Ever scratched your head trying to figure out what makes a song more interesting? Maybe you struggle with topics such as how to make a song more exciting or what might describe exciting music. Then check out EP 116 of the Inside The Mix podcast.
Are you ready to uncover the secrets of music production and transform your tunes? Join me, your host Marc Matthews, as we venture into the mesmerising world of ear candy and unique sound effects. This episode promises a deep dive into the innovative techniques I used in my latest single, "Let You Go," featuring the magnificent Indigo. Discover the magic of the ANA 2 plugin, learn the power of the bandpass filter in creating a compelling noise riser and pad, and share my love for the rhythmic world of tremolo.
We don't just stop there. Wander with me into the labyrinth of adding layers to a mix, creating an audio journey that will capture your listeners' attention. Uncover the beauty of a high-shelf filter and learn how to use other effects to add that irresistible ear candy, making your mix pop. Hear my personal tips and tricks and give them a whirl in your own mixes. Plus, get an exclusive behind-the-scenes listen to how these techniques were applied in "Let You Go." So grab your headphones, set your curiosity free, and let's embark on this musical journey together! Your ideas and feedback are my favourite part of the ride, so don't be shy and share your thoughts - I can't wait to hear what you think!
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Thanks for listening & happy producing!
Speaker 1:
You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, mark Matthews. Hello and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. I'm Mark Matthews, your host, musician, producer and mix and mastering engineer. You've come to the right place if you want to know more about your favorite synth music artists, music engineering and production, songwriting and the music industry. I've been writing, producing, mixing and mastering music for over 15 years and I want to share what I've learned with you. Hello, folks, and welcome back to the Inside the Mix podcast.
Speaker 1:
If you are a new listener or viewer, make sure you hit that follow button on your podcast player of choice and if you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you hit subscribe and that notification bell so you get notified anytime we go live or there is a new video. So I am still in celebration mode. My single, let you Go, featuring Indigo, has now been out for just over a week at the time of this podcast going live. Now, when I'm recording this, it actually hasn't been released yet. It's going to be released this Friday, because I'm recording this on the Sunday before it goes live, which is November the 10th, and it has been available now for streaming. So I have no idea in this episode, how it's gone, what the reception has been. But if you haven't listened to it yet, I'm going to put a link in the episode description and head over to Spotify and give it a listen and let me know what you think as well. Head over to Instagram at Inside the Mix podcast, and send me a DM, give me your thoughts. Alternatively, head over to YouTube, watch the music video, which will go live on the November the 10th so it will be live and leave a comment. Let me know what you think. It'd be amazing. If you do have any playlists, please do chuck it in a playlist, share it with me, tag the podcast. Alternatively, you can tag my producer profile, which is Mark Matthews producer, on Instagram and just let me know what you think. I would love to get your feedback, as I have been banging on about this track on the podcast for a while now. So any support would be amazing. So thank you, folks. I also want to give a shout out to Pensacola Mr as well. Now, if you are an avid viewer of the podcast, particularly if you're watching this on YouTube, you might notice behind me on the wall there is a new poster and it is the gig poster from their Halloween show and it is amazing. It's a Simpsons themed poster and I saw them post this on Instagram and I immediately reached out was like I need that poster to adorn my wall, which is nicely growing here. I must say it's a nice background I've got going. So if you're listening to this on your podcast player of choice, do head over to YouTube. Obviously, hit subscribe where you there and check it out. Is a great poster. Now, admittedly, the bottom is cut off, but you get the idea. I'm not going to move it now because we're going to dive into this week's episode.
Speaker 1:
So I regularly provide feedback on song sent to me by artists. So that's feedback in terms of mixing. It could be composition, arrangement etc. And one thing I always remark on is the use of rises and just effects. So when I say effects, I don't mean like time based processing, I mean like sound effects just to add a bit of ear candy to a composition and arrangement. So that's what we're going to go through today. I'm going to show you in this song let you go by featuring Indigo. I'm going to show you how I use effects just to add a bit of ear candy, to add a bit of interest and push forward a song.
Speaker 1:
So I've got this pre course section here and I'm going to play it. And I'm going to play it without any effects, any rises, anything going on, just so you can get a bit of context. So let's play it without any effects. There we go. You can hear I've got some tremolo going on there with the vocal. I love the use of tremolo. I love it. I love that stereo width of moving things from left to right. I think it sounds great and I use that a lot in productions, in this one in particular. Here you can see it sounds a bit empty, to be honest. It just sounds like it's moving along, it's plodding along and suddenly there is a crash and the chorus comes in.
Speaker 1:
Let's go through the first thing I've got here. I've got this noise riser and pad. I'm using the Anna 2 plug in here. Let's have a look at what patch I've used for this. I'm loading Anna 2 now. I've got the red riser pad. I did it a while back so I couldn't tell you if I've changed the patch here. Let's have a listen to it on its own. I'm just going to turn off any effects or any process. Rather, I've done to this. Let's have a listen. There we go. It's just a standard. It's almost like high strings, basically High strings, but it's a pad. It sounds a bit boring.
Speaker 1:
What I did was I went in, I used an EQ I've got the Infinity EQ here Obviously you can use any EQ and I've got this band pass filter going on here. It's set at 720Hz and just under 10kHz. Let's have a listen to that. And I've also, actually, before I do that, I've got this tremolo. Like I said, I love tremolo and I've got this default one here. It's synced to the BPM. I always like to sync to BPM.
Speaker 1:
I like to keep things nice and straightforward rather than do that sort of freeform version of it, which is just the rate. Well, it is the rate anyway. I can't remember what it's called. Now you can change it. You can be more granular with your changes. I'm waffling now, but I leave it on rate and I've got the depth at 50%. Let's play it with the EQ and the tremolo. So immediately that sounds much better and it's going to fit much better in the mix as well.
Speaker 1:
I wanted to get rid of that quite harsh sounding highs for a high frequency you have there. So I've got that. So on top of this I've got this other noise sound as well and I believe it's just white noise, and I'm using Anna 2 again for this and I've got the Infinity EQ with a bandpass filter on it again. This time it's about 200 Hertz and I've got it set about 8.5 kilohertz and this is just literally just noise. So let's hear what this sounds like with the sort of high strings underneath it as well. So I'm just going to move my cycle region because I don't want to play that bit before. Yes, so here we go. So I've opened Anna 2 and I can see here in the G envelope I've got the pitch and it's the coarse pitch, so it's gradually going up in pitch. You can hear that pitch rise in there.
Speaker 1:
Now, looking at this here, if I was to go back and do any more editing to this track, I might look at some reverb on this one here, because I've noticed I haven't actually got it bussed out to any verb. Now. I must have been a creative choice at the time, but thinking now it might be something I experiment with. Maybe I did at the time, I couldn't remember. So then further I've got this bubble effect noise and this sounds like this. So I'm just going to move my cycle region actually here and you can hear that moving from left to right.
Speaker 1:
Once again I was in Anna 2 mode at this point because I'm using Anna 2 again and it's called Bubble Boy. It's a patch called Bubble Boy and for this I've got the Infinity EQ again. I've got my band pass. They use that a lot in this mix. Looking at it here for the effects, I've got this set at 300 Hertz and just under 10 kilo Hertz for the low pass. And then I've got tremolo. I said I like tremolo and this is moving from left to right. My rate is set at a quarter note and it's synced, as I mentioned earlier, and this time it's at 65%. So it's more prominent and I actually did this bus.
Speaker 1:
I did bust this out to the whole reverb as well, so you can see, if you're watching this from YouTube, it's going up some verb and I'll play it again in this sounds. I play it just from bar 23 and it sounds like this. There we go. You can see how I'm layering these sounds just to create a much more interesting build to the chorus. And then there's one more bit and I've got this reverse CD sound and I love this. I've used this in so many tracks. It's a really short transition and I will play it now on its own. So I'm just going to mute the other track so you can hear what it sounds like. Okay, and I've got that bused out to a chamber reverb, so let's just turn the verb off. Okay, and now with the verb on.
Speaker 1:
And then I've got my infinity EQ again, and this time I've rolled off a lot of the sort of mid range frequencies and the highs as well. So I've got this high shelf filter at minus 5 dB, around 2 kilohertz, where is the sort of most sensitive? And once again I've got this band. So anything below sort of 300 Hertz getting rid of, and then anything above 11 kilohertz I'm getting rid of, I'm getting rid of. And there we go.
Speaker 1:
I did notice, actually, when that noise came in. It kind of comes in quite abruptly and but I'm imagining I cannot hear that in the mix, otherwise I would like to think I would have got rid of it or made a smoother transition into that sound. So let's give it a listen with everything. So here we go, folks. I'm actually going to extend my cycle region a bit more and I'm going to go from bar 17 to bar 29, just so we've got a bit of lead in and lead out. So here we go. Ok, so that's with, and now I'm going to remove everything. When I say everything, I mean the effects. There we go. So hopefully you can hear the difference just by adding four simple effects there. I've made that such a much more interesting transition and I've layered them as well.
Speaker 1:
Now, looking at it here, I've used a band pass filter on all of these tracks, but if I were to go back and do it again, I might look at how because they're all sat in the same region, they're all in that sort of mid range region and I might look at how I'm juggling those frequencies. But for this mix, I think it sounds OK. So there we go, folks. A quick demo on how you can use effects to spice up your mix and your arrangement and just make it a bit more interesting to push forward a song and add that bit of ear candy. And before you go, do make sure that you click on the link in the episode description and give my song, let you Go, featuring Indigo, a listen on Spotify. And please do reach out to me on Instagram at Inside the Mix podcast and let me know what you think. Add it to your playlist. Tag me in it as well. Tag the podcast, I'll give it a reshare. And also, if you're watching this on YouTube, just leave a comment and let me know what you think.