#168: Mastering Music Production: Insights and Strategies with Lij Shaw (Recording Studio Rockstars)

Curious about mixing music or want to level up your music production skills? Join me in EP 168 of the Inside The Mix podcast as I sit down with Lij Shaw, award-winning producer and owner of the Grammy-awarded Toy Box Studio. Lij brings a wealth of experience and shares his practical approach to balancing the simplicity and complexity of music mixing. From gear discoveries on eBay to his insights as a longtime podcaster, Lij’s journey provides a unique perspective on dedication, community, and artistry in music.

In this episode, we tackle practical techniques to streamline your music production workflow, inspired by a listener's challenge to manage track organization and MIDI conversion. Lij and I explore how mix templates, separated technical tasks, and effective session setups can make mixing a smooth, enjoyable process. Plus, you’ll learn how tools like poetry scores can inspire lyrics, helping you produce creatively while staying efficient. Whether you're an aspiring producer or a pro, this episode is packed with actionable strategies and real-world advice.

In This Episode, you’ll Learn:

• Mixing Essentials: How to simplify your mixing workflow by rendering MIDI to WAV files and organising tracks for easy access
• Mix Templates: The benefits of using mix templates for a consistent, professional sound across your projects
• Creative Lyric Writing: Transforming poetry scores into lyrics and enhancing songwriting
• Effective Workflow Tips: Separating creative mixing from technical tasks to avoid burnout
• Stress-Free Recording: Setting up a comfortable recording environment for seamless production

Tune in and discover strategies to make mixing music and music production not only manageable but rewarding.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Music Production Podcast Interview With Lidge Shaw
• 3:46 Improving Workflow in Music Production
• 7:43 Separating Sessions for Music Production
• 14:57 Refining Mixing Techniques in Music
• 26:53 Creative Songwriting and Recording Process
• 37:24 Developing Mix Templates for Music Production

Transcript

Lij Shaw: 0:27

You want to learn some simple stuff that will help you out at first, and then you can get more complex as you go. I'm way more. It's funny to say this, but I've got a much more complex way of approaching things now and simultaneously I treat it in a much simpler manner now.

Marc Matthews: 1:04

I'm much bolder about doing less on a mix 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. Hey folks, welcome back. I am very excited. I'm thrilled for today's guest, or rather this episode's guest, the award-winning music and podcast producer, recording engineer and owner of the Grammy-awarded the Toy Box Studio in East Nashville, lidge Shaw Lidge. How are you today? Thank you for joining me on the podcast.

Lij Shaw: 1:51

My pleasure, mark. It's great to be here and it's great to get to meet all your listeners who, I understand, are all music makers and aspiring music makers, and songwriters and people who just want to make cool tunes.

Marc Matthews: 2:05

They are indeed, and I'm going to hazard a guess and say a large number of them probably do listen to your podcast as well, as I do routinely communicate with the listeners and they say they listen to XYZ on other podcasts. So no doubt that. But we'll get into to your podcast shortly. But yeah, it's. It's always nice to have another podcaster on the show because, as you were mentioning earlier, it can be quite a solo effort being a podcaster. So, yeah, it's always nice to have another one on the show, and you, they're always going to have a good microphone as well, which is always good.

Lij Shaw: 2:35

And this is my dedicated video mic. It's not actually my podcasting mic, but it's the one that I made sure sounds good on video, so hopefully it sounds good. It does, indeed, it does indeed you know it's funny, you mentioned it, so it really is true.

Marc Matthews: 2:47

Podcasting can be a little bit of a lonely business, in the same way that making music in your home studio can feel that way you know, yeah, most definitely find yourself sort of alone doing your stuff, your creation yeah, I, I totally agree with that and I was just saying off air actually, um, with your podcast itself, so it's for the audience listening. Um, I'll tell you what it is now. It's recording studio rock stars and I was listening on my listening to it on my run today with your conversation with Brennan, which was really interesting when you were talking about eBay and I was saying to my fiance the other day that I cannot remember the last time I bought something on eBay, but I did used to buy loads of gear on. When I say gear, I'm talking about I say gear like guitars and whatnot. Over in the UK. Gear can often mean something else.

Lij Shaw: 3:32

Well, you guys refer to here. We talk about gear for the studio over there. You guys talk about your kit, right?

Marc Matthews: 3:40

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, talking about your kit. So, yeah, I remember buying loads of guitars and pedals and whatnot on there, but no, it was a really interesting conversations. So, audience, once you've listened to this one, go and check out that um conversation if you're one that feels some, or listen to some, nostalgia when it comes to buying, buy kit or gear. However you want to call it um, but lidge um a bit more on your bio here a chart topping producer and engineer, but also the host of the number one itunes podcast recording studio rock stars, where you share insights from over 480 interviews shameless self-plug got my own t-shirt on.

Marc Matthews: 4:17

This is my uniform when I go to events and stuff if I'd known that I would have worn my inside the mix podcast hoodie, but I do have my mug here, so I've got.

Lij Shaw: 4:26

Oh nice there you go.

Marc Matthews: 4:27

There's my shameless and can your listeners go get a mug if they want uh, I think I don't think my store's up and I'm going to have to double-check.

Lij Shaw: 4:35

You don't have to do that.

Marc Matthews: 4:36

I was giving them away for free, so I cannot remember if the store's still up and running. It might well be. I never plug it.

Lij Shaw: 4:44

Maybe I should All right, everybody, give Mark a hard time and get him to make those mugs available to you.

Marc Matthews: 4:49

Yeah, in fact, I will say that I think, yeah, this is the old logo, so I do need to get some new stuff with the new logo and the hoodies as well. So, yeah, I should have worn my hoodie as well. So what I was saying there was about 480 interviews with top recording engineers, mixers and songwriters worldwide. You've been in the game podcasting game game for a while now. I think you were saying 10 years, is that right?

Lij Shaw: 5:14

Yeah, it's been about a decade now already since I started, and when I started it I had been really interested in podcasting myself. I'd just been listening to other ones, and then I got this idea. I was like you know, what do I love more than anything is talking about making records in the studio, recording songs, writing songs, all of it. So why not just make a podcast about that?

Marc Matthews: 5:36

Exactly. No better reason. It's got to be something you're cliche, passionate about, hasn't it? Yeah, otherwise, you can soon Again. We were discussing off air that a lot of podcasts don't get past the 10 or 20 episode mark, and probably for that reason. So, yeah, I think it's like 90 a podcast, which is crazy considering how well, it's like recording in your home studio.

Lij Shaw: 5:58

You, you love it, but as you do it, it's still going to turn into work yeah, you're going to hit that point where it's a real pain in the butt and it's like if you don't love it, you're not going to push through and get. Get to the other side of that, yeah.

Marc Matthews: 6:12

I totally agree. There are elements, as much as I love podcasting, but there are parts of it where it is kind of like that man, I've got to do that again every week, I won't lie and it's mainly when it comes to social media marketing.

Lij Shaw: 6:23

That's where I grimace every time an episode goes live.

Marc Matthews: 6:37

And I've never heard a musician talk about the frustrations of having to put themselves out there on social media either. Right, yeah, exactly, exactly, it's that necessary evil. I even might be the strong word, but yeah, I'm gonna roll with it. I'm gonna roll with it. Um. So, lidge spent your career helping musicians and producers, as you, as you've just mentioned, then, uh, with recording studio rock stars and obviously with the the um, producing and recording audio engineering as well.

Marc Matthews: 6:52

So today's topic is inspired by one of the podcast's listeners and his name is tony. I won't, I won't read out his full name, he'll. He'll know who he is tony, you rock, he does, indeed, he does there. There we go. A big shout out for you there, tony.

Marc Matthews: 7:08

So his pain point is this, when it comes to mixing, is the amount of time it takes to set up a session, and he says rendering midi tracks to wow files, grouping, editing, putting individual tracks in order, not to mention loading up all the necessary plugins. And he says he finds the whole process quite tedious and, if anything, he says, it seems to get longer each time, which isn't ideal. So this episode, folks, lidge is here to share his best tips for improving workflow in music production and mixing. You know it, yeah, so we're going to get loads out of this. So my first question so, as Tony mentioned then, about setting up a session can sometimes take quite a while. Maybe you could talk about some techniques or shortcuts to use to streamline that initial session setup Audio files, organizing everything before mixing, basically.

Lij Shaw: 8:05

So, tony, first off, you're 100% correct. It is a total pain in the butt to do all the stuff you described and it is time consuming, and it also can leave you feeling like, by the time you've got through all that stuff, you're depleted and so you got nothing left more for the creative, fun part of it, which is the music making, mixing should feel like a performance. It should feel like you're making music. If you're a guitar player, like I am, for example, I think you want mixing to feel like you've picked up a guitar and you're playing a song with your best friends and having a great time, and so the best strategy for doing that I find, and have heard from countless other people, is to simply isolate and set aside the different times. So, for example I'll just go to the guitar analogy again you might not want to set up and restring your guitar at the same moment that you want to pick up your guitar and play it right. So you would want to probably do that at a different time, where you get the guitar into perfect playable condition and then, when you sit down to actually play or write a song, you just pick up the guitar and start playing. And so I find for mixing it's the same thing. It's just another form of an instrument that we need to get ready when we're going to sit down and do the work we want to do. So if you can literally separate your times, where you sit down at one point and all you're doing is getting it ready to mix and then you just put it away with no obligation to do any mixing yet, and then you come back next time knowing that it's ready for you, where you can just sit down and quickly mix, I think you'll find that that makes it a lot more enjoyable and it could also leave you feeling a lot more empowered, in that when you sit down to mix, maybe you sit down and you mix it in you know, half an hour the first time, because you didn't have to put in all that work, and so you just kind of go through and do a quick balance and maybe you bounce that mix and print it and put it away again and maybe come back another time and mix it. You know, and maybe you've listened to that rough mix or that first mix that you printed Maybe you come back with a couple of notes to yourself and very quickly do another version of the mix and put that away and then come back again when I'm mixing.

Lij Shaw: 10:52

But then there's also a lot of stuff that I'm just not going to know until I listen back to it in the car afterwards, especially in home studio situations where I'm trying to stay in the inspiration moment but the sonics might be limiting, there might be limitations to what I can hear in the bass and the drums and the vocal level and all that kind of stuff, and it can be really really helpful to hear it outside of that control room context, for example, listening on the phone speaker later in the kitchen while you're making coffee or something like that, or listening in the car driving around. Those could be places where it's really easy to hear something that you missed the first time, and so giving yourself the ability to kind of print a mix quickly with some fundamental decisions and then have a chance to listen to it and come back and make quicker changes could be an inspiration for you. I got lots more to say on it, but I'll let you share the mic with me, mark.

Marc Matthews: 11:48

What I was gonna say. There is what you mentioned about there about separating sessions, and really does mirror something I was chatting with to someone about the other day which was about, uh, the sound design and the songwriting process, and it was, uh, I think it was on the podcast, so it might just been a general conversation, and I was asking the question do you sound design at the same time as you are songwriting? Because, because for me I do them separately. That way I've got separate sessions. I know today I've got this idea, this sound I want to recreate, and that is my session, or today or this morning, whatever it may be, and then later I will then move on to the actual songwriting process.

Marc Matthews: 12:27

But it kind of does echo what you said there about having those separate sessions, in that you have one session which is where you're going to be setting up your project, getting it ready to go, and then coming back to it later with a different mindset, ready to go with the mixing process, which is, uh, you know what I've always and I I don't know why I haven't done this before because I do it with sound design and music production, but I always go straight in, straight into mixing afterwards without taking a break, and I never thought actually it'd probably be. Do me some good to take a break in between, um, which makes perfect sense, it really does well?

Lij Shaw: 12:58

I, I think it's. You know, there's a certain element of like you just created this thing, so you want to now keep working on it, that's fine, as long as you're having fun, keep, keep moving forward.

Lij Shaw: 13:07

But just, you know, we've all got our own personal version of what part of this feels like work and what part of this feels like fun. So I think it's a question of finding ways to separate the two so that you don't feel guilty about stopping in the middle of of a process. You know, like, if you do the work part and you're like cool, I accomplished that and set it aside Because I mean, it's really easy to like make something, and then I think all of your listeners can appreciate this it's very, very easy to make something and then listen and come back later and go, wow, that sucks, yep, so that's normal. Everybody feels that Like, pick your most favorite famous artist. I promise you that they feel that way too.

Marc Matthews: 13:52

Yeah, most definitely I. I do all the time I do it with. Uh, actually, to be fair, do I do a podcast? I think when I record tutorial episodes for the podcast, sometimes I I watch back and I'm thinking I could have done that better I'm gonna, I'm gonna.

Lij Shaw: 14:04

I'm gonna remind you of this mark the first podcasts you did. You were grueling over them, you were probably beating yourself up. You probably edited yourself into a black hole.

Marc Matthews: 14:13

Oh, 100 I. I I've had. Uh, I was chatting with another podcaster when I was on their podcast a few weeks back and I was saying that when I first started podcasting it was just that I was editing crazy amounts uh, dead, dead air and whatnot and it was taking me so long and I was thinking, oh man, um, if I can't do this every week, this is going to take me a while. But yeah, a hundred percent. And then as time progressed, I became a bit more well, it didn't take me so long and I wasn't being so harsh a critic on myself. But then when I listened to the first episode it's also the delivery as well it's a lot different. So, audience listening, if you go back and listen to episode one of this podcast, you'll find the way that I deliver now is probably a lot different to the way I was delivering it in episode one as well, which is interesting, yeah.

Lij Shaw: 14:58

You learn to do things like self-edit when you're speaking. Yeah, because you go through and you edit what was said so many times that you begin to recognize all these details. How many times you say um, how many times you repeat a sentence that was one of the ones that was weird to discover is like oh wow, originally, when I'm talking, I would start a sentence and then start it over again. Weird stuff like that. You just really get to know, and that's true for music too. That's one of the reasons why it's okay to put in all that time editing at first, because you begin to really discover things. You discover that, oh, when I changed from this chord to that chord, I kind of missed the beginning of the next chord and I didn't notice it until I edited it carefully.

Marc Matthews: 15:47

Yeah, it's what you mentioned there about when you listen back to your voice or what you're saying on that podcast, the one that stuck out for me was that when the interviewee had finished talking, I was almost not always, but like 70, 80% of the time using the same word to then start talking myself, and I was like, okay, I've got to self-edit and start using a different word or a different foundation for me to then build on what I want to say. So, yeah, it's really, really interesting.

Lij Shaw: 16:14

Right, so you can start every sentence with something new, like butterfly or spatula.

Marc Matthews: 16:19

Yeah, yeah, little Easter eggs, as we say in each episode. See if the audience could pick them out when I'm using just a random word to start a sentence and see if they can get it. Yeah, I might introduce that in episodes going forward. So, audience, listen out for that. I'm going to put Easter eggs in each episode. See if you can pick out what that word is for that particular one.

Lij Shaw: 16:37

I got more thoughts about speeding up the workflow there.

Lij Shaw: 16:42

So one of the things there's this concept of a mix template, and that is a huge time saver because what you do is you essentially create something that represents a baseline setup for mixing that includes a lot of the stuff that you like. So that's going to vary depending on who you're talking to, what kind of music you're doing, what kind of mix you're setting up for. But, for example, let's just take a really basic idea. Let's just say you've got live drums, which tend to be one of the more complex things we can record in a studio, and I understand probably a lot of your listeners are using in-the-box drums, digital drums, but still the digital drums might lay out in your multi-track DAW like kick, snare, toms, hi-hat, overheads, rooms and everything like that, so they may end up looking like multi-track mics and in order to mix that, you may want to do things like collect them all together into a track grouping. You might want to have certain plugins on the kick and the snare that do things that really make them punchy or give you the ability to sculpt the low frequencies carefully In real drums. In the studio you might have gates, that sort of try and get rid of the sound of the bleed from the other things. With your digital ones they tend to be recorded so well. You're not going to need quite as much of that stuff you probably won't need any of it, in fact but you might still want to do some EQ moves. Eq is one of those things that is sort of universally useful across all styles of music. And then you might want to take all those drums and have them all bussing or routing together through a master output. Sometimes it's called a folder track, sometimes it's just an auxiliary bus, whatever it is that you're using to do that, that, and then on that you know, routing that bus, routing for the drums. Maybe you want to have a compressor and another EQ or something, or a tape thing that makes it sound like old school drums or something like that. So by setting up all of that beforehand as a template where everything is sort of got a, it's an empty track, maybe there's no actual drums on it, but it's got the right plugins on it. The levels are generally what you would have done when there were actually drums on them, and then it's going to the output fader.

Lij Shaw: 19:20

That could be your drum mixing template, and you might have a template for mixing that includes all the instruments you might ever typically use. So in my studio, if I have a live band in here, it might include kick tracks, you know, snares, toms, hi-hats, overhead mics, ambient mics. For the drums it might have the stereo room mic that's upstairs and all of that is routed through a drum output. And then I might have a bass track that has, you know, an input where the bass player is going to record. We do a lot of direct bass now. The plugins for bass amps sound so good that you're welcome to go record a real bass amp. But you might actually just be creating more work for yourself than you need to do, since the plugins of amps can sound so good now that you can really dial it in and make it sound right for the mix when you're leaning into the mix. But, for example, I might have that track, might already have five options for bass amp plugins preloaded on it so that I can just enable one and see if that's the right bass amp for that song when I'm in the mix, when I'm actually mixing.

Lij Shaw: 20:36

And then same thing for guitars, vocals you know vocals typically might want a variety of plugins on them, like compression and EQ, a de-esser you might want to have something to control the sibilance. Once you've done all that compression with vocals, once you add all the compression that you want and the EQ to sort of make the vocals pop, now all of a sudden you've made all the S's sound insanely loud, and so that's why you need to put a de-esser to take that sibilance back under control on your vocal track. And then also you'll do things like exaggerate all the breaths so that it sounds like people are gasping on a microphone when they take a normal breath before a line. And those are the reasons why we have all those special tools like Waves. De-breath will help with that a little bit. But honestly, when it comes to breaths, since songs aren't all that long they're three minutes and there's only so many lines, it's easier for you to just go in and manually adjust those if you want to. I'm probably getting a little overly technical.

Marc Matthews: 21:40

Yeah, one quick question on the breath there, because I do see conversations online where some might say leave breaths in attenuating by X amount, get them gone totally. Where do you stand on breaths in a mix?

Lij Shaw: 22:00

I do a variety of things. Sometimes I blow it off, and just, it's one of the beauties about mixing quickly, especially when when you're doing rough mixes is you can do less of all this trickery and just really try and do a great balance of all the instruments and and you know, get the look. We all know what our music's supposed to feel like to us. So just go for that first, do just go for the feeling of it and then print that mix, because then you'll have something to listen to and then, when you're listening to it, you'll get a better sense of like oh wow, those breaths sound ridiculous. Or you might not notice them at all, and if you don't notice them at all, then it's not a problem. Don't fix it, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. That's what we say here.

Marc Matthews: 22:37

It's kind of like don't look for the, don't look for the problems that, yeah, yeah, you're actively looking for those for an issue, you're probably going to find it. But I I love what you said there about that printing that initial just what is essentially just the balance, isn't it? You're just getting the getting a balance bit of panning and whatnot, and then that's your initial sort of creative vision for it, and then you can use all the other processing that you have available to you to then further refine and enhance it and get you that finished mix ultimately.

Lij Shaw: 23:03

And those are tools and techniques that you will learn and acquire and put into your own toolbox as you learn them. You don't have to worry about knowing them all right straight out of the gate. You want to learn some simple stuff that will help you out at first, and then you can get more complex as you go. I'm way more I swear it's funny to say this, but I've got a much more complex way of approaching things now and simultaneously I treat it in a much simpler manner. Now I'm much more, I'm much bolder about doing less on a mix I love that.

Marc Matthews: 23:40

I'm gonna get that as a soundbite for the episode because I think that's fantastic. I'm much bolder at doing less, because I think that's that's because you can overkill it. And I used to do a thing about a year ago which was, I think, with the producers pub where probably named it incorrectly. But I gather other artists on and we chat about, uh, music production. They play some music and we critique it and whatnot. And also another feature we do is the producer kickstarts as well, where the audience come on and chat about a pain point. But a lot of the time it is just overdoing stuff, just doing too much. And the coaching I do we were discussing off air coaching and I often get coachees come in and they'll go through their mixing process X, y, z and I'll go through just the basics, for example, setting a static balance and they'll be like, oh really, I didn't realize that's all I needed to do. In that instance I'm like, yeah, you're just over complicating it oh, I was just going to comment on that.

Lij Shaw: 24:27

So the static balance is a great way to do it. And then when you're listening back to the static balance and you discover you know what the vocal is too loud in the verse but it's too quiet in the chorus, then then you know Eureka. Now you know that it's okay to bring the level down in the verse a little bit on the vocal and bring it up in the chorus. But trying to like decide all that stuff before you've arrived at something that you feel confident about is a recipe for just going in circles. I mean a lot of it is just as simple as that. Your listeners.

Lij Shaw: 25:03

What might be a funny thing to say is they may feel like beginners about maybe the songwriting or the production or the how to do all the technical stuff in the studio, but just based on the fact that they're listening to this podcast right now is an indicator to me that they are already actually experts at music.

Lij Shaw: 25:26

And this all goes back to a famous quote from Ira Glass, who said you begin as an expert in your taste in music. So you've spent years and years possibly listening to music and so you have a strong feeling about what's good. You know what's good. So your level of expertise is up here as far as what you think about music. But in the creating of it you feel like your expertise is way down here and so you're just trying to, like, work your way up to match your, your um. You know your expertise in taste and that can take a whole. You know lifetime of practice and body of work and all that. So don't sweat it too much, just just trust your own impression of what you think is good and just keep trying to work your way, one step at a time, towards that yeah, fantastic advice.

Marc Matthews: 26:24

Totally agree with all that. Um, just circling back to what you said there about the templates are going right back to the beginning here of this particular section. So you mentioned there about having sort of a mix template or recording recording template. Do you have different templates for different sort of phases of the production process of like songwriting mixing? Yes, although I don't get too caught up in that of phases of the production process of like songwriting mixing.

Lij Shaw: 26:43

Yes, Although I don't get too caught up in that, because one of the problems with focusing too much on templates is you spend all your time there instead of on making the song. So I, very specifically now have arrived at a system that works great for me. In fact, I just like, literally just last night, the last member of seven house guests who are here with me over the weekend making music together just split. So I had a house full of people in the studio, full of friends and guests, and we recorded five songs, from demo sketch to something that sounds like it's ready for um. You probably could just release it as is. You know, I'm, of course, knowing me. I'm going to go back in and I'm going to work hard on the mixes and work hard on the mastering and like tweak more things and check the vocal notes and all that kind of stuff but, I'll get to all that.

Lij Shaw: 27:37

When I get to it right now I did the rough mixes really, where it's like you just go for the feeling and everybody left feeling really, really excited about it. But that process for me is something that is probably a longer story than we can get into on this whole, just on this podcast. But it involves working with a group of friends where, in this instance, we do something we call poetry scores, where one of the people involved is a writer and a poet and he really wanted to hear other people singing this stuff, so he sort of shared it with the group of us. Each of us was taking one of the poems and saying, oh, I'm going to go make a song out of it. And then it sort of relieves you of the responsibility for the lyrics. You're like great, I've already got the words, now I just got to figure out how do I put this into a fun song. And then that becomes a really great, simple, creative process. You're like OK, it's like a songwriting exercise.

Lij Shaw: 28:40

So for that first stage of it I have been using just my phone to write the song and I think for different people they got different techniques, but for me I am using an app that is actually discontinued at the moment, but maybe it'll come back one day. It's called Spire and it's from iZotope. They created a little battery powered you know recording device with an app on your phone and it's pretty brilliant. You could have the lyrics right there in the app and then you can record multi track right there and it makes it really easy for punching in and stuff and it's very simple. So there's other apps that work great for this too. You could do this on your computer in the studio. I personally find that if I take a guitar and a very simple iPhone recording studio and I go to some inspiring place, then it opens up my mind and my thinking and my creative ideas in a new way, where being in the studio might feel, can feel creative like that, but it could also feel like I'm thinking about other responsibilities or I'm thinking too much about, like you know, the finished product and I just need to think about the song. So so in that, in that respect, the song, the initial song sketch, is the way I like to refer to it.

Lij Shaw: 30:02

I would recommend that you find a system that is ultra simple and has like don't worry about plugins, don't worry about anything. You might want sound effects. You might want effects because that can inspire the idea. So you know, a big reverb might make you sing a different way, a cool delay effect might make you play a new guitar part that has a rhythmic element, or distortion might give it an attitude that inspires you. But I'll do that separately.

Lij Shaw: 30:33

And then when I come in to record the band in the studio, a first part of our template musically is literally um charting out the song. I'll arrange it out on paper so that we know exactly how many bars there are. Um, we can still make changes, but at least it gets everybody quickly on the same page so that we're not I mean I just I'm sure everybody's familiar with this like with the no guys. It's the second verse, is that extra third chorus, and now we forgot how the ending goes. And if you can find a simple system where one page of paper sort of outlines the song and it's easy for everybody to know what that means, it's going to make that process really a lot quicker. So once we get the band in the studio, then my first template in the actual Pro Tools, which is what I use for a lot of recording, although I use Ableton Live, I use Apple Logic. I'm teaching myself Reaper right now, which is a really great one.

Lij Shaw: 31:35

Studio One, you know, mixbus 32. These are all great, great tools for recording. Did I forget anybody? I probably did Cubase, oh my God, cubase is brilliant. And if you're curious about Cubase, go check out Mixdown Online with Chris Salim. He's an expert at teaching that and a great YouTube channel. But so anyway, just regardless of which one of these you use, for me the starting template with the band in the studio is going to be having all the multitracks there, where all the inputs are going and the instruments are set up.

Lij Shaw: 32:12

So back to your setup question. I set up my studio for this tracking session a week ahead of the session because I had to fly to New York and go to the AES conference all week and I flew back here on a morning flight. I was basically a red-eye flight, landed in Nashville, went straight to the studio and everybody started arriving and I knew that I would not have any time to set anything up when it was time to record. So again, it's that idea of separate the setup from the session. If I had tried to do the setting up, the mics and the instruments when it was time to record, which I did. That when I was starting out. It was a nightmare, oh my God. I would just be unraveling and just breaking down in stress and I probably would have had no ability to actually play the music and had no fun. So I did all that beforehand and when you set it up beforehand then you can just be relaxed about it. You can just put on some music and like kind of la-di-da around the studio slowly setting up the drums and the mics and everything, because you're not under too much pressure. So my template for that would be a template where all the mics inputs are line checked for all the band members.

Lij Shaw: 33:26

I have things in that like maybe the drums are pre-routed to a folder that has the plugins on it that I might use for when I go to the mix. But plugins introduce latency, so I have all the plugins turned off while we're tracking. But plugins introduce latency, so I have all the plugins turned off while we're tracking and I use a system called Pro Tools HDX, which is just a very low latency thing so you don't hear an echo in the headphones. But whatever you're using, you either have an app that has a mixer, headphone, mix in it or something, but your interface and your DAW, I promise, has some way to hear yourself clearly without any delays or echoes. The place where you might run into latency delays and echoes is if you have to use a VST instrument to do your thing and you've got MIDI and you have to turn up the buffer. Then you might have to deal with setting that right.

Lij Shaw: 34:19

But for me, I'll have all that stuff. I'll have a master fader that already has, you know, maybe a compressor and an EQ and a tape simulator and then a limiter on it and then maybe even a and I know this sounds techie, you don't have to use all this stuff. No, no, go ahead, but I'll have, and then maybe I'll have a meter plug-in on the end, and so what I do is I actually turn that off at first, so it's disabled, so that none of my tracks go through it when we're recording, because I don't need any of that stuff. I just need everybody to hear themselves in the headphones. I'll have a click track in the session template so that I can easily set the tempo of the song, turn on the click track. Now everybody's hearing it.

Lij Shaw: 35:07

I get a little more complex here in my studio, which is set up more like a pro studio. So, for example, the drummer will hear the band playing, but they also get a separate feed of the click track that goes to their headphones, which is a lot louder than the rest of us, because the drummer is going to need to hear the click really clearly to be able to stay on it. And let me preface this If they're using a click, you do not have to use a click track. You only want to use a click track if it's the right choice for the song you're doing and for the production.

Marc Matthews: 35:40

Yeah, lovely stuff all of that there. When you mentioned click tracks, it reminded me when I was in a band. I was in a metal band, as the audience knows, because I probably bang on.

Marc Matthews: 35:47

You guys needed a click track we did indeed, yeah, and our drummer was fantastic. He, he made, he bought us time for my deficiencies in my guitar playing when it came to recording. So he'd bank us time because he was so good at recording drums that I knew I had a bit of extra leeway. Well, I had leeway when it came to my guitar playing, when, uh, when it came to recording, because I was not as excited as he was on drums, but, yeah, most definitely in metal, for example. Yeah, it just reminded me when you said that there, but no, all really interesting stuff.

Marc Matthews: 36:14

I just want to circle back to um, the grouping side of things. You mentioned there about grouping drums and I know again, it's a conversation I've had frequently with the audience and listeners and whatnot on social media. But when you are presented with a project, let's say it's just drums, guitar, bass, vocal, maybe some synths, some MIDI synths or whatever it may be, maybe you could talk a bit about your grouping of those instruments and how you would, particularly with drums, do you put all the drums in one a really nice way, you know, and that could just be as simple as a compressor across it which gives it a little bit of, you know, compression.

Lij Shaw: 37:10

It might be a tape plugin or something that get, or a console emulation plugin that gives it a little bit of a sound. I mean, you know, we all have again to that idea of like being an expert at listening. I'm 57. So I certainly grew up listening to records that were recorded on gear that is from you know, from another time or from another style of studio than just a laptop, you know, and a computer. So there might be a plugin that I want to put on that gives it some of that quality of that sound, cause maybe to my ear that sounds like oh, now the drums sound right, you know, and I think, depending on the style of music you make, again, there's going to be a thing that that's the kind of stuff you might want to put on the, on the grouping bus that represents what you do, you know, your, your metal music. There's a whole slew of guitar amps, guitars, styles of drums, styles of drum, cymbals All that stuff is relevant and there's probably certain recording studios and recording gear that sounds more like the right answer to you than than might, you know might work for an Americana folk session in Nashville. So I think it helps to just kind of do a little bit of homework on the style of music you like too, and see what kind of stuff they used and look for those sorts of plugins if you want. You know, but, um, but that's how I would group it, uh. But then at the same time you might find that grouping all the drums together sort of squishes them together too much, and now you're like, oh, I can't, I don't, the kick and the snare doesn't have that punch that I want. So you might want to also have the kick and the snare sort of going directly to the stereo bus, you know, outside of the group at the same time, and maybe that gives you a little bit of both worlds. You know outside of the group at the same time, and maybe that gives you a little bit of both worlds. You know that might sound complicated to explain it, but let's just imagine all the drums go through this stereo grouping bus, but the kick and the snare also has an additional send that goes straight to the mix, you know, so that it's got a clarity to it. Those are the kinds of things you can experiment with you know and sort of see what sounds best to you.

Lij Shaw: 39:24

And when you get there through trial and error and you start arriving at things that sound better to you, this is how you develop your template.

Lij Shaw: 39:32

You know, this is how you develop your mix template. And so then when you come back in and do your next project and this is where it gets a little tricky you're like what did I do on the last project that sounded so good, so you want to make sure you keep some of that stuff somewhere nearby so that you can, like in Pro Tools, I can import all the track settings from one session to another and so I might import particularly from song to song in a record. This is where that happens mostly for me. I'll mix the first song and I get something that really is working now. So then I'll go to do the next song and I'll import all the settings of the first song over on top of the tracks on the second song and that's how I start out with a new mix template for the second song is by bringing over all the same mix settings of the first song, for example I do do the same in logic.

Marc Matthews: 40:23

Uh, you can import um tracks, auxiliary sends with the processing, yeah, and the plugins and also the automation as well, if you're not entirely sure why I would do that. But you can import all that in logic as well, because logic is the door that I use, and I do use reaper as well. Logic's so great it is, it's fantastic I was.

Lij Shaw: 40:39

I did a. So my brother has a music school in Brooklyn and he sent over 25 to 30 kids band songs for me to mix and I have to and I've got like one day to do it, so I'm like all right. Well, obviously I'm going to have to have a template. That's really fast. So I would. I think I set up I sort of preemptively set up the template a little bit, or he sent over the first song first and I kind of get a thing going, then I just import it over to the other one and then Logic had added the auto mastering plugin feature and so I would do the mix really quickly and then I just hit auto master and like listen to him, like did it? Did it screw it up? No, it sounds pretty good print that you know it's.

Marc Matthews: 41:23

It's really good. I'm um, I've been eulogizing about the uh logic pro 11 in a few episodes probably about 10 or so episodes ago with the stem splitter, and I did a few episodes on using the stem splitter and comparing it to other stem splitter applications like rip x door and g audio and whatnot. So, uh, yeah, absolutely loving the uh. The only thing I find is this is going a bit off topic now with with logic pro 11 and the stem splitter. You do have to have an m1 processor, so it gets you a bit there.

Marc Matthews: 41:49

But that's right, right yeah that's if you need to have that, but if you're using the same I use the stem splitter stuff, but I use it.

Lij Shaw: 41:56

I don't know if I use it in places. It was originally intended. I I'm not like pulling out tracks and doing remixes of things, yeah yeah, but I use the iZotope stem splitter that comes in Ozone and RX when I'm mastering a record I'm like, hey, you know what? I think I want a little more vocal or I want a little more kick or snare.

Lij Shaw: 42:17

I find it a little bit really helps it come out. And then the other place that was really cool is on guitar sketches all the way at the beginning of a project okay, yeah when I was doing.

Lij Shaw: 42:28

What was it? It was, um, I did, uh, well, no, I had one where the guitar player was sending me his sketch and he strums his guitar and sings and there's, there's a guitar strum that I recognize all the way from the beginning. That just drives me bananas. I call it jung-ja-gung-ga-junga, where people are like jung-ja-gung-ga-junga, jung-ja-gung-ga-junga, and it can be OK on some songs, but typically it's just a default. So my thinking as a producer on that song was like all right, it's got that guitar strum, which really distracting and it's going to make everybody in the band think we're doing this boring, light, fluffy song. And then his vocals on top. So with the stem splitter I just threw it in there and it was amazing. It just sucked the vocal right out, it removed the guitar and all I was left with is a vocal track and I'm like, ah, now I can listen to the song, vocal only and imagine something totally different underneath it. For you know, imagine a piano part, or imagine like power guitar or something.

Marc Matthews: 43:26

Yeah, yeah, I love that use case that's a great use case for it, cause I've been not struggling but I've been trying to find my own use case for it, having done all these tests, but that I really like when it comes to actually demoing it across.

Lij Shaw: 43:38

Any of your listeners. Let's say they are. They sketched an idea on a voice memo app, um, on you know iPhone and they're like I completely screwed up the guitar playing it sucks. Or I hit the wrong chord on the piano. Try the voice, try that. Just throw it into the stem extractor. Suck your voice out. Now you've got your cool lyric and melody idea. You can even rearrange the melody a little bit, pulling it into logic or whatever, and you might be able to rescue that good idea I love that Great stuff, great advice, litch Great advice.

Marc Matthews: 44:08

So we're coming towards the end of our conversation.

Lij Shaw: 44:11

It's too soon, man, it's too soon, I know I know I haven't got that.

Marc Matthews: 44:13

I've only got through about two of my questions. I always do that I go off on tangent. So I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't give you the opportunity to talk a bit about your podcast and a bit about what you're doing at the moment, and also maybe if you've got something for our listeners that they could consume Absolutely so.

Lij Shaw: 44:31

My podcast is called Recording Studio Rockstars and it's interviews with producers and engineers bringing you into the studio to learn from recording professionals so that you can make your best record ever and be a rock star of the studio yourself. I just quoted the intro of the show to you right there.

Marc Matthews: 44:49

I know, I know Very good.

Lij Shaw: 44:50

That's what happens after 500 episodes, right? So it's really great. It's going to be a total variety of guests on the show. Some are very techie, some are songwriter-focused. It's different styles of music, but I promise you you will find somebody that really is interesting to you. So go give it a listen. They're long form episodes, two hour interviews.

Lij Shaw: 45:12

Um so, lots of just casual talking about making records, tons of great ideas being shared on the show, and along with that I created a free course that is just for you. It's called mixmasterbundlecom and it's an introduction to getting a professional sounding mix in your studio so that you can take your tracks from sounding like basement demos to sounding a lot more like a pro mix. It's a really just simple introduction to it, so you won't have to get too advanced and too technological, but, especially if you're doing band music, it'll give you some great ideas for how to get the stuff to just sort of leap out of your speakers. So again, just go to mixmasterbundlecom and you can check that out. And if you just go to the website recordingstudiorockstarscom, I think we have 10 different ways to join the email list so that you can know about each weekly episode and just be able to get access to all the information that's there.

Marc Matthews: 46:11

Amazing. I will put a link to all of that, so the website and also the freebie as well, and I'll put links to that in the episode description. So, audience listening, do go and check that out. And, of course, if you're not already a follower, do go follow Lidger's podcast as well, because it's brilliant. As I said right at the beginning, I was listening to it today on my run with Brennan and start with that episode because I thought that was really good. In particular, there was a conversation that you were having with him about when he was just starting out and waiting tables and his thought process thought process surrounding that, which I thought was really really insightful and very useful for the audience listening, if you're in a similar position whereby you are thinking, day job, I want to be in the music industry and how you, how you juggle those two.

Lij Shaw: 46:55

So how much of do you have listeners who really want to do this professionally as well?

Marc Matthews: 47:00

Yeah, it really does range from those who do it as a sort of hobby and have the day job and then want to just release music of their own accord and just get better at doing it. But then there are others who do want to pursue music, whether that's audio engineering or producing, as a full-time occupation. So it really does range between the two.

Lij Shaw: 47:19

Well, it's a special time now if you want to do it professionally because there's so much gig. What's the word I'm looking for? There's like a gig economy where you can just turn the app on and go deliver food, or turn the app on and do ride shares, and it's much trickier in some ways. When I was starting, where you're like, I don't even know what job I could do, because I need. If somebody calls me for a studio session, the answer is always yes. So delivering pizzas was my first one and I until I did a u-turn in an intersection and totaled my car and I was like all right time to get serious about the music and that's a, that's a side, isn't it that, um, you need to maybe think about doing something slightly different at that point.

Marc Matthews: 48:04

No, fantastic lidge, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting you, on the chat with you today on the podcast, and it's actually the first one, first interview post-summer in 2024, so uh, right on yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been a few months now since I've had someone like me, I'm starting up the interview season too yeah, yeah, I've got a lot lined up now.

Marc Matthews: 48:21

So, audience listening there, you'll find there's gonna be a lot more interviews leading up until sort of the end of 2024 and into into 2025 and, uh, yeah, some exciting ones ahead. No spoilers, but it's been an absolute pleasure and, um, I will catch up with you soon all right mark.

Lij Shaw: 48:36

Thanks so much and thank you to your listeners for joining us.

Marc Matthews: 48:39

Folks, before you go, I want to hear from you. I want to know your favorite episode of the Inside the Mix podcast. Alternatively, you could just review this episode. Click the SpeakPipe link in the episode description and you can record an audio message detailing your favorite episode and why, and also give yourself a shout out. All you need is your mobile phone. You don't need a SpeakPipe account. You don't need to download an app. It's just like sending me an audio message via WhatsApp or whatever messaging platform you use. As soon as I get your audio, you will be entered in that month's draw to win a Starbucks coffee voucher, and if you don't like coffee, just give it to someone else and pretend that you bought it for them. All you need to do is click that speak pipe link and send me an audio message reviewing this episode or a previous episode and give yourself a shout out.