Music Production and Mixing Tips for Music Producers and Artists | Inside The Mix
If you're searching for answers on topics such as: what is mixing in music, how I can learn to mix music, how to start music production, how can I get better at music production, what is music production, or maybe how to get into the music industry or even just how to release music. Either way, you’re my kind of person and there's something in this podcast for you!
I'm Marc Matthews and I host the Inside The Mix Podcast. It's the ultimate serial podcast for music production and mixing enthusiasts. Say goodbye to generic interviews and tutorials, because I'm taking things to the next level. Join me as I feature listeners in round table music critiques and offer exclusive one-to-one coaching sessions to kickstart your music production and mixing journey. Get ready for cutting-edge music production tutorials and insightful interviews with Grammy Award-winning audio professionals like Dom Morley (Adele) and Mike Exeter (Black Sabbath). If you're passionate about music production and mixing like me, the Inside The Mix is the podcast you can't afford to miss!
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Music Production and Mixing Tips for Music Producers and Artists | Inside The Mix
#175: What's the Secret to Mixing Without Muddiness? Achieving Clarity and Dynamics in a Mix
As we bid farewell to 2024, this special episode of Inside The Mix celebrates your incredible musical wins while providing actionable tips to elevate your music production journey. My co-host, Aisle9, and I reflect on the year’s highlights, share listener achievements, and answer your burning questions about mixing, mastering, and making meaningful progress as a musician.
Whether you're wondering what is gain staging, how to get rid of mud in a mix, or how many reverbs to use in a mix, this episode is packed with practical advice and inspiration to kickstart your 2025 music goals.
What We Cover:
- Celebrating inspiring listener wins, from mastering collaborations to personal breakthroughs.
- Breaking down the essentials of what is gain staging and its impact on sound quality.
- Exploring what is the best LUFS for mastering to meet industry standards.
- Proven strategies on how to get rid of mud in a mix for clarity and balance.
- Tips on how many reverbs to use in a mix for depth without over-complication.
- The importance of community and networking for creative growth.
- Setting achievable music goals for the upcoming year.
Join us in reflecting on the power of collaboration, community, and creativity as we step into the new year with renewed energy and inspiration!
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Hi, mark, I was just looking at your video about mastering vocal compression 164. Really good stuff. I really enjoyed that and it's really nice to hear a sample where I can actually hear the compression being applied. Normally when people are talking about compressors it's so subtle the compression that I can never really quite hear it, but this time I could actually hear the reduction and leveling in volume as you were applying it. So great work on that piece. Um, I actually used Logic Pro myself and I was just looking that um, the equivalent to the 1176 Rev-E anyway, in um, logic Pro would be the Studio FET compressor. That's a stock compressor plug-in in Logic and the Vintage Opto is the LA-2A. So I might try some of this with the stock plug-ins rather than going out buying plug-ins to try this. I've got so many plug-ins at this point that I get confused between them all.
Marc Matthews:So again, thanks very much and um and good luck cheers and gain staging is a word that I find is thrown around a lot online a lot, and sometimes it's misrepresented. Now I mean my understanding. The way I see gain staging is is having the, the audio, at the optimum level going into the plug-in. If it's a plug-in or whatever it is in your chain, it's at the optimum level going into it and also coming out of it into the next sort of step in the chain.
Philipp K:You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, Mark Matthews.
Marc 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 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 favourite 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 learnt with you. Hello, folks, and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast and welcome back to the returning listeners as well.
Marc Matthews:This episode is a relatively festive episode. So we're past Christmas now. Well, we're not at the point of recording this, but when this goes live we will be. So this is going to drop on the 31st of January and we're going to be celebrating the wins the listener wins of 2024. When I say we because I'm not alone on this one, I've got my co-host here I'm going to say co-host. We didn't agree this off air, but that's what I'm going to say now. Aisle 9, welcome buddy. How are we?
Aisle9:I'm good thanks. Thanks for having us.
Marc Matthews:No, my pleasure, my pleasure. You've been on the podcast before, but I think it's probably been well over a year, if not more.
Aisle9:Yeah, yeah, I haven't been on for a while. Yeah, time does fly. How do you cope without me? Well, this is it.
Marc Matthews:I struggled to the end clawing my way to the end of the year.
Marc Matthews:And then, yeah, here we are now. So in this episode, folks, I've got I think it's about eight audio clips submitted by you guys, the listeners, detailing your musical wins of 2024, and a question for us as well that we're going to answer in this episode. So I'm going to preface this with a big thank you to everybody who submitted audio for this and, of course, you give yourself a shout out as well. So, without further ado, let's dive into the first one. I hope this is going to work. We did try it off air and it worked fine. So this is submitted by Philip from the outfit Year of the Fall. So here we go.
Philipp K:Hi, this is Philip from Year of the Fall. My biggest music win of 2024 was definitely recording our new single Disappearing Time with my bandmate Dan in the same room. Since we live 5,000 miles apart, we usually record remotely, but meeting in California to produce it made a huge creative difference for us. So here's my question to Mark what's your top tip for creating depth and space in a mix without making it muddy?
Marc Matthews:So depth and space in a mix without making it muddy. So depth and space in a mix without making it muddy. Now I'm going to immediately jump on the bandwagon if I always jump on with this, and the first thing is is going to be with regards to time-based processing and buses and busing it out, and I've bleated on about this, on the podcast before, and I think tim and I regularly meet up for a coffee and a beer.
Marc Matthews:We talk about this on the podcast before, and I think tim and I regularly meet up for a coffee and a beer. We talk about this and it's the idea that you have buses for your reverbs and your time-based processing, your delays and whatnot, and then you're busing to that from your tracks rather than having individual reverbs for each track itself. I think that's a big one, because that if you're doing the opposite, if you are having reverbs and delays on each track which there's no rule against it, but the more you do that, the more you build that up, the muddier and the denser it's going to get with that soundscape as well. So there's that, and I would also add to that as well. It's your choice of reverbs as well.
Marc Matthews:What do you want to achieve with the reverb? Do you want the reverb to add presence, let's say, to a vocal, or do you want it just to blend it in? So you can think about your choice. Do you want to go with a plate? Do you want to go with a hall, a spring reverb, depending on what you want to do? So that would be my big tip, there would be buses. I'm a big fan, big fan of using buses, and I think that probably comes from using consoles in the past, where you're limited, aren't you? And then I've sort of moved that and transitioned that over into the, the digital realm, so I'll fire it over to you now, tim. What are your thoughts?
Aisle9:yeah, I, I would, I would second that, in fact I'd, I'd put down one of my things was like the top tip is like, make sure that your reverbs and delay returns from your buses aren't too blooming, they are not too full of bass and, you know, muddy in themselves. So you can. You can often find, like when you've got quite a lot of reverb going on, that you can maybe sort of eq the returns from your reverbs and take out some of the the mud or low end that you don't really need in the returns. So, um, that can help. But like, actually mine was in general an eq tip which was, when you're eqing, bear in mind that the low mids are often an area where mud ends up and it sort of builds across your track.
Aisle9:So you're going to have low mid in your bass, low mid in your keys parts, any sense um, guitar parts notorious for lots of low end, uh mid, sort of low mid, 150 to 300 kind of hertz, that kind of region often. Um, but uh, and you're going to have it in your vocal, you're going to have it in a kick drum, you're going to have it in a snare, and it doesn't mean it needs to come out of everything, because it might really really nice in your snare drums have a lot of like low mid, but then if you've got a really sort of dense low mid in your snare drum, you might need to cut it a bit more out of your guitar or your your keys part. So yeah, so it's basically to sort of like eq, but a lot of the time it's just a little bit of subtractive eq. That kind of will will vary across each individual instrument, but will often that low mid part is is where mud builds up and you know bass as well.
Aisle9:Sometimes you don't need a lot of bass on some things you don't need that bass end, but so you need to sort of filter that out a little bit. But yeah, mine was mainly an eq thing and then perhaps like working with the returns as well of your, your reverbs and your delays. But yeah, I'm all for the bus pass as well. The bus is a good idea. It's a bus pass. I'm sure there's like a meme in there somewhere isn't it right.
Marc Matthews:A t-shirt. I might as well get some t-shirts made up for the podcast with the constant sort of things that are mentioned on the podcast, with the guys like bus passes and stuff That'd be quite interesting, but no, eq is very, very, very important.
Marc Matthews:It's active synthesis on on a reverb, when you're sculpting sounds. It's, uh, really, really important stuff and often overlooked. Um, yeah, don't. I think that generally, I think the general gist is just just don't hammer every track with a different form of time-based processing, I suppose like from a creative perspective. If it sounds all right, then I guess it is, but I think in general, as a rule of thumb, I think that's the way I work out of interest. Well, like numbers wise, I was working on a project earlier and generally I sort of have sort of like some ambient space reverbs, maybe a larger reverb, some plate reverbs, but I find myself fluctuating between sort of like three to seven reverb sends depending on what I'm doing, and often, oftentimes, I don't end up using all seven. But they're there. Um, yeah, what's your sort of viewpoint on that? Have you got a number? That's usually yeah, I mean I sort of reverb wise.
Aisle9:I often wouldn't have more than maybe about four and uh, like I actually find someone gave me this tip like a long time ago that delay. You can often use delay a lot more in tracks without getting such a sort of, you know, sort of smearing, the kind of uh sort of stereo and getting too dense, a sort of reverberation too long. Obviously you were saying about lengths of reverbs as well, but like, um, so I tend to use delay quite a bit, like you know, maybe a little slap back on something very small, maybe on a vocal or something, to just give it a bit of sort of I don't know a bit of body, a bit of width to it, perhaps like, and then use a long, longer reverbs, a longer delays, rather, um.
Aisle9:So you know, but again, you, maybe you don't want huge amounts of feedback on them and that sort of stuff, you don't want them to get in the way too much, you don't even notice them that much, but um, but they can really help create a sense of space on things without hopefully overtaking your mix and muddying it. So, yeah, but, but I use sort of maybe two or three delays and then sort of four reverbs, maybe something like that. So yeah, it's probably about the same, about seven, and again, I don't use them all always, but you know, yeah, I wouldn't have more than that very often.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, exactly the same, and I think what you said there about delays is important. The project that I was working on earlier and I was finding that the reverb I was busting it out of reverbs and I was like, oh, it's just sounding a bit too. Um, it wasn't sounding muddy, but it wasn't quite where I wanted and I just stripped back the reverb and I just used delay. In the end I just had a delay the quarter note on the left and the and an eighth note on the right and just increased that a little bit and it achieved exactly what I wanted and it got rid of that sort of I don't want to say it was muddy, but it just got rid of that build-up and I think it really did help. So I may I don't know if there is a misconception that you have to stick reverb, then you have to have reverb. I think there are other time-based processing that you can use.
Aisle9:Uh but yeah, you, yeah, yeah you and I mean sometimes as well like short, really short reverbs, like ambience and stuff, can be really really useful on some things. Sometimes, like a guitar part doesn't really need much reverb on it at all, it's a rhythm part and it's going to sound quite smeary with a big reverb on it. But like, just a really short ambience can give it a bit of life and in the mix just a small amount of that is all it needs, or it needs, or it needs a very short delay on it or something. But like, yeah, it's funny.
Aisle9:Um, yeah, definitely sort of that kind of oh, I'm gonna stick massive hall reverb on everything is is a bit of a recipe for disaster. But but then if you leave enough space so that maybe an element like your main vocal, maybe you do want quite a big reverb on it, but if you have left space and not put that on too many other elements, then you can maybe make a feature of that and it works. You know, but yeah, but if it's on everything, it becomes a problem yes, indeed, uh, I, I think we're with these.
Marc Matthews:You could do a whole episode on this. I think you could go down a rabbit hole of genres of music where reverb is used quite extensively and a lot.
Aisle9:Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, it does vary, doesn't it? Genre to genre. How much is the right thing?
Marc Matthews:Yeah, yeah, most definitely.
Aisle9:Some genres just seem to be about reverb entirely. Nothing else. Yeah, that's what I was alluding to yeah, we won't go down there.
Marc Matthews:Yeah yeah, indeed, indeed, we'll move on to the next question. Thank you, philip. So this is from Bending Grid, whose album is an absolute belter of an album.
Aisle9:Yeah, it's great, isn't it I?
Marc Matthews:love the tunes he's put out this year Fantastic work, ethic, an all-round nice bloke. So here we go.
Jessie K:Hey, this is Bending Grid, and my win for 2024 is Hyper Sleep with Taya Flow. So let me know what you'all think about this track. I also do have a question for mr aisle nine and mark matthews what were your wins of 2024?
Marc Matthews:indeed, yes, uh, it's a again. It's a fantastic album, audience listeners, so just obviously just plug it into spotify and you'll find finding grid. So I write this down um, I, musically, I only released one song this year and I wouldn't necessarily say it's my win. I kind of just wanted to release something so I put it out there. But I think for me my win would probably be the podcast and that was achieving.
Marc Matthews:My goal for the year was to achieve 400 downloads of a new episode within seven days and at the tail end of november, beginning of december, I hit that. I've been sat around 375 to 390 and then we hit it at the end of, at the end of the year. So that would be my win, would be hitting that goal, and then into next year I'm looking to further improve that. I suppose another one as well would be. I dropped a free logic pro mixing course as well, so I did that earlier in the year, first one I've ever done, and, um, it was well received. So technically, two wins, but it was mainly mainly the 400 downloads. I would say um, that I hit this year for the podcast. So thank you the listener and everyone who's been part of the podcast. Um yeah, it was a quite a feat.
Aisle9:Um so, yeah, really, really happy with that one, so I'll throw it over to you now, tim well, first of all I wanted to say to Bending Grid I thought Hyper Sleep, which he mentioned, his win, was excellent and I think I love those hooky, clean, funky guitars that turn up in it and there's a great energy in the whole track from his programming and, like you know, synths and the vocals from Tao's were brilliant. So, yeah, really, really whole track from his programming and, like you know, synths and and the vocals from taylor's brilliant yeah, yeah so, yeah, really really top track and a top album, yeah, um, from a top guy.
Aisle9:There we go um, yeah, um, but like, um, sort of yeah, I think my win of 2024 was probably a couple of them. But like, uh, I think across time that I did without runner, um really sort of went extraordinarily well, much better than I could have sort of hoped for. That sort of really took off and a lot of people really loved it. I think so sort of wrote that track together and, um, you know, uh, sort of split the producing on it a little bit, but like, yeah, it works out really well and just sort of yeah, just got a phenomenal response from sort of going into loads of playlists and you know, and I think it's done over 50 000 streams now already, like sort of heading to 60 000 streams, and you know, it only came out in the you know sort of middle of this year.
Aisle9:So I, I felt like it did really well, really quickly, and I think I sort of followed that up actually with a track of my own, which you know did really well.
Aisle9:So, yeah, I just sort of think, yeah, it's sort of I got over 10,000 monthly listeners, nice. And then I sort of got, I think I went over 15 briefly and and I'm right back down to six now, but, like you know, but it was that felt like an achievement in the sense of the music's more important to me. But I think that feeling of like you know, um, getting over that, that that point I had not got that many monthly listeners and got into that many sort of playlists with a tune I've released before. So I mean it was nice because, um, I sort of uh, you know, managed to do it both with the track with outrunner and obviously he had a lot of support, and then I did it with my follow-up track. So I felt like, you know, I'd sort of um future horizon did really well. So I sort of felt that it was not just outrunner, who's a brilliant artist, and because his support was enormous and doing a track together. Obviously you know you get a lot more from good collaborations.
Aisle9:You've got both artists and all the rest of it, but I managed to do it myself as well, which made me feel like, oh, oh good, you know, it's possible to do on my own on my own releases. So, yeah, it was just really nice to go above that that mark and to get into so many um playlists and, um, yeah, not to get rejected by the whole of submit hub it was good, yeah, yeah, well done mate, congrats yeah, it's nice it's a nice one to achieve and like you said I think collabs definitely help.
Marc Matthews:Oh, they do yeah. Your music's quality as well. Hot Cup of Sun. I know I bang on about this all the time. It's been out for a while now. I probably listen to it at least once a day going round. It's such a good song I listen to it all the time.
Aisle9:Yeah, it was one that sort of slid under the radar actually. I don't know why, I think I released it and it didn't no, but yeah, it came out well, Thank you yeah, yeah. Yeah, but no, it's been a good year.
Marc Matthews:really like that, nice, nice and a long way of continuing to next year. Submit Hub's an interesting one, isn't it? I mean, I mean, you got to take it like thick skin, I guess. If you get rejected, you get rejected. It is well it is. But um, I'm finding um. Now even more so because I do like look for playlists, depending on the genre of music that I'm, that I'm releasing, and then invariably I'll say, oh, how can I submit a tune? And they'll be like I'll find me on submit hub. So I'm finding tune. And they'll be like, oh, find me on SubmitHub. So I find myself having to go there more and more now, rather than doing the old school boots on the ground just finding contact details. So no, submithub's an interesting one Again, probably a topic for a whole podcast.
Aisle9:Yeah, I've had good response overall, but yes, I know it can be tricky. You can just make a tune that doesn't neatly fall into. It could be a good tune, but it doesn't neatly fall into any of the playlists that are really there and you can find it hard then. But, um, yeah, you've got to kind of, you've got to be reasonably thick-skinned, I think, yeah as well, you know yeah you're not always going to get agreement on these things.
Marc Matthews:No, and it's also I think it was anything like that, isn't it? You could just submit it to someone and they're in a rush or they're having a bad day and ultimately that's going to impact their decision on whether or not. I mean, I'll hold my hands in the air when I get um submissions through via email for the for the um, the, the playlist for the podcast and um. Often, often than not, I will accept, but there are occasions if I'm in a rush, if it doesn't immediately strike, then you know. So it does happen.
Marc Matthews:But, yeah, it's an interesting one, but thank you, bending Grid, thank you very much, so let's move on to the next one. So this is FastEddy856.
FastEddy856:What's good everybody. This is Andy. Producer is FastEddy856. What's good everybody. This is indie producer FastEddy856 from the States, jersey to be exact, and my win for the year was being on Inside the Mix podcast speaking with Mark on how I made 100 mixes, but now I'm down about three and then I'm confident. So I appreciate you, mark, for having me on the podcast, for giving me some information. I think, since the podcast, I've released, I believe, seven singles since then. So I'm very confident after our talk. And my question for you, mark, is what's your musical goal for 2025? Once again, this is Fast Eddie 856, any producer, videographer from Jersey. You can follow me everywhere under Fast Eddie 856. Have a good new year, peace.
Marc Matthews:Lovely. Thank you Fast, eddie. I think this is quite a nice one. It kind of segues on from our previous conversation and that is to hit 10,000 monthly listeners on spotify, and to do that I'm aiming. I did set myself the task of a release every month, but I'm going to be realistic and that's probably not going to happen because I've got a few other things happening this year. So every one release every two months I'm aiming for, and then I'm going to push it, uh, when it's released and whatnot, and then the aim is by the end of the year to hopefully at some point hit 10,000 monthly listeners, so that on Spotify that is my aim for this year. What about yourself, tim?
Aisle9:I think that's a good aim. I'm sure you will make it as well. Yeah, I'm aiming to do a single. You know, do a release a single or an EP a month, and I desperately want to put an album out. I've kind of I meant to do one last year, sort of build up to it and do one, and I've got, you know, enough kind of material hanging around easily to do it. But I have the time to all put it all together is not materialized yet, but I want to. Yeah, I ended up looking. I had a really good year last year and you know, yet when I look back at it, the amount of music I released was way less than I thought it was I had. So I didn't hit that, you know, single every month thing. So I really like to do that. So, yeah, I mean equally, I'd like to. You know, as I had the good fortune of hitting 10,000 monthly listeners, I'd like to hit 20. You know. I'd like to go further sort of thing.
Aisle9:But you know, to be honest, just be good to put out more music, I think, more consistently.
Marc Matthews:I think that would be key to it. Yeah, yeah, most definitely. It's something I really missed this year and that's why I kind of wanted to get on and release something at the end of this year, because I've been doing other bits and pieces this year, keeping myself busy, but I'd really missed actually just releasing my own stuff, and I think that's going to be a focus of mine next year is to get back to, uh, releasing my own music and obviously doing other other stuff as well, but I think that's going to be a and just being creative for my own personal gratification and then releasing music. You know, and I'd love to do. I might start trying to do one a month and see how I go, but it probably will end up being two.
Neon Highway:But no, I'm sure I'd love to hear an album of yours.
Marc Matthews:I think that'd be amazing an album. How many tracks? Do you think would you shoot for?
Aisle9:yeah, probably 10 tracks. I think, yeah, probably 10 to 12 is reasonable, isn't it?
Marc Matthews:yeah, yeah, I think so yeah, I think I've got.
Aisle9:I've got that if you look at all the singles I've released. But I don't just want to put out all my old singles and call it an album. I want to put out new material. That's obviously not been on them, but I would feature some of them because I think sometimes as well it's part of the Spotify sort of algorithm where things get lost.
Aisle9:I think you, you sort of put out something like I noticed that Miami Nights, the first track I ever put out, which, um, you know, now it's sort of lost somewhere in my Spotify, it's not on my sort of top five or whatever, and you know. And then you just find, like, tracks that you put out quite a while ago do get lost. So, and I think also, it's quite nice to maybe revisit um sort of those some tracks that you've done and go like I think I could have done that better, or I could have changed something or done a different mix, or, or I would have liked to do an album version of it, a longer version of it, or yeah, so it might be good, but I would have liked to do an album version of it, a longer version of it. Yeah, so it might be good, but I do want it to hang together as a whole piece. Really. That's the key, isn't?
Marc Matthews:it.
Aisle9:That's the key, isn't it? And that takes. You know I'm not quite enough. I don't think it's going to be Wish you Were here, but you know I'm hoping. Or Dark Side of the Moon, but I'm hoping for something that's got some sort of quality to it, you know.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, I think that's the trickiest part, having done the EP and I've released albums when I was in the band and stuff and just getting a collection of songs together that work cohesively and thread together properly is quite a feat, because it can be quite easy just to have eight, nine, ten songs that you just slap into an album, that and then they're just, they're effectively 10 singles, you know, and there's there's no cohesion there. So getting them to yeah, to have a cohesive set and complement one another and that flowing theme is, is quite a quite a feat to achieve. Uh, but I'm sure you'll do it, mate.
Aisle9:I look forward to seeing how it progresses I'm always amazed by the number of artists small independent artists who do put out some really good. It's like that bending grid thing we mentioned, like people who put them all together, and the amount of work that's involved in them, and they do it on top of their day job and everything else and they get these albums together as well as singles, and I just think it's incredible the amount of creativity and hard work that goes into them.
Marc Matthews:Most definitely, yeah, most. It's incredible the amount of creativity and hard work that goes into them. Most definitely, we're approaching the halfway point with wins, so I'm going to play one from our good friend Neon Highway. He doesn't have a question, but he's going to celebrate a win with us. So here we go, all the way from the Scottish Highlands.
Neon Highway:Hi, this is Neon Highway. My music win of 2024 was creating my first proper collaboration. I worked with a tremendously talented post-punk artist based in Spain. Her name is Lux Mala, a phenomenal singer, an all-round multi-instrumentalist. What happened was I gave her a backing track, she quickly added the lyrics, the melody, the violin and the vocal performance, and it's been a really successful track for us both.
Marc Matthews:It was great to see our friend Neil on Highway releasing tunes again this year. He's been quite prolific, releasing some good stuff and also taking the leap with vocal mixing as well and vocal production. So, yeah, great work, carl.
Aisle9:It's a great track. I loved it.
Marc Matthews:Really really good. So long may that continue into 2025. Let's get some more collabs on the go buddy and avid supporter of the podcast as well. So yeah, he's been there since, I want to say, the beginning. So yeah, and he was on the podcast a few times last year as well. So big shout out to neon highway there, good friend of ours. Uh, so the next one let's go with. Let's pick this one here. Here we go. This is going to be an interesting one hi, this is dan from electric trains.
Dan B:my win of 2024 was actually finishing an album and the first single got on bbc introducing. So loads of thanks for the inspiration, tips and tricks that I get from your podcast. Check out the music if you can at Electric Trains Question what final level DB are you mastering to? Thanks so much. Have a great Christmas From Dan from Electric Trains. Bye.
Marc Matthews:So that was Dan from Electric Trains. I should have introduced that before I played the clip. So that's my bad Slap on the wrist there. But that's an interesting question. Db for Mastery?
Marc Matthews:My first response to that would be I don't really aim for a DB in Mastery. Don't really aim for anything, to be honest. It's kind of what suits the music, what complements the music best and gets it to the optimum level that it needs to be to portray that creative vision of what you want it to sound like. But generally I find, on average and we were discussing this just before we came on out to record this you're looking at LUFS, loudon's Units, full Scale, and you may have seen that banded around quite a lot. You see it on the internet a lot, particularly if you dive into the, the forums and the threads of things like spotify and they'll say they have these targets and whatnot which I implore you, just I wouldn't necessarily pay any attention to, um, that sweeping statement now and probably someone's going to comment on this on youtube and say xyz, but generally I don't. Uh, but I mean luffs wise.
Marc Matthews:Again, I don't really shoot for a target, but if I had to I would say it's usually between sort of, and this is for, like, synth music. So this is kind of, yeah, that synth pop, synth wave music minus nine to minus eight luffs, depending on the track itself. If I'm working on something that's more sort of EDM-based, I can find that number moving down to maybe sort of like minus seven, maybe a bit further. Again, it's got to compliment the music and, depending on what it is you're producing because you might end up actually mixing an acoustic track, in which case you don't want it to be that hot You've got to do whatever compliments the music best. But yeah, that's that's my thought process on it. That's that's my thought process on it. So for again.
Aisle9:We were discussing this just before we recorded today over to yourself, tim. Yeah, I mean, I tend to. I tend to sort of aim around that minus eight, minus 8.5 um level, but again, dependent on genre. Really that isn't right for every genre and it is very dependent on the mix of the song. Because if, if your, if your mix won't really, if, if, when I'm working with it, mastering wise in order to push it up that loud, I'm actually crushing the song and ruining, you know, its internal dynamics and its structure and it just does not feel and sound enjoyable and a pleasant listen at that kind of level. It may be that it needs to be more dynamic and stay at a lower, you know, volume level. So it is all about the mixing and the song.
Aisle9:I have to say I think the mixing is an important thing. As to how loud you can, in mastering, push something. If the mix is really good and really tightly worked out, you will find you can probably take it further in the mastering stage level wise without ruining and in fact hopefully enhancing what is there. But if the mix isn't, you know some mixes just won't take that. They just won't and I think you end up knowing that, as a mastering guy, you just go like, if I push this past a point, it just doesn't take it, it doesn't sound nice, it's losing something and it's actually going to sound better at minus 10, minus 9, something.
Aisle9:So you've only got two things you can do at that point, which is either go back to your, your mixing and, sort of, you know, go for better mixes, or you may find that, you know, leaving it the dynamics a bit bit wider. Um, you know, is is is better for your, your particular album or whatever. So I think I definitely say that to artists when they're doing their own mastering is, you know, uh, don't, don't crush it to the point where you know, just bear in mind, is this making this sound better, or you know, or are you actually ruining your initial creative vision? So don't be, don't ruin the track in the mastering yeah, definitely, definitely because of level.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, yeah, most definitely, and I think, um, a lot of it, like you say, there comes into the preparation, uh, for the, the mix itself, the. I mean there's again it's kind of sweeping statements you hear this a lot like, don't you? And it is true, you don't want to fix it in the master. Whatever you can do in the mix to make your life easier in mastering, do it, and particularly as well for the mastering engineers as well.
Marc Matthews:I know I've, um, I've had mixes sent to me and you stick it into something like rx audio and immediately you go in there you can see the peak levels are crazy and you can see these just random peaks throughout the mix because they've got these wild fluctuations in in dynamics and volume for particular phrases. It might be a vocal that suddenly shoots up or a snare or a kick that just comes out of nowhere, and the more you can tame that and control that in your mix, that's just going to give you better loudness potential. Yeah, the further down the line, without someone has to go in with a clipper and just shave the shit off of all that, yeah, and then you get this horrible distortion because you want to try and push it as far as you can go, yeah yeah, if it's already really strongly controlled.
Aisle9:Yeah, it's surprising how loud you can get it I mean I've had I've had to watch it sometimes where I've gone like god, I'm like hitting sort of minus six and it sort of doesn't audibly sound, distorted really. But I generally don't aim for that kind of level myself. I don't really think there's any need to. But there are some music genres where that extreme loudness is called for. But I don't think it really helps most music to be that loud.
Marc Matthews:No, that reminds me of a conversation I had with someone on the podcast and it was another mastering engineer last year and they were telling me how a label uh, it was an edm or dance label contacted them and said they wanted something around minus two. Uh, I know I was like that's madness, absolute like yeah, I don't know why you'd want it like that, because that's crazy. I mean, when you put it into a streaming platform, it's going to get normalized anyway.
Marc Matthews:But it's just going to be one solid block brick of audio, uh, but I guess the label. We're kind of like that's what we want, but, um, I think if that were to happen, I'd probably say, well, just don't put my name to it. Um, just say you, you mastered it in-house, rather than saying I did it but no, I think a key tip for this is to get the mix to the standard or the place where it's going to be most conducive for the mastering process to take place. So get it nice and controlled. It's that control throughout the mixing process and, more often than not, mastering engineers, if you send it to them for feedback I mean, I'm not saying this for everyone, everyone they will provide feedback for you to make their life easier to go back into the mix and sort that out.
Marc Matthews:Um, but yeah, I hope that helps there, dan um, again it's there. I should have done this off there, but there are some episodes of the podcast that you can dive into, uh, where we talk about luffs, in particular last year. There's a lot of episodes with some mastering engineers that would help you out. So let's move on to the next one, and this is quite an interesting one, and I'm going to let you take the lead on this one too, because I haven't actually thought of anything off the top of my head yet, so I'm hoping you might inspire me for this one. So here we go. This is from Jesse K, who was on the podcast earlier this year from the new agency.
Jessie K:So my name is Jesse K and I'm the CEO of new agency and a guest on this great podcast. This year, my biggest win of 2024 was being selected as a top voice on LinkedIn. It's allowed me to connect with so many great people, it's allowed my newsletter Beats and Bytes to grow expeditiously and it's just allowed me to help more and more brand marketers understand the power of music as a marketing vehicle, and that's what I do at New Agency. I live in the intersection of music, technology and brands, so having a megaphone like LinkedIn allows me to connect with so many more people and I so much new things coming into the market. What would you want to see created to make your job better, to make it more interesting, to make it more impactful? What is an invention that the market space is missing from a music and tech standpoint? Quite interested to hear that. Happy New Year Sending love.
Marc Matthews:Thanks for everything, Peace. Thank you, Jesse. So yeah, I'm going to throw this one straight over to you, Tim.
Aisle9:This was a tough one and I came up with a super boring answer. Yeah, this is one to use at parties. Yeah, A better way of sharing projects between DAWs. There we go. That's really exciting.
John B:Important no.
Aisle9:I just sort of, you know, as a mastering mixing engineer, like constantly you're dealing with people. Now We've got everyone working in all kinds of different things. You know, someone's in Logic, someone's in Ableton, someone's in something else and I noticed actually a new thing that Cubase, which is what I work in, happened to have brought into their latest version, which was that it can produce a sort of file that is kind of shared between it and Bitwig, I believe, which you know sort of uses a. It uses a kind of shared sort of common file format, and there have been things like OMF and stuff like that. That sort of exist, but it's not very good and it doesn't really work across all DAWs. So I think it would be amazing to have that way of just going. Look, you all like working in different things, but you can just export your project in this. Someone else can pick it up in whatever they're in and it will kind of work out. I mean, it would actually be a lot more clever than you think to try and go oh right, they use this reverb in Ableton, but we can use this reverb in Cubase. We can. You know, it's something that clever that you know. But with AI and all the rest of it. We've got such advanced technologies to work these things out.
Aisle9:You know, I'd love that compatibility between things, but maybe it's not in the interests of, you know, software developers to make. This is my theory. There's like who wants to create something that means everything can speak to each other. But you know, I mean it would be lovely in terms of what we do, I think, or maybe it's a third-party company that makes something that sort of interfaces with all these things, and you can, there used to be something a bit like that, but, like you know, so you could go this is my project, I'll load it up into this and it will convert it into something for somebody else. But you know, but yeah, that's a pretty dull idea. So I won't try that at the new Christmas party, but you know, no, I won't do that.
Marc Matthews:It's a good idea, though it's just standardization, isn't it?
Marc Matthews:That's what you want, standardization across the board.
Marc Matthews:And the thing is with technology, for the most part, if you think back to like the with computers and networking, and if you want to go down that avenue and that route. That's essentially what happened with regards to that, and that's how we access and we use what we're using now be able to communicate via the internet, because there's standardization of protocols and and, like you think, if, if the manufacturers were able to do that, so it'd make it a lot easier for us to then share and collaborate between daws um, but I'm assuming they were very closed box and don't want that to happen. But maybe, like you say, it doesn't need that third party to intervene and say, okay, well, I don't know some form of ap, API access, and then I'll be able to put it all together and then you'll be able to do it. And, like you say, with the advancements of tech, it would. Certainly. It must be something that could be done, but, like you say, it's an interesting one for a party, isn't it? If someone says what are you up to this year?
Aisle9:More online collaboration as well, and making that easier within you know, so that you can be in your studio and I can be in mine, and it has got. It is possible to do it now, whereas it wasn't, but the more that could be, it could work out. So I could go like, oh, I've got vocal talent in you, you know LA, and I just want to record them in London. Lovely, I can just, like you know, sort of, uh, sort of sit on this and that will stream, you know perfectly, into my DAW and they can hear it perfectly. That kind of thing. More, you know, being able to collaborate, collaboration in general and making collaboration easier, is probably something I would love to see. Um, because we, we do do do it, but it's not as easy as it could be.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, yeah, there are platforms like you mentioned. You've got like audio movers, which is the one I use when I'm sharing sessions, and things like that, which I use, session wire. Yeah, yeah, just building on that, just building on that and making it easier would be amazing. I still haven't really. Thing is, I think of ideas that would be great, but then I think to myself actually, like, with AI, now there are things that automatically do it. I mean, I think go back to our conversation just now about the feedback for a mix maybe some way of automating that you can have a chat bot that you can go into and provide feedback on your mix prior to you then mastering it, rather than just uploading it to a master. This might already exist and it just goes.
Aisle9:I don't actually use these platforms, so there is something out there I can't remember the name of it now that is sort of come up, that's kind of you can feed your audio into, and it kind of comes back with a load of you know checks and advice on things and you know it was interesting, it's. Yeah, I can't remember the name of it.
Marc Matthews:I did try but again it's, you're at the mercy of the, the data that that platform is being fed and how it's responding to what, because it is basically just if, if and if.
Marc Matthews:If it was if, if and else statements and just saying if it does this, then do that, and that's what you're at the mercy of at the moment. I mean, as technology passes, in five years time we may listen to this and we're like it's totally moved on, and then people are using this sort of platform and thing all the time. There was, oh, what was that one that was released recently? Um, it was an engineer who released his mix in process as an automated function, so you could submit your mix and it would mix it in his particular style, and I cannot remember the name of it.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, I think I saw that as well, yeah oh, it's gonna bug me because I discussed it on one of the episodes here, and just that idea that you could now mix in the style of someone else using ai and you can see where it's going.
Philipp K:Yes, yeah it was the first one um that you mentioned.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah and it'd be interesting to see how that goes and whether or not more get on board and you know you get your plugins, which are the CLA plugins with Waves and whatnot, which are sort of their signature plugins, whether then it's going to move down the route. Okay, now you can have a signature mix and then go for that, which will be interesting and how that plays out.
Aisle9:I think obviously technology moves on at such a pace that maybe these things are going to be a lot more possible than we think. But to a degree you don't want to take the human out of the process and it's why somebody wants to hire Chris Lord-Owge to do a mix. It's like it will sound different than you know, just if you bought all these plugins and stuck it on the mix.
Aisle9:you know that it's there's a hell of a lot of decisions going on within any engineer's mind or musician's mind when they're putting something together, and it's those things of the you know, it's those human things that make things interesting to us all. In my mind anyway, it's not perfection.
Marc Matthews:Exactly, I think that's. Would you strive for perfection? I don't think you do. I like having the idea that, like whatever I put out, there are going to be subtle nuances to it that are imperfect, and I think that's what makes it. As soon as you start deviating away from that, then it becomes too clinical, too mechanical, too digital. Yeah, yeah, you know, and then you need that, you know.
Aisle9:To something that's just reading things by numbers rather than actually going. You know, making that sort of creative decision, and you know it's a creative decision whether you have your base up by an extra dB or down by an extra dB, and that you know there's not a right or wrong there by an extra DB, and that you know there's not a right or wrong. There's a what you felt.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, yeah 100%, I say, isn't it? If you think it's right, then roll with it, and then you'll soon get told by the rest of the internet.
Aisle9:that it's wrong, it's a bad idea.
Marc Matthews:Yeah.
Aisle9:Yeah, generally what?
Jessie K:happens.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, I'm not going to go down that very salty route. Thank you very much for that one there.
Aisle9:Jesse Good question.
Marc Matthews:It was very good because it had me thinking, because, again, with technology, I think of things. I'm thinking. I'm fairly confident it probably already exists, but maybe in 2025 there'll be more. So let's move on to this one here. This is Jill, so Jill's got a question. Now Anna Wynn. This one here this is jill, so jill's got a question.
Jill R:Now that's anna win hi, this is jill at roller blue. My music win in 2024 was getting a top 30 placement for two of my electronic tracks in the australian song contest, one in the pop dance category and the other instrumental. Here's my question for mark once you have a rough mix in place, do you have a process for the order of fine-tuning adjustments? For example, do you start with panning, further EQing or automation?
Marc Matthews:Great question and also I just want to throw out there it is great that these audio clips have been submitted from the United States, the UK and Australia, and if I put a triangle and just join that, it's quite cool that the podcast sort of traverses the globe. So, uh, that's very. Thank you, jill, it's a very good question. And when it comes to that so you mentioned there, uh, what approach first. So with me I always do like a static sort of mix or balance, however you want to call it, which is where I just do level and pan, basically, and then just get a basic mix put together. Then from that I then go through the instrument group. So I usually start with drums and then go through the drums and then, if there's a vocal, I bring the. I tell a lie, actually. I usually go with drums and then bass, particularly getting the kick and bass right, and then I bring in the vocal and then build everything in around that.
Marc Matthews:Generally, I start with EQ. It's usually some form of surgical EQ, if it needs it If it needs it that's the caveat there as well if it needs it, because sometimes it might not. What you don't want to do is just start EQing and compressing things because you feel like you have to EQ and compress something which, particularly with compression, you can go down a very destructive route. If you feel like you need to put a compressor on something for the sake of it, eq I think. Less so you probably there will be.
Marc Matthews:I'll be struggling to think of a time where I haven't EQ'd something. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, um, but no, generally it is. I usually start with um, just a basic balance of level and pan, and then I'll go through the, the drums, kick and bass, then the vocal bring everything around that, and then I'll go through each track, do whatever processing I need to do on those tracks and then I'll then move on to automation. Automation usually comes at the tail end when I start moving things around, ducking things out, bringing things back in, and that's automation of level, pan and also sends, muting sends and the level of sends and things like that as well. So that's generally my. That's kind of a very whistle-stop tour through my workflow. I'll send it over to you now, tim.
Aisle9:Yeah, because I think, if I'm correct in saying that, the question was sort of look at your fine adjustments, wasn't it at the end of when? I assumed, anyway when I listened to it, that you're kind of because we've got another question coming up about order of things. So it was like when I heard that question it was like you know that you've got your overall mix and you're making adjustments at the end. And I think the one thing that you mentioned it, mark, and I'm 100% the same is that automation, to me, is the last thing. It's the last thing that comes on at that point.
Aisle9:And you know, because if you automate your mix earlier, it's like you've given control to somebody else and it's busy running all these things and then you'll end up fighting it and then you'll end up going oh, but my vocal's too quiet here and I need it, you know, and I'll put this other plug-in on to make it louder. And then suddenly, no, just leave it all and get it all sitting as good as you possibly can, um in a static version and then reach for the automation is my, my tip, because I I think that way you won't be fighting things too much and you can just fine tune them when they're sitting at that point. Because if you've got your eq right and you've got your compression right, your main vocal, for instance, should be sitting pretty nicely at that point. But it will need some finessing, probably with some automation. And you know probably won't need finessing with panning, but like it will probably need some, you know, be sitting in the center of your mix but like um other things, yeah, sure you might. You might want to sort of have, you know, changes in the send levels, changing in the panning, changes in um, you know volume, and that might be the last sort of thing you do. So I tend to all of those things you know will be automated at the end and I won't automate them really until the end of the mix. So, um, but yeah, volume is definitely the the thing.
Aisle9:If I'm tweaking stuff at the very end of a mix, it generally still is tiny little bits of volume movement. Is this sitting in the right place? Does this need to come up or down? And occasionally a little bit of like very sort of subtle eq sort of things, because hopefully everything's basically sitting there, but at the end of my mix it might be like oh, I think a little bit more in the bass, in that, little bit more brightness on this. So it's just really tiny little things, but they're often just really small eq. I remember I remember sitting there and going, oh, just too much, 300 hertz in that I'll just take another dB out of this.
Aisle9:So they're very small movements, hopefully. I think that's the thing. As you go across your mix, the movements get smaller and smaller and smaller. So you've done all your broad strokes earlier on and you're gradually moving down to very fine stuff. Um, you know, I mean, if you're still going all right, massive movement on something at the end of your mix, there's probably quite a problem already that you, you know, you've got got it almost. And sometimes during the mixing process you sort of realize that you've got things out of whack or out of balance and you're almost better to go away, freshen up your ears, come back, put all the faders you know, do it solo. You know sort of maybe start from building up from your drums upwards and build back into your mix, if it's really got a, but hopefully at the end of your oh, just cramping my leg but hopefully at the end of your mix. You're just doing fine little details of the volume, fine little details with the automation. That's where I'll probably be or hope to be.
Marc Matthews:I think that's really good advice, dad, the idea that it should be small movements at the end, um, and I think that's really good and it's not something I'd consciously been aware of, but it's something that resonates. You know, when I was working on a mix earlier and I was just, it was just like oh, that vocal maybe. Okay, in this section I'm just going to automate the, the level down. It's going to come down by a db here, just so it sits better, and then in the next section it's going to come back, or maybe I'm just going to bring up that verb there again, just to bring that push that vocal back a bit, just near this part here. And it's just little, little tweaks. And, like you say, if you're finding that oh man, I'm, I don't know you're pulling something down by 10 db, a particular instrument, then at some point I think, when it came to that initial balance, that you've got something slightly out of whack if you're making those wild movements. That being said, I mean, if it is like a breakdown, then that makes perfect sense.
Aisle9:Yeah, yeah, it's more of a sort of arrangement decision.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent.
Aisle9:One little detail there that I think is someone showed it to me early on and I remind myself and go back to it. All the time is like is towards the end of particularly of your mix, you're trying to do fine things turn the volume right down really really super low so you can hardly hear it, and just listen to it super quiet, as if it was almost in the background. Like you know, you're listening to it on the radio in the background, in the kitchen type thing. Listen to it really low and just see what you will see where things sit and sort of see, almost turn it down, and turn it down and turn it down and go, well, it's just disappearing.
Aisle9:What's, what's still sticking out, and if it, it should sort of work really, really quiet. Your drums, your bass, your, your overall balance should be beautiful even at a really really low level. If it's not and something's being lost or poking out too much, you'll hear it, and then you may need to just make those tiny little adjustments to sort of sit it in there and then turn it back up loud and then turn it back down really quiet, and so you can just like because it should work, but both ends of the scale. If it's not, there's still a problem that's uh.
Marc Matthews:Another one, another great one. And do the same, I think, comparing if you've got a reference chat you're working with as well a, b them at that really low level, and then make sure obviously you want to have a very, very good reference that you're working with as well A, b them at that really low level, and then make sure, obviously you want to have a very, very good reference that you're working with. But you'll get an idea. Okay, well, I can still hear X, y, z in this reference. That's the sound I'm going for. I'll be able to do that with mine.
Marc Matthews:Another one as well which I found works reasonably well is if you just have enough volume that you can step outside the room and then you can hear it outside the room, and that's quite good for the mid-range because you can get an idea if you can still hear everything in a balanced way outside of the room. Now, I appreciate this. This is more, I guess, if you are like a home studio producer, because if you're in a professional setting, then you're probably it's going to be treated. You're not going to hear a great deal outside the room Not doing carny or anything.
Aisle9:Yeah, exactly.
Marc Matthews:But if you're at home and you've got a home studio, then you'll be able to do this. You'll be able to go out the other side and then you'll be able to hear If all you can hear is one particular instrument. I did this actually. This is interesting. I was listening to the radio and my car's an old piece of shit and basically I had to have the heating on full wax so I could see. And it made it so that the song I was listening to on the radio all I could hear was the hi-hat.
Marc Matthews:It was just Like that is all I could hear and it made me think is that a creative choice, or is that my radio, or is that genuinely someone's mixed it? So the hi-hat is that loud, that at that low volume. It is just pure hi-hat and and nothing else. I couldn't hear the vocal, I couldn't hear anything. It was just this hi-hat coming through. So I thought that was quite interesting. But then it just goes to show that maybe some people, some genres, music is just pure hats. There we go, that's off to that producer. Yeah, indeed, I'll probably get corrected now. They'll be like this is a particular for this style of music, which is fine Hat rock. Yeah Right, let's go. We've got a couple more left, so this one kind of feeds on nicely from the previous one. So this is Kai's music win.
Kai C:Previous one, so this is kai's music win hey, this is kai um, my music win from 2024 was that I learned how to actually mix and record and I started my music journey, uh, got my ideas into the music. I also learned how to really make, how to compress really well, how to eq really well and just make good mixing and recording, and I learned that I need to get sound from the source and not later in the mix. My question is in what order should I mix the whole track? Like what first drums, or first EQ, or first compression? I just don't know how to do that. First maybe automation, probably gain staging. And what order should I mix vocals? Like how should I place first surgical EQ and then, or yeah, how I mix vocals, like how should I place first surgical eq and then, or yeah, how to mix vocals?
Marc Matthews:thanks, oh, there's a.
Marc Matthews:There's a lot to unpack in that question. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was two or three questions there, so thank you, guy. Uh, well, done as well for um getting to the place where you're happy with with your mixing um.
Marc Matthews:I think the first, the first part of the question was regards to the process, um instrument groups. I guess you I think you were referring to there in terms of what you do first I think I mentioned this earlier. So with me it was I start usually start with drums and I'll bring in the bass and then, and then it'd be the vocal and then mine's predominantly like synths and effects and they'll just come in around that. So that's generally the instruments and groups that the way I work with. So it's always. I always start with a kick drum. I always start with a kick drum and then bring in the other drum elements, as I say, then again the bass and the vocal and whatnot um, and I might have to play the last bit again to get the rest of the question. But I think it was to do with the order. So that's the order I would do it in. Then I think you mentioned something along the lines of the order in terms of the channel strip and settings. I think was the next part with vocals, but I think you mentioned something there about gain staging and automation. So this sort of mirrors or echoes what we had, the discussion we had just now about how you should probably leave automation until the end.
Marc Matthews:And gain staging is a word that I find is thrown around a lot online a lot, and sometimes it's misrepresented. Now I mean my understanding. The way I see gain staging is having the audio at the optimum level going into the plugin, if it my understanding. The way I see gain staging is having the audio of the optimum level going into the plug-in. If it's a plug-in or whatever it is in your chain, it's the optimum level going into it and also coming out of it into the next sort of step in the chain. That's gain staging to me. Sometimes I see people refer to gain staging and what they're essentially referring to is just level. Overall level is getting the levels right in a song. So for me, gain staging is making sure you're at the optimum level going through. If you go from the top of the channel strip to the bottom and you've just got the optimum level.
Marc Matthews:I think when you first start working with audio. I think it's the output. I know I did this when I first start working with audio. I think there's a. It's the output. I know I did this when I first started years and years ago. I would neglect the output. I'd feed something into a plugin and then think, oh, it sounds great, but neglect what was coming out of it. And often you can get that loudness bias. Just because it's louder, you think it's better. And that's where gain matching comes in really, really handy, so that gain staging. You're kind of doing that throughout the whole process and then just leave the automation to the end, um, but I'll throw it over to you now, tim.
Aisle9:Yeah, I mean, I I think very similar sort of um order for mixing. I will start with the drums, then add the bass and I will start with the kick drum. Probably in the drums, um, kicks their hats, sort of you know kind of work down through them. Um, something that I would say on on top of this is not only should the order in which you mix sort of that you know you get a pattern to the, to the order, but for heaven's sake, put that in your project when you're doing your project. So, um, I sort of think that projects should follow as well, like I always have my drums at the beginning, my bass, my guitars, my synths, like literally the order of tracks in your mix, and mix in that order too, so that you you have the whole thing and it will, it will pay dividends. You will find mixing a lot easier and you can grab a you know a project from five years ago and it will still have that order in it and you'll be able to go straight into it. So, and I think it just helps as a way of working, um, but yes, I work in that kind of way. So it will be drums, bass, guitars, synths or synth guitars. That's a little bit interchangeable, um, but more I would say on, and I don't actually put the vocal in often until the end, um, towards the end. So I will almost build up, almost build up a sort of backing track before starting to put the vocal in.
Aisle9:But like I again, I will sort of go for on the synths and guitars, more the rhythm parts initially. So I'm trying to build up the rhythm section, the drums, the bass and the, the rhythm parts like from the guitars and the synths, um, or keyboards and then any. I will tend to put the vocals in then and any lead parts like lead guitars, lead synths or whatever tend to play around the vocals or hopefully be in, not in the way of the vocals, so I will put them in, maybe after that. I'm not particularly interested in the lead synth line if I've got a vocal in it until I know where the vocal's sitting. But you know, it's that rhythm section really that I'm most concerned about initially. If it's a track that's got a rhythm section, a rhythm feel, I really want the drums, the bass and the guitar and synth, rhythmical pads and chords and all that to really, you know gel, and once they're gelling um, then I know that all the other parts can be made to sort of sit and work on top you know um or sort of sit in there but like, yeah, um.
Aisle9:As for order of channel and stuff and gain staging, I mean I think I'm with you very much. It's the same idea. I mean there is a whole question with something like eq, surgical eq and creative eq. It's a big question, but I would, if I'm being really particular, I would probably do my cutting eq first and then my boosting eq would be last or towards the end of my chain. There so often um.
Marc Matthews:But you know that is quite a big question, so it is, and I think it all comes down to what works best for you, and I'm very much the same In my head. The way I think is I'm going to get rid of what I don't want at first, which is the surgical element, then maybe some compression and then some creative EQ. I guess you would call it then sort of like that tonal compression this is a very, very sweeping generalization here A de-esser in there somewhere as well. Sometimes I'll do a de-esser at the beginning and one at the end, or I might just have one at the beginning, I might just have one at the end. It really depends on on the this is a vocal or I suppose, on a hat as well. You can do it on cymbals too, um, and it really depends. But generally I think yeah, I'm with you on that one I think surgical eki first makes most sense.
Aisle9:And then they're all kind of clever mystery things like de-essing your reverb returns.
Aisle9:There's all kinds of advanced sort of stuff which you can get into. I'm not saying you have to do that to make a nice mix. I'm sure you can survive without doing that but these are definitely sort of things that you might end up with. But I think, yeah, you're right. It's that getting out stuff that you don't need in there, because before you hit your compressor is generally not everyone believes in that, but I can see the sense in it that your compressor is going to be made to work a lot harder.
Aisle9:If you've got like and be triggered by all this sort of low end, that energy, maybe that you're not, don't actually need in the in, in the particular channel you're listening to. So you know you, you might take out that energy, that actual sound. Maybe you've got low end rumble on your vocal or something and you just go, I don't need that in the actual vocal, so I'll take that energy out and then my compressor will probably be a lot gentler or more controlled because I don't have all of that triggering it and and you know. So, yeah, take out what you don't need, or or or get a, get a sort of more balanced sound before you go into compression saturation, you know, sort of creative eq, you know yeah, I thought.
Marc Matthews:I don't know if it was that clip, so apologies, kai, if it wasn't in yours, but there was. I think you mentioned about getting a better recording or getting it right at source. I think it was that one there. Yeah, and that's what I was going to say as well. I think that's that's a massive part of this sounds. If you are recording. I know there's many genres of music whereby we're using samples rather than actual, but then you have to make sure you find decent samples. So that's one in itself, and I found this the other day. I thought, oh, this is a great sample. Then, when I stuck my headphones on and really dug into it, there was some weird shit at the beginning and end that I had to get rid of.
Marc Matthews:So there's a learning curve for you there, folks. And I thought this sample was great, and then it's not, until I stuck my headphones on, because that's where I do my really like surgical editing when it comes to actually mouse clicking, editing of audio, and then I could hear this. So if you're ever using samples, top and tail, make sure you check them. I know they let that one slip through, but yeah, getting it right at source. Because what I was going to say is you've got to think this goes back to what you said earlier about de-essing the send on on a reverb. You think back to all these amazing records that were made sort of like 30, 40 years ago, where they were using a much fewer, fewer elements to put these mixes together, but on reflection, they were probably getting it right at source versus what we. It's quite easy now to think, oh, I'll roll with that and I'll fix it later, which you probably don't want to do wherever possible.
Marc Matthews:But that's a classic one I see online all the time. You see tips and tricks people put out and the classic one is someone will say I'll do this, this and this for this vocal or whatever, and then you'll see the comments saying just re-record it. Just re-record it. Or like record another one, record another version, record an overdone record, a harmony you're like. Well, I don't have that option right now, um, so sometimes you don't, and then you have to make do with what we have, which is quite a lot in the in the digital realm. But no great question though, kai, very, very good. So, in the interest of time, I think we'll move on to the last one now, which is another kai. This is valley lights, who has been on the podcast before.
Valley Lights:Um, a full rotation of the sun ago, and, uh, it is gonna play now hey, this is valley lights, and my biggest win of 2024 was getting out and playing live music. My first show was called Escape from LA. Played it with some amazing musicians like Slack Machine and Missing Words. I then went on to do a summer series of concerts called Summer Nights, which was an amazing success, and it was so beautiful to meet all of my friends and fans and meet new amazing people all of my friends and fans and meet new amazing people. I want to ask, mark, what do you suggest for musicians who want to get out there and start gigging, start playing shows and start playing live music, where all the magic happens. 2025 is going to be amazing. Guys, stick around.
Marc Matthews:I'm glad I put that one at the end because I like the way you ended that one there, kai. That was a great way to end or to have with the with the last comment there. So well done. On the gigs as well, it's something that I do miss profoundly gigging. It's probably been over 10 years now since I last gigged, and before that I was gigging a lot, so I do really miss it. My advice I mean I've been out of the scene for quite a while, to be honest. Honest when it comes to gigging and uh and rehearsing and practicing with other musicians. But way back when, when I did it it was, I think I found my bound band for the local trade, it um, which is uh, which is a a. It's not even a periodical, it's like a newspaper which you just put.
Marc Matthews:It puts up like trailers and caravans for sale and I put an advert in there trying to find some other musicians, and somebody responded and then I joined them. We got together and they become great mates of mine still friends of mine now and then, um, we're running on this journey with this band for ages, but obviously I mean we have better things to do now rather than use our local ad trade or trade it to do that. But I notably for me and this is something I'm going to do more of this year, because I want to work with local artists not to gig, but just to work with them and like singers and get them on some of my tunes rather than going down the international route of something like Vocalizer or these other platforms where you can find top liners and I think the best thing to do is just embed yourself and start networking in your local air quotes watering hole of musicians. So I mean, if you go on Facebook or something like that, you can find these groups. Like I live in a city called Exeter and there's like Devon musicians, exeter musicians, and you can go on there and there'll be a plethora.
Marc Matthews:Every day there are people commenting saying they're looking for this musician or they're looking for musicians to do X, y, z, and that's a really good place to start, I think, to meet musicians. And I think I remember when I first started with the band and I only really progressed and got better as a musician when I started playing with other people and got out of my silo in my parents' shed and then started gigging with other people and got out of my my silo in my parents shed, um, and then started gigging with other people. So, yeah, my, my advice really would be is just to um. I mean, it's easy as an extrovert or someone who it could be quite hard if you're introverted, but it's just to break beyond that barrier and just talk to people online. Everyone's really nice for the most part, um, and then, yeah, go down these watering holes and just get meet local people, go to gigs, and then it all really snowballed from there.
Aisle9:That's my thought process I have been out of the game for a while, so it may well have changed well, yeah, I I did at one point do an excessive amount of gigging and, uh, you, you know, I sort of, uh do know what it uh, yeah, I sort of felt like I spent 18 years constantly on the road at one point in my life, so it was great. I, I don't, you know, I loved it. Um, but I, I have been out that loop a little bit, although I did, you know, I have done a bit of synth wave live gigging, which I really enjoyed.
Aisle9:Yeah, you were were indeed like and I'd like to do some more actually on, hopefully, on, I will get to do some some more live stuff, um seeing, because I've got a fantastic drummer in stew, my mate who who plays with me, and a couple of other awesome mates who I'd love to get involved, um, so, yeah, I'm fortunate. I've got kind of a really good backlog of you know, sort of back catalog of sort of musicians who I know, like you know in my little black book, of sort of cool musicians it'd be nice.
Aisle9:Yeah, it'd be nice to get involved in the projects and do stuff with. But, like um and I know that you what you're saying mark, some people don't really have that and they're trying to sort of get out and meet other musicians and that's sort of the side that you really covered there Trading or whatever that's.
Marc Matthews:Oh, trading, yeah, yeah, trade it. I don't even know if it's still going. It might be Gumtree Marketplace yeah, gumtree. I haven't used Gumtree in bloody years either. I remember selling some equipment on there, some old band equipment.
Aisle9:You too can find a room full of bedbugs, yeah, but like, yeah, I think the one thing I would say with that from years of doing live stuff with various bands was, I think, if I went back into it now, what I would do differently. And it sounds like sorry, I've forgotten the guy's name.
Marc Matthews:Kai, sorry Kai.
Aisle9:Yeah, kai has done this already with what he's done. But I would say, don't bother. Just sort of playing any old, you know dive with your music. If you're, for instance, if you do synthwave or if you do you know shoegaze or if you do whatever it is like you know, whatever your genre is, go and find the places that people really go to listen to that genre, don't it? It can be very soul-destroying when you're in the dog and duck and nobody you know nobody wants they want to hear johnny cash and you're trying to play, you know, gunship or whatever.
Aisle9:Like, just don't, don't go and play the wrong to the wrong crowd. Try and find your crowd and your audience because you do want to get a response. You do want to get, you know, connection with people. That's why you're doing it. So, um, and that probably means, like you know, networking online and finding other people in your niche who are going out and are gigging and you know, and then try and get on you know supports and that sort of thing and work with other people in your niche. Um, and don't be too proud to do whatever comes up in that and sort of see where it goes. But yeah, I would not bother sort of doing. There are some gigs that are worth saying no to. That's all I'd say, you know, yeah, I I a lot.
Marc Matthews:I totally second that. I remember playing some gigs where we would set up. We would be the oddest band on the lineup and I'd be like what are we doing here? I don't think anyone here is for melodic death metal and then you're playing. That's it. Yeah, you're playing in a. Legion at the back of a. Legion in. Yeovil yeah, and you're thinking why? Are we here, why are?
Aisle9:we here, yeah, and you don't want to be there. You want to be doing some sort of you know, metal kind of sort of night of lots of bands in sort of Bristol or whatever. You want to be hitting and finding your audience. So not every gig is worth doing, but like, oh, yeah, I mean it does, it is. It is an amazing thing when you start doing gigs and you really get a good response.
Marc Matthews:It's, it's awesome yeah, most definitely yeah, maybe at some point in the later, later, maybe you know into it, it'd be nice.
Aisle9:Maybe, maybe we'll concoct something, mark, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah we could do.
Marc Matthews:We could do. Yeah, okay, collab going, put all our connections together and then do something down in the southwest. There's a number of southwest artists knocking about in the odd scene, and then, of course, we've got bristol up the road. Yeah, great city, um, but thank you everyone for your musical wins of 2024. So had philip, we had bending grid, dan fast, eddie, jessie k, jill, kai kai, valley lights and, of course, neon highway. And I say, of course and of course, thanks for jumping on and hashing these questions out with me. It's been a pleasure.
Marc Matthews:Yeah, it's a good format. Maybe it's a format we could continue doing into the new year. We'll see how it goes. Let's see what the response is to this one. It's quite nice having questions come in and answer. Maybe next time we'll do it blind and um, we'll have the questions, yeah well, listen, but we won't see. Yeah yeah, um, and we won't listen to the questions beforehand, but it's been an absolute pleasure.
Marc Matthews:Uh, this is going to come out on new year's eve, so I'm going to wish you a festive time. Have a great festive time and Christmas.
Marc Matthews:Yeah indeed, and happy new year, folks. Before you go, I want to hear from you. I want to know your favourite episode of the Inside the Mix podcast. Alternatively, you could just review this episode. Click the speak pipe 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.
