 154 clients deployed that have hole punched or punched 47,000 peers around the world and contributed 6.25 million data points that we are now analyzing or I have started analyzing. And on the right hand side, you can see where the clients were deployed and, sorry, and the remote peers resided. So we basically probe the whole network, so this is the whole world. So here we have the time on the x-axis, on the left y-axis, the success rate. And each dot is an individual, so the color of each dot is an individual network in which the client was deployed. And so basically what you can see here is that the success rate, if we probe the whole world or all the other peers in the network, we have a hole punching success rate of around 70%. And so I will get to this in a bit. But yeah, so this highly depends on the network conditions. But yeah, so we have around 70%. And the faint red line in the background is the number of data points that were submitted on each day across all the clients that we have deployed, which at peak were 35,000 and yet dropped after I have sent out the email that the whole punching campaign is done. So what were the insights so far? So I'm still working on the final reports. So the success rate is around 70%, but as I said, since we're probing the whole world, it depends on the network of clients as well. However, that's the success rate that it would experience right now if they used the whole punching protocol today to connect to a random peer, other peer in the network. Then some other insights. We expect it quick to be more successful than TCP. We couldn't verify this. So it seems to be that they are similarly successful with regards to hole punching. IPv4, IPv6, IPv6 has a much lower success rate. We're still not sure if this is a measurement detail or actually a problem in the implementation or the protocol. Interestingly, it's not round trip time dependent. So if you know the whole punching protocol a little bit better, we're synchronizing both peers and we thought that the round trip time is a big factor into place a big role in the success rate, which we couldn't verify. So that's also good that we're not aiming to optimize for that. Then peers, as expected, have a worse success rate in VPNs, but also we have interest in another protocol optimization for that lined up. And so this graph at the bottom is quite insightful. So we try the whole punch three times, but we found out that if a whole punch was successful, it was with 97.6% successful with the first attempt with the first try. This means, let's optimize the protocol to change strategy with the second or third attempt to increase the odds with the second and third attempt. So this is also another insight for that. Alyssa, the three, like there's another protocol improvement that we're proposing based on feedback from the foster talk that Max and I gave in Brussels last weekend. Also some implementation details issues kind of thing. So still discussing discussions going on. Around some weird data points that we have which could indicate some bugs or not. So we're still discussing that. And in terms of next step, I'm working on the final report. You can see the gif at the bottom right. I'm already started with that. There are many more graphs and so on, many things to look into and a lot of angles to look into the data. And yeah, feel free to have a read and this is the next step. Thanks a lot.