#207: How Many Drafts Does It Take to Finish a Track? (feat. Michael Oakley)

Have you ever abandoned a promising track because it suddenly "didn't feel right" the next day? Why does your track feel wrong the next day? Is Overthinking Killing Your Songwriting Process? In this eye-opening episode of Inside the Mix, synth-pop artist Michael Oakley unpacks the creative psychology behind overthinking songwriting and how our emotional state can sabotage musical momentum.

Inspired by advice from Max Martin -“Don’t overthink a song until its third rewrite” -Michael reveals how writing 14+ song drafts taught him the balance between intuition and iteration. We explore the mental traps artists fall into: abandoning promising tracks, getting stuck in endless revisions, and losing objectivity. Michael shares how trusted collaborators (Ollie Wride, Dana Jean Phoenix, and John Kunkel) help him overcome production blindness and restore clarity to his mix decisions.

You'll also learn practical strategies to break creative paralysis, from setting a tempo and key to choosing sounds that unlock inspiration. Discover how he transformed a 2000s-inspired track into a synthpop anthem, retaining its essence while reinventing its sound.

Whether you’re battling the blank DAW screen or questioning your last vocal take, this episode offers real-world tools to finish more music with confidence. 

Subscribe now to join our community of producers and songwriters learning to navigate the creative landscape with confidence. Michael's new album arrives May 8th next year—perfect timing to apply these insights to your musical projects.

Links mentioned in this episode: 

Follow Michael Oakley

Listen to the Sodajerker podcast 

Xfer Serum

Chapters

• 0:31 Overthinking vs Intuition in Songwriting
• 7:36 Drafting Songs & Getting Feedback
• 16:28 How Mood Affects Creativity
• 27:55 Reworking Without Losing the Spark
• 35:21 Mapping Musical Ideas in the DAW
• 46:52 Sound Selection & Reuse Tips
• 51:35 New Album and Future Projects

Transcript

Marc Matthews: 0:00

What if the real reason your songs aren't connecting isn't your production, but your process? A wise man once shared a powerful piece of advice from Max Martin Don't overthink a song until its third rewrite. It's a reminder that even the biggest hitmakers wrestle with the question should you chase perfection or trust the initial spark? Today, in this episode, returning guest Michael Oakley and I unpack that question and more. If you've ever struggled with when to stop tweaking a song, whether to write more or better, or how to stay authentic in a high output world, this episode is for you.

Michael Oakley: 0:36

You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, Mark Matthews.

Marc Matthews: 0:40

Welcome to Inside the Mix, your go-to podcast for music creation and production. Whether you're crafting your first track or refining your mixing skills, join me each week for expert interviews, practical tutorials and insights to help you level up your music and smash it in the music industry. Let's dive in. Hey folks, welcome back to Inside the Mix. I'm thrilled to be joined once again by Scottish synth-pop maestro, Michael Oakley. He's now based in Canada and he's signed to New Retrowave Records. Michael, that was a long intro for me. Welcome back. How are you?

Michael Oakley: 1:16

Good, yeah, thanks for having me back. Yeah, I enjoy doing these sort of things, because doing these sort of things because, you know, in a world where it was social media, where it's all about how people look rather than how they are behind the scenes with the process, you know, people see my social media. I don't really post a lot. I'll maybe post the odd picture if I'm in the studio or something, or my cats or a stupid meme, but I care more about this type of material because I feel like this is the sort of thing that has value for people listening.

Michael Oakley: 1:58

You know, musicians, producers, writers, and you know I don't think of myself as a finished article. You know, I really think that I'm still learning and still working towards, um, not a goal, but staying in the zone where you are able, where you're able to have enough energy to pull from places in order to get the ideas from here and here into here. Um, and that's the most important thing, um, and I just I love the idea of people getting something of value that helps, uh, their creative process out of these types of things, you know yeah, I totally agree.

Marc Matthews: 2:43

I totally agree and, uh, that's why I love doing these interviews and getting these sort of behind this, behind the scenes, almost psychological conversations about the process, not just about mixing techniques, you know, and and music production techniques that you can employ, but also there's the psychology behind songwriting and music production as well, which I think is incredibly important. Before we dive into it, folks, if you want to catch our first chat, check out episodes 53 and 54. This is episode 207, just for a bit of context. So it was a while ago where we dove into synthwave production and getting started as an indie artist and, as I mentioned, in this episode we're going to go deeper with what's the line between refining your craft and overthinking it into the ground. So we're going to be talking about songwriting strategies and everything else as well.

Marc Matthews: 3:31

So the idea for this conversation stemmed from a reel that you sent me from another podcast, and apologies if I pronounce this podcast wrong because, hands in the air, I haven't listened to the actual episode, but the podcast is called I think I'm going to pronounce this with a slightly Scandinavian tone Soda, soda, jeker. I could be totally wrong there. It's S-O-D-A-J-E-R-K-E-R on songwriting podcast. So again, apologies if I got it wrong. So the reel anyway. Podcast. So again apologies if I got it wrong. Uh, so the the real anyway was where gary barlow of take that talks about advice from max martin and, to paraphrase, he said you should overthink and rework every song. So my question to you, michael, is do you often go through multiple sort of rewrites of a track and at what point do you feel like you've taken a song as far as it can go?

Michael Oakley: 4:36

I absolutely will go through at least 12, 13, 14 drafts of an idea before I even start to say, yeah, this is where it needs to be. And usually by that point, um, I get other people involved to take a listen. Um, you know, I work with people like, uh, john conco he's uh of new division. I probably mentioned this in the last podcast, I forget, but, um, but I like to work with a lot of the same people. So Olly Rye, dana, jean Phoenix, and I always let them hear the ideas and say what do you think? What would you do at this stage? Or is anything sticking out at you that you think isn't working? Because when you work on something for that length of time let's say you get to draft eight and you've probably heard the idea about 600, 700 times played over and over and over because you've been working with it and then you start to, um, you start to get blind. It's a little bit like when you spray aftershave and then after 15 minutes you can't smell it anymore because you've become nose blind, yeah, yeah.

Michael Oakley: 5:56

And it's like that, it's like you start to become. It's a myopia takes over and you can't hear it anymore, and so what you need to do is get someone else I mean, I like someone else to come and listen and give me feedback, and because they usually give me an observation that I haven't considered or they break that myopia and and like most recently, I was working on us on a track and I really liked the drums. I thought the drums sounded really nice. And then I took it to John Kunco and he said he said those drums don't work, the kick and the snare do not sound like they really belong in this world. And at first there's that little, you know, there's a little push back inside. You feel like I like that, I like those drums. And then, as I sat with it and he demoed some alternative kicks and snares for me, I started to come around and go, yeah, you're right, you're right. Actually I'm going to have to go on a hunt now to basically find an alternate. And it's funny because you know, see, when you, when someone shifts that little shift of perception and it actually, it actually uh, extends the life of how many more hours you have of enjoyment when you're working on the track because someone's broke you out of a, let's say, a roadblock and then you feel the energy come back to to want to work on it again, because you're oh, I know what to do with this now and you know it's a bit like that. So, um, yeah, I go through about 12 or so, maybe more, drafts, um, of a song before I start to be happy with it. I guess I mean, yeah, it's, it's, it's a frustrating process.

Michael Oakley: 7:49

I think I I heard a great piece of advice, uh, and someone was talking about the difference between an amateur and a professional. Right, so, or, or sorry, let's say a better word is a hobbyist, or sorry, let's say a better word is a hobbyist. A hobbyist and say, like an amateur or professional, someone on the road to try, like, I'm taking this seriously and I want to get better. So the hobbyist will work on something because it's fun, and when it stops being fun, they stop because it's a hobby, it's supposed to be fun. But an amateur or professional, semi-professional, someone on the road to like, I really want to unravel the secret of how to make a great production or a great track. When the thing starts off being fun, it's an experiment. But then it stops being fun and it becomes frustrating.

Michael Oakley: 8:52

And you, you know you, you work on it. One day you're in a certain mood, you enjoy it because you're in that mood. When the amateur, semi-professional person hits that frustration, you know you're in a certain mood, you're feeling melancholic and that lends itself to the vibe that you've been going for for the track and it works. But then what happens the following day? When you know you get up, you go out for a walk, you watch a movie and your moods changed and you're no longer melancholic. Now you are in a completely different, you're jovial and a more fun mood and you go back to try and work on that track with that slightly somber tone. Your energy does not match with that song.

Michael Oakley: 9:42

So you, there's a moment where you think this sucks, this idea is not as good as I thought it was. This idea, this idea doesn't feel the same as it felt yesterday. Maybe it's not good, wrong, your moods changed. So, in the same way, if I'm walking around listen to stuff on Spotify, depending on what mood I'm in, I'll listen to a certain playlist, a certain artist, a certain song that fits my mood. But somehow we know that when we're looking for entertainment, but we don't recognize that as a creative. When we are making music, it's an immediate oh, this idea sucks, I'm not feeling it anymore. Of course you're not feeling it. Your mood's changed.

Michael Oakley: 10:27

It's a bit like uh, george Harrison got great advice. I've got all these anecdotes because I am obsessed with that. I'll take wisdom wherever I can find it, whether it's the Beatles, gary Barlow, barry Manilow, uh, you know, I don don't care, I'll take any wisdom where I can find it and apply it. And George Harrison said he was asking John Lennon for songwriting advice. And John Lennon said that exact thing. That's where I got it from. He said if you come up with a good idea, stay with that idea for as long as you can and get as much of it down on paper and as much of it developed, because tomorrow you will wake up and you'll feel differently. Because that's what we're like as human beings. You know you sad one day, happy the next. The following day I'll need to join the gym because I'm motivated and I want to get fit. Falling day nah, I'm just not going to bother, I'm just going to have ice cream.

Michael Oakley: 11:26

We're a very capricious species and that, so we have to recognize that when we're being creative. So to try and bring this all home is stay the course. That's why I mean people might ask, why the hell would you do 12 drafts, 20 drafts of a track? Isn't that obsessive? Isn't that a pursuit of perfection that doesn't exist? Yeah, it's my perfection because it's my song and it's my production and at the end of the day, you know and I mean this in the nicest, most respectful and courteous way possible I don't write music for other people.

Michael Oakley: 12:13

I know that people who are fans like to sort of think that about their favorite musicians. But I promise you, if I wrote music specifically for what I thought was the fan base, my music would suck. It would be the most bland, generic, crappy, mcdonald's hamburgers level music. And that's why, for me, I enjoy the process and I even enjoy the struggle. And I even enjoy the struggle, I even enjoy that frustration of oh, why isn't this working? You know, why can't I get this bridge section to sort of gel back to the final chorus? What is wrong here?

Michael Oakley: 12:58

Oh, it's, you know, the drum fill before we go back. It's the melody line hasn't resolved, it's the chords just don't do the right thing. Maybe I need to do a sus chord, then the major bam back in and that's what lends it back. Like there's various techniques to smooth things around, and it's like that with with drafts of songs you torture yourself. It's like that with drafts of songs you torture yourself, but that's what you've got to do. It's not supposed to be fun at that stage. At that stage it's about building the perfect beast. You're like making Frankenstein.

Marc Matthews: 13:39

Yeah, I totally agree. A lot of what you said there echoes so many conversations I've had on the podcast. So go right back to the beginning about like your circle of support, as it were. So you've got that regular group of artists that you're sending your ideas, your drafts to for feedback, and it's something that I've uh pleated for one of a better way putting about about it on the podcast numerous times to have that supportive network of people that you trust their opinion that you trust to then come back honestly and openly with critique and feedback on your, on your track. And it's something that I talk about again all the time on the podcast and with other, with other artists as well and I would.

Michael Oakley: 14:17

I would add one thing to that as well which I think because we had a little chat before this podcast about football. Right, we did Now. When I used to play football, I wasn't very good, but I used to play with people who were better than me, because that's what would allow me to develop and sharpen and become better. And the people I work with are all better than me, like I think they're all better than me. You know, oli Ride is a far better songwriter than I am. John Kunkel is, you know, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times the musician producer I am. You know, dana Jean Phoenix as well what an unbelievable, unbelievable, incredibly talented, way better singer than me. Same with ollie.

Michael Oakley: 15:06

So I surround myself with people who I perceive as being way better than me and by being in their presence and getting their advice, I know it's going to help, you know, elevate anything I do to a better level. Because if every single one of us signs off on the song and says, like it, love it, love it, love it, it's got the best chance. And I'm thinking, yeah, I'm confident with this, this is this, this is, this is where it should be. Uh, this is, this is exactly where it should be, and and that's why I always like to work with people who I you know, um think are at a higher level or better than me, if you know what I mean. Like just you know, it's that football thing, you know. Play with players that are better if you want to improve and I've definitely improved through being in their presence, you know.

Marc Matthews: 15:54

Yeah, it reminds me of when I started playing guitar and I was learning to play guitar and I was playing along to tracks and Total Guitar Magazine, playing along getting all the tabs and whatnot. But it wasn't until I joined a band with other musicians that were better than me that I was like okay, and when I went in the studio as well to record and really shone a spotlight on what I needed to improve on. But yeah, just being with other musicians, the path to progression just sped up. So so much because you realize where your deficiencies are and obviously they're there also to to help you and you bring you up as well as the rising tides. Something with boats come around with the analogy, but something along those lines lifts or boats or something like that.

Marc Matthews: 16:37

Um, but what you said about there, about the 12 or 13 drafts and then staying in the zone and continuing on with the idea for as long as you can, it reminds me of a conversation I had with, I believe, our shared friend Ed Sunglasses Kid. Oh, yes, I think that was a couple of years ago and he said the same thing. He said you've got to break the back of it. I'm fairly certain that's what he said, and you got to continue because, like you said there, sometimes it's not going to be fun, but you've got the idea. You just need to continue with it because that that idea was there for a reason and you just just continue with it for as long as you can.

Michael Oakley: 17:15

So it's really it's like. It's like indiana jones movies. You know, like the, the, the, like the thing with Indiana Jones in the first movie where he's in pursuit of something the Holy Grail, you know, the stone, the artifact. You've got to think of your song as being like an Indiana Jones movie. You know you're going to have to run and the big boulder's going to come and you've got to jump out the way. But if you can manage to get to the top of that summit and get that rare bird egg that you've been trying to achieve and you suffered for it it's worth it. You are in pursuit of perfection. I mean, the interesting paradox is that by the time I get there and I finish the song and we all say this is great. I actually hate it and I can't listen to it, for you know, I'm the same.

Michael Oakley: 18:08

Yeah, I mean I'll listen to the master when I get the master back and I'll enjoy the master for a little bit, just to sort of, you know, hear it in its absolute fullest. But after that I usually can't listen to my music for six months to a year after it because I have to, just I have to like shake it off me. It's kind of it's a, it's a, it's a weird. It's almost. The price I pay is that I no longer get to enjoy it, but other people hopefully do and that's worth it. And then years later I've you know, I don't really. I don't really listen to my old songs, but if ever I come back and listen to it.

Michael Oakley: 18:43

I've been working on doing reworks of my old songs for a live show and coming back to listening to those old songs and I'm thinking, yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things I would change. Because there's always that part of me that thinks, yeah, maybe I would turn that snare drum up, maybe I would have turned the vocal down a bit there, maybe I would have. But the fact that I'm asking those questions means that I have that almost perfectionist thing about me where I'll never be happy. It's just, you've got to draw the line under the whole thing at some point and say the listener is not going to get any more benefit out of this from my incessant fiddling. You know they don't care if that guitar part is minus 25 left or minus 14 left, they don't care, they don't get anything out of it. They're not going to go to their friends and say oh my God, wait till you hear this track, you will not believe how panned left that guitar is Do you know what I mean.

Marc Matthews: 19:46

Yeah, yeah, it's something I've said on the podcast many a time. When it gets to like binge editing or binge revisions, and you're like, does anyone really know that you've automated that vocal down by 0.5 dB, that, that pre-chorus, that, no, like no one.

Michael Oakley: 20:01

Only you know that only I know, and but it's. It's the thin line between does the listener get anything out of this? Versus can I go to bed at night tonight and sleep okay, knowing that that vocal is where it is and that's the if I, if I walk around and every time I hear the demo and I think, oh, that is annoying me. I had one song actually recently where the snare drum I had it mastered, had the whole thing finished and then I was, I left it and then I went back to it and I actually bought these headphones, these Bose, quiet comfort headphones, and I was on a flight to Los Angeles and I I was listening to the uh, the demos, or the sorry, the finished masters of the new album on on these headphones and uh, and the snare drum, I was like oh no, I don't, I don't know if that's right.

Michael Oakley: 20:53

And I had to go to my friend james's house and listen to his on his adam a7 speakers and I said and I didn't even prompt him, I just said do you hear anything? I'm not going to tell you what it is, but something's bugging me about this he said that snare is like it's sticking out really obnoxiously, like there's a frequency that just seems to. Every time the snare hits it just makes your eyes go, yeah, yeah and. And I was like, oh, but because I went back to the mix and rolled off some of the the eq on it on the high end it was really a lot of the high was I had to soften it down. I used um, smooth too, you know that, uh, plug-in, uh, baby audio sooth or whatever it's called smooth operator, sorry, and and just softened the snare down it.

Michael Oakley: 21:46

But I actually went back into the chorus and then changed a couple of the layers because I usually like to layer sounds, and it was that it was actually a prompt for me to go back and actually go. You know what that snare and the chorus could be better. But now when I listen to the track actually it's one of the few tracks that I listen to of mine that I don't hear anything volume wise or production wise that I would change, and that's kind of rare for me. You know, I usually do listen back and think I wish, I wish I'd done this. But then I think if I had, if I had done that maybe it's the grass is greener I would be sitting, sitting thinking I wish I'd done the thing I was originally doing.

Marc Matthews: 22:55

Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned that there, because it kind of moves on. It segues nicely onto my next question, which is have you ever polished a song so much, or reworked or worked on a song so much revision wise that you ended up losing what made it great in the first place? Oh yeah, how do you protect the original spark, the original idea?

Michael Oakley: 23:16

Well, I think that file was under. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, so an idea is a good idea. How you dress it up, however, a good idea how you dress it up, however, will determine whether it has legs. You know whether it comes across to the listener, because an idea is potential. A finished track is, you know, fully realised potential. It's an experience for the listener. No one really cares about potential, except you know me or you the musician, because you can see where it's going, but you have to build the scaffolding to get it where it's supposed to go. So, for an example, um, one of the songs that I had done for my new album.

Michael Oakley: 24:09

So I started writing this album in 2022, started working on ideas and when I started doing it, I was going through a phase where I really didn't want to do anything that sounded 80s or retro or anything. I just thought I just, you know, I fell out of love a little bit with the whole process because I felt boxed in slightly by synth waves and genre limitations and and I just felt like, after do I done three albums in five years, which for me, is quite that's really productive for me, and I felt like I needed some time away just to forget about making music. And then, when I came back after a year off, I had worked on some other sample pack projects, worked with a couple of other people on their songs, so that it wasn't about me necessarily and my music came back and the first idea that I came up with it was very, very different to anything that I'd ever done before. It sounded kind of like mid to late 2000s electronica sort of thing, like Ulrich Schnauss, that sort of thing, taiko, early taiko, and I liked the idea.

Michael Oakley: 25:32

But once the song had been written and I recorded my vocals for it and then I started working on other songs, I realized that this idea doesn't work anymore. The song works, but the, the dress up, the clothing of the song does not work. And uh, I mean I guess that's more of an example of, you know, like a, a heavy metal musician deciding to do drum and bass. It's a bit like what the hell are you doing? I mean you can't do that and and not that, I am not that I feel too like like I have to stay in a certain thing, it's just. It's just that for that type of thing I should really have set up another project and, set you know, made it clear oh, this is more 2000s year two year, 2k electronica.

Marc Matthews: 26:34

Do you mean, like with a different name? With a different name?

Michael Oakley: 26:37

yeah, like a different moniker, because of how different it was, and I had already sort of shifted as well. My musical sensibilities had really shifted by that point. I went to an event in Florida called Neon and I fell back in love with the synthwave scene and the music and stuff. And when I came back from that I felt like I had become realigned again with what I wanted to do and the type of album that I wanted to do, and I wanted it to sound a bit more Eurodance, early 90s kind of thing in there and I wasn't so rejecting of synthwave things. I realized there's a way I can, I can do this now that makes sense. But that song no longer worked. So I essentially had to go and remix this song that I no longer cared for. Really, I like the song as in the lyrics, the melody line, the structure, the verse, the chorus, all that stuff.

Michael Oakley: 27:47

However, I now had to go back and essentially remix this song and I tried to do it. I did about three versions and it wasn't working. Something was just not working and I nearly gave the song away to somebody else to essentially rework it for me, because I started to feel like maybe I can't do it. Maybe I'm, maybe I've got too close to this and maybe I can't hear it anymore. Maybe someone else's interpretation of that maybe would give it new life. But then I also thought, well, if I do that then it's not me, is it? It's not me anymore. I'm literally someone's remixing me and I'm putting it out as if it's my original song.

Michael Oakley: 28:33

So I thought I'll give it one more go and I came up with something that sounded a bit more like New Order Technique album meets Pet Shop Boys kind of thing, and that's where it started to work. And that's when I thought, yeah, this is working. Now this is actually starting to sound the way it's supposed to sound and and I'm really glad that I stuck with it because I love that track and I realize now that if I ditched that or gave it away, I would never have got to this feeling of accomplishment with the song, because it was it's probably the toughest experience I've had with a with a song. Because it was it's probably the toughest experience I've had with a with a song, because when, when you've done a whole song like that and recorded it and you've hired session musicians to play guitar on it, and then you're like this isn't gonna work now.

Michael Oakley: 29:24

I've spent money on this. Yeah, like you know, I've put in a thousand hours on this. You know what the hell am I going to do now? But I'm glad I did, because when you hear it it makes sense. It makes sense in the context of the album now, whereas if I had went with the old version it would have sounded like completely out of place. You know, it's a bit like that who's that band? Who's the band that did that song? More than words, was it extreme?

Marc Matthews: 29:56

is that what they're called? Yes, yeah, it was. Yeah, yeah right.

Michael Oakley: 29:58

That song is absolutely nothing like anything else on the album. It kind of tricked people because it was this ballad on an acoustic guitar and the rest of the album is this heavy rock album when people turn up at the gig and they play the rest of the music and they're like, because I like extreme.

Marc Matthews: 30:17

And then you get the whole audience is there and they're wanting more than words. Yeah, you've got all these other songs and they don't correlate with more than words. That was around the time where every band just was chucking out a ballad, wasn't?

Michael Oakley: 30:29

it, yeah, exactly poison.

Michael Oakley: 30:30

Every rose has its thorn and every rose has its thorn and and. But it's that whole thing of I thought, well, I can't really put this on the album like that. You know, and I did, I did like the previous arrangement, but it just did not work. For because I like to have an album that feels cohesive, um, I like, I like there to be, um, a similar family of sounds across the album. That is what makes that album sound like that album and uh, and so that's the closest I think lately that I've had to, to that scenario of um, it got to a point where I just I couldn't hear it anymore.

Michael Oakley: 31:14

But then, by starting from the ground up and I mean literally with just starting with the vocals and really building it from the back, you know everything it started to open up again. It started and I started to hear it in a new way and I started to add some things, which, because the song is called School and it's kind of about when I was at high school and my experience of that, and I managed to add some like musical things in there, that sort of complement like Pink Floyd with sound effects and things like that. It complements that. It complements that ambient world of that sort of thing now and and yeah, you'd have to hear it, but to hear the two side by side to compare, I don't even think I've got the the previous version, because as soon as I got the new version, delete that's. That's six gigabytes off of my dropbox.

Marc Matthews: 32:06

Bye, bye you know, don't blame you, uh.

Marc Matthews: 32:11

So I mean that that's a clear uh. What you mentioned there in that, in that story, is kind of that classic sort of how to reinvigorate your love for what it is you were doing before, to take some time away and work on something different. It reminds me of I'd say it reminds me of any kind of similar to the beatles, where they did that whole, when they went over to india and then came back and they experienced that and they came up with these new sounds and these new soundscapes Slightly tenuous link there, but the idea that you go away and then you work on something else, you come back and you also you went to that gig as well Uh, that that festival to reignite your sort of passion, as it were, for that sort of retro, that 80s and 90s as well 90s sound as well in there as well and sticking with it. I think it's a key example of what we mentioned earlier about sticking with an idea and that process of reworking, because there's something there. You just got to stick with it.

Michael Oakley: 33:07

Honestly, the hardest thing is doing that, I think, think, sticking with it, because you don't feel like doing it and you, you know you. You want to just go on facebook and doom scroll, or you want to go and play video games, or you want to go out and just do anything. That's a distraction because there's an uncomfortableness, but I promise you that there's. There's no such thing as a feeling of accomplishment without first having to put in the hard work. It's like exercise, you know I. You know like small weights because I like just general strength training. But if I haven't done it for, you know know, a few weeks and I'm back to being that weak level again. The last thing I want to do is stand for, you know, 45 minutes to an hour, bored out my mind, lifting weights to some video on YouTube. I'm just thinking. I said I'm bored, like I, like I. I'm not being mentally stimulated. This is me just being literally in service of hoping that later I will get the benefit from this. I'm doing this right now. It's uncomfortable, it's unpleasant. You're lifting these weights and, oh man, I just want to go upstairs and do something else or go outside and do something else, but you get the payoff in a few days, when you feel a little stronger, and the payoff? I mean, I think that's the thing. What's the payoff from staying with it? Well, hopefully you get your track to where you want it to be, but you start to create a new habit and that habit is resilience, because you're not somebody that's going to cop out when things get tough. You're someone that's going to say you know what? I'm going to take this idea and I'm going to fucking get it to where it needs to be, and nothing's going to stop me. And if it doesn't work today, that's fine, I'll have laid some groundwork that will help me tomorrow. You have to think of it like a compass, even if the thing you have in front of you in your DAW, the ideas that you have, the drum arrangement, the bass pattern and the structure, even if that is not quite what it's supposed to be great, that's feedback. That's not what it's supposed to be. Great, that's feedback. That's not what it's supposed to be.

Michael Oakley: 35:33

So you now know you need to go in another direction. You know the worst position ever with people with writer's block is they have an empty DAW. There's nothing in it. There's just a couple of blank tracks, nothing laid down. They're sitting there in front of the keyboard here and what do I do? What am I going to do? And there's nothing, there's. There's no map, there's no point on a map, there's no compass, it's just. I don't know what to do, because you know.

Michael Oakley: 36:06

So what do you do? You start to. You start to map the terrain. You start to. So what do you do? You start to map the terrain, you start to load a plugin, flick through presets until you find something that you go, that's nice, there's the start of, there's the first point in your map. Well, that's nice, that's a nice bass sound. Let's keep that.

Michael Oakley: 36:23

Get another plugin, start to go through until you find, oh, there's a really nice pad sound. There you go, there's another destination on the map. Does that pad work? Nice with the bass? Oh, yeah, great, let's start to lay down some, some drums, even if the drums aren't quite what you're going to use. Let's just get something going, just to. Yeah, I think that's the key there. Set, uh, set, the course.

Michael Oakley: 36:48

You know, tempo is a good one as well. Do I want a 90 bpm chilled kind of vibe? Do I want a 115 beats per minute kind of mid-tempo dance kind of track. Do I want a faster, 130 beats per minute to 160 beats per minute, kind of up tempo, kindpo-y, kind of energetic thing.

Michael Oakley: 37:10

All of these things like what you do is you just commit early to something and if later on you say I don't want to be this tempo, cool, let's go back down. I had one song actually recently that I was working on and it was about 100 beats per minute and I had done the whole arrangement. Because one of my philosophies on this album is if I do start an idea, finish it, don't ditch it. Finish the idea, and if it doesn't work, cool. But I'm training myself to say I'm going to finish this idea and if I don't use it, okay, I can give this idea to someone else and they can maybe use it, you know, but just setting that habit of finishing an idea rather than going yeah and then you have a folder full of you know 64 bars of nothingness.

Michael Oakley: 38:06

You know, maybe a verse, and a verse and a chorus that goes nowhere, um, so anyway, this idea, um 100 beats per minute, finished the whole thing. It was like, honestly, there's about easily over 100 tracks in the DAW with all the effects. I had got it mixed and everything and, uh, I was working with Oli Ride on it and I let him hear it and he said this should be faster, this should be 116 beats per minute. We should turn this into a dance track, like a more kind of mid kind of tempo dance track. And you know, that way I'm thinking oh, but I've just fucking done this.

Michael Oakley: 38:48

But it's 100 beats per minute, like I've just spent all this time working on it. And he said send me the stems. And so I sent him like stemmed stuff, you know the drums, bass pads and all that stuff and he said I'll let you hear an idea that I've got. And he basically rebuilt it at a different, higher tempo, changed things around, and then when he did that, I could hear it, I could hear it, and then at that point it was just a case of time to delete things that, that, that, that and that doesn't work. Delete that out of the session. 116 beats per minute.

Michael Oakley: 39:25

Let's keep what we're keeping. Let's change the bass to be a bit more up tempo and you start to work with the arrangement to make it fit this new landscape and by the end of it the new version is far superior to the old version. Um, you know, and I, I get it now, I get it, it's, it's, but it's. Being able to do that in the moment and not say, oh, I've put all this work in, this has to stay at 100. Being locked in the compass idea is a good thing. If you don't draw a sandbox, you just walk along the beach aimlessly and so just commit. 110 beats per minute C minor. Let's find 10 preset sounds that work kind of well together until you get a little melodic idea and just start, and start moving in any direction. Any direction is better than sitting in a blank screen. What am I going to do?

Marc Matthews: 40:24

yeah, that is fantastic advice and it's something I do the exact same. I start out a track, I pick a, pick a tempo. Uh, pick a, pick a key and then and then move on from there. Admittedly, I often put down the um I. I find myself starting with the, the, the kick and the bass. I find a bass line is. That's more so with the music that I've been putting out lately myself. But but, like yourself there, what you mentioned there about having a folder full of ideas about 18 months ago, I thought to myself you know what. I'm not going to start anything else, I'm just going to go back with what I have. This is the reason why I started those songs and I've been gradually chipping into them and releasing them and it really does work. It's that resilience is the key word.

Michael Oakley: 41:08

What you said, it's resilience well, I can honestly tell you that of all of the uh other demos that I've ever done, that maybe didn't get finished. Something from those demos came back later. Maybe it was, maybe it was a melodic idea, maybe it was the drums. I thought those drums are really nice. You know, everything else is not quite to my liking, but you know what? Those drums I managed to get those drums sounding really nice. Those are a good jump off point for another song.

Michael Oakley: 41:41

And I've dragged because obviously I use Ableton so you can be in a session and then open up another session while in Ableton and drag the group of drums to the new session and it's like oh, there you go. That now it's just instant, works instant. I can just cut and paste where the sections need to go and then start to work with it, but by and large there's. It's that thing again that I said earlier do not throw the baby out with the bath water, there's something in there. You know, even if you found six sounds that work really really well together, that in itself is a massive step forward because you've got sounds that are going to be you know the basis for something and they work you know there's a reason why people like time cop and the midnight use a lot of the same preset sounds that they've had from previous songs.

Michael Oakley: 42:43

There's a reason that they do that because the sounds work together. Um, I mean, I don't necessarily have the same philosophy about maybe recycling old sounds I've used before. I'm a little more. I kind of tend to push away from that. I don't like to chart territory that I've been before because I personally don't find it interesting in my music. I find it interesting, you know, when they do it, because it's it's there's a familiarness, there's a comfortableness, um, but there's a reason why they use a lot of the same sound palette because it works yeah, yeah, I'm much the same what you mentioned there about the sounds.

Marc Matthews: 43:36

There's always a go-to sort of kick, hi-hat and snare sound that I really like this particular year. But at the same time I'll use it, but I'll mix it slightly differently or I might sculpt it with time-based processing or something along those lines, slightly differently, and the same with the bass as well. There's a serum bass patch that I've used on every track, but I'll make it slightly different every time, whether that's with the LFO or the envelope or whatever it is. But there's a reason why I use it so much because, like you mentioned, you know it works. But again, echoing what you said, I just like to make it sound slightly different.

Marc Matthews: 44:12

I think that's the sound synthesis and sampling side of me that really likes to go in and manipulate the sonic textures and get really hands-on with synthesizers. I wish I had a hardware synth. I don't they're all plugins, but so but going in there and just milling around and and then just moving stuff about and see what I can come up with. There's a song I was working on yesterday and for what I working on yesterday and I was listening to it. I listened to it for a while and there's just this sample of a crow and I was listening so I was like, why have I put that in there? And at the time there must have been a reason why I decided to put a crow in a breakdown, um, but I don't know where I was going with that, but it just reminded me then of just these different sounds and thinking you know what. At the time it sounded good, so there must be a reason I did it.

Michael Oakley: 44:56

One thing as well about if you are going to recycle sounds. I mean, there's one. There's definitely a few things that I have recycled on multiple songs on this new album, and that is a kick drum from Oliver Power Tools because I just love the low end and the overall sound of it. However, whenever I've reused it in other tracks, I've changed the top and I've layered it with a bit crushed top thing or maybe more of a like a punchy attack transient thing, so that the kick never quite sounds the same, but it has the same effect. Same with a lot of the snare drums as well.

Michael Oakley: 45:51

I like to layer snare things together, especially in the chorus, just so that the chorus feels like it's just got a bit more oomph, a little more juice, and so I don't mind doing that as well. But yeah, it's funny, there are ways where you can really re-sampleple, re-effect things to sort of do the same thing but sound different. I do like serum. I've come along to enjoying serum and I've done quite a few uh sound banks for serum now on splice. So it's it's. It's that way where I've had to learn how to use it inside out, you know, and overcome the sort of technical obstacles that stopped me from being able to use it to its fullest.

Marc Matthews: 46:39

It's a fantastic plug-in. I only started using it at the tail end of last year I think it was the tail end of last year and it's certainly my go-to for bass. I would say, and then I use it for other bits and pieces as well. But it is a fantastic go-to for bass, I would say, uh, and then I use it for other bits and pieces as well. But it's a. It is a fantastic plug-in. I got well aware of time here. Um, as I say, before we we started recording this, I said I had five questions and I often don't get through them all, but I think we'll have to have you back to go through the other questions that I have here, because it'd be great to go through them. And I also need to give your t-shirt a shout out as well. I just realized you've got a Resident Evil t-shirt on as well. Man, that's so cool.

Michael Oakley: 47:18

There's nothing more nostalgic than Resident Evil save room music. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love Resident Evil Would you believe and I didn't make it, but there's a sample pack on splice uh, I think it's by a company called shaman stems and the uh. The pack is called the save room and it's all music that sounds like resident evil save room music.

Marc Matthews: 47:43

No way that's so good I'm gonna find that because I wanna. I wanna release a halloween themed tune this year, so I'm totally gonna go find that because I want to. I want to release a halloween themed tune this year, so I'm totally going to find that and then rinse it. Man, that'd be so good. Um, I, as I always do with the, with these, with these chats. Michael, if you, uh, you've mentioned uh about your new music. Uh, is there anything you want to share with the audience? Have you got any key dates?

Michael Oakley: 48:07

yeah, at the moment I've got a prospective release date of 8th of May next year. Just the way things have kind of worked out with me with a few things. It's the best and soonest time to be able to do that. So, yeah, it gives me more time to come up with more ideas and finish the ones that I have. I've got most of the album done actually. It's just I feel like I want to come up with a larger group of songs to work with, to pick the best 10 that work together really well, and then, you know, I could use the remaining ones, uh, you know, for a deluxe album type of thing, like b-side sort of stuff, um, you know, which is a thing, but yeah, we, we should, uh, we should maybe do a part two.

Michael Oakley: 49:08

You know, this is, this is yeah fun. I, I definitely think so that there's.

Marc Matthews: 49:13

When you were talking there, there were multiple questions that were coming in my head, but I was well aware of time. So again I think, yeah, we'll get you back on to chat and go through the other questions that I have, because we started to touch on, uh, mixing a little bit there. So it'd be quite cool to to, um, maybe do a chat a little around that, not diving too deep, but a little bit there. So it'd be quite cool to maybe do a chat a little around that, not diving too deep, but a little bit, on mixing as well, because you mentioned that when you mentioned about 8-bit and I remember having this conversation on the podcast with someone else because I'd never really used a bit crusher, bit crushing, bit crusher on kicks, but I do it all the time now.

Marc Matthews: 49:51

So just little bits and pieces like that would be great to have a chat about.

Michael Oakley: 49:54

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's the thing, and I've come around to that sort of stuff as well, because when you look in the EQ at what an 8-bit or say, bit, crush effect does, it's that little up at the very top end and the high end, that little spike. That little up at the very top end and the high end, that little spike that adds that high end top end ring noise on top and you can, you can totally uh high pass all the way up just to get that top and then put it onto the thing you know, um, but yeah, I'd love to do like, uh, an episode full of all of that stuff, because it's something that I'm very, very passionate about actually.

Marc Matthews: 50:34

Yeah, and a side episode on our joint appreciation with Newcastle United as well.

Michael Oakley: 50:39

Let's do that, like, let's do that. Then, when my album comes out, we'll do a sort of a production centric. Yeah, that'd be cool-centric thing. Yeah, that'd be cool man, and I'll send you over the ideas that I have so far. The finished masters, yeah that'd be great.

Marc Matthews: 50:59

Yeah, that'd be fantastic. So it's been a pleasure having you on again. Again, audience listening. Do go check out episodes 53 and 54 and see if anything has changed as well. It'll be quite interesting. I did that with Ed's sunglasses. We did it a year later to see how things had gone, so we won't leave it so long in between next time, I think. But I'll leave you to enjoy the rest of your day, michael. It's been a pleasure and folks listening. Until next time, stay inspired, keep creating and keep experimenting inside the mix.