Please note that this is NOT a personal attack on Paul Third! Paul and Ed took our multitracks with NO direction from us, and NO brief from us, and mixed the tune. A genre neither of them are familiar with. We heard Ed’s mix first and he took our negative, but hopefully constructive feedback, ran with it, and sent back an incredible mix! Paul chose to go his own way and do ‘his thing’ and that’s absolutely fine. The truth is that we prefer Ed’s (even over our mix!) but that is NO reflection of Paul’s skill and talent - a mixer and UA-camr we have nothing but love and respect for! They mixed it for their podcast, and to have two very similar mixes would have been somewhat boring. So this is NOT a criticism of Paul in any way! Love ya Paul! ❤
Gentlemen, thanks for taking the time to analyse our mixes and give us your professional feedback! Sam, it was great to get your insights as an artist and producer, too.🤘🙏
There's so much I resonate with in terms of doing atmos first. When I started learning it I was in the mindset that I'm basically starting to learn mixing from scratch, after a couple of experiments I realized, that you can just do one mix and export all the folddowns you need and it works great. I think if I started to learn atmos and think about things, like "how do I do 2bus processing" and stuff like that, it would be detrimental. Instead of trying to try to make atmos into something it is not, I adjusted my approach to the format and let it guide me. And I've arrived to pretty much same conclusions as you guys. :)
I feel like I've come so far from where I was in february, looking back at what I did with this song then, and the difference between what I made then compared to now. So very glad I got an invite a few years back! PDP has been a foundational step in my progress! Side note: MARK unleashed is FUN to watch. Let him off his leash all the time, and you'll get MORE viewers / subbers :D I swear. I promise. meow.
You guys keep saying things word by word what I believe in or have in my head 🙂 I’m spending less and less time on youtube for the same reason I stopped reading forums ages ago. It’s full of misleading information and bulls#it “you must do this and that on kick, vocals…etc tutorials”. Then you got this “vintage and expensive is good, but everything else is bad” mentality. Too many arguments about what is better than the other…Btw I’m pretty sure the above are people in their bedrooms who never saw a client. …meanwhile I just keep making music and create great memories with awesome artists. For me that’s what this is all about. I’m having fun 🙌 None of my artists care what mic I use or what I do during mixing. They have a sound / picture in their heads and we paint that canvas together. From the first second when we do a meeting to make plans for the project, throughout recording and producing until the last listening session it’s all about that. Or what kind of effect does each part of the song have on the target audience? The internet says it’s 99% about mixing and 1% about everything else. Might sound strange but I’d say the way I work, we spend 20%-30% mixing and the rest on everything else. Excited to finally meet you guys this year. 🙌
Great listening to your take/discussion on all the elements of this song, highlighting the large and sometimes small but critical things in a polished, professional recording. It's a great track 👍🤓
The bit at about 29 minutes on how over important the mix has become is so true. I haven’t thought about the artistic v technical approaches before but it’s spot on, and explains why I rarely know what I’m doing when I have to try and mix anything! I like Steve albini’s (rip) philosophy I’ve trying to get as close to the sound you want as possible at the recording stage so that mixing is straight forward and easy. I’m sure millions of other people have said that too but I live by it now - I see it as a failure of my recording misadventures if I’m having to do anything major from a post processing perspective.
A lot of the soothing and noise reducing software works better on poorly recorded tracks. Thats kinda where the market is with them. A lot of new artists are recording on garage band or other free/cheap software at home. So, these kind of plugins make sense in the editing stage, if needed before any mixing is done. A lot of the time with home recordings people skip the editing or even arranging (and sometime it feels its even the writing) stage and try to fix everything in the mix. I can't really comment as this is something that has only very recently been revelation to me. Start with a good song, arrange it well (with mixing in mind), record is well with feel and then edit all before mixing it. When the penny dropped its transformed the way I approach music production. I'm now confident the projects I'm working on now will blow my previous stuff out the water. Its all a learning process.
I believe the Reason we do the Atmos mix like the Stereo is so when apple streams it they play both at the same time... the system they use is made to play the stereo along with the atmos mix ... So if the atmos/Stream is not quick enough on your device you hear the stereo mix plays :) Now i mix my Atmos 1st then fold down the track to stereo so they are both pretty much identical. I have not idea if they allow two very different mixes to play together if they are not both the exact same time code.. ?
I prefer Ed's mix, by the way. It sounds more lively and open and dynamic than almost any "commercial" music I've heard in recent memory. But then I'm also in a period where I can't take the sound of compression. I've ended up mostly listening to late 80s early 90s recordings or to jazz and classical
Plug In Paralysis! I don't plug ins. Over time I assembled a huge pile of free ones but now I mainly use native Reaper plugins. My template has three plugins per track: EQ some sort of compressor - both turned off and ReaFir to deal with the interference from heavy power lines outside, (some weird peak just above 20Khz and other bits),. I turn them on or add if I need them. Going IN I don't use any plugs though will use an outboard compressor on my bass. I don't mix well but I don't have paralysis anymore.
I am not a professional and am not in the industry .. but I can see Paul's angle here as someone opening a studio for tracking and likely hoping to provid a mix for those recordings. He may just be looking to be known for a particular style and sound, a form of niching down..
As someone learning to mix (for my own use, not to necessarily become a 'mixer') I'm wondering if I'm wasting my time with stereo techniques ... everything relating to making space in the frequency response seems like it may soon become an outdated idea . Perhaps I need to bypass and go straight to Atmos and go back to those stereo techiniques as suplementary skills later. (Spelling is also a supplementary skill by the way .... ).
To go against the obvious grain, I thought Paul's mix was great and head-and-shoulders above Ed's; that mix could easily have been from the 70's, a la Earth Wind & Fire, and the great brass mix/setting of levels reminded me a lot of the live sound from Vine St horns on Phil Collins' later live tours. The brass, particularly had great presence, without sounding shrill, and the attack was was very polished and, as I'm guessing, the compression of volume he used to get that affect didn't sound in the least bit obvious. I suspect some serious side-chaining went on here, and to very good effect too. edit - to use PDP's own comment, albeit in the reverse, I thought Paul's mix wasn't particularly technical and it didn't make un-necessary effort to make every instrument/track have it's own place all of the time. Like I said, I think he used side-chaining to good effect and that kept the overall vibrancy well and truly alive. edit 2 - I've just listened to PDP's mix, I didn't spot it first time I watched this pod. I think Paul's mix is closest to the PDP mix, but where they differ is the low-end instruments are more prominent, without being evasive, on the PDP mix and that gives it a more polished sound. The BV's are better placed too, most prominent that the other two mixes, but in an impactful way rather that over-bearing. I think the PDP mix is a good example of combining a technical understanding of what's going on, but without removing energy or drive. What's important about these mixes is the better mix makes you want to listen to the complete song, and probably multiple times, whilst the less appealing mix would probably see me turn it off after 30 seconds if that were on the radio.
@@PresentDayProduction It's always handy. I still use mine to run Logic Pro 7 on Mac OS9 and apps such as 'thOnk_0+2', which is still great for granular fx and textures.
If saw people saw Mark's polite and measured criticism as rude or mean, then that must be down to british culture or maybe even culture in the English language sphere. It would perhaps also explain why youtubers see comments as rude that we here find good natured. The criticism you get in Germany or Austria or the Faroe Islands would have been several million times harsher and I personally don't have a problem receiving that kind of criticism. I mean, how the hell could you be more polite and measured than Mark was without it becoming smarmy or condescending?
Serious people who want to learn want to hear truthful opinion. Personally I'd prefer to hear the fly on the wall conversation no matter how painful it may be 😊
As I understood it, it was the reaction in the UA-cam comments Mark was talking about. They will be from all over the world . ... and one can't generalise about anyone's sensitivity to criticism based on where they are from - humans are different and individual, no matter the stereotype of the local culture they come from.
@@natdenchfield8061 But “cultural stereotypes” is not a blanket term you can throw over any mention of cultural differences. The fact that Faroe Islanders don’t present themselves or new people to other people, for instance, is frequently (actually always) perceived by foreigners as rude and closed off, but the fact of the matter is that it simply isnkt a concept Faroe Islanders understand, for instance. To Faroe Islanders, someone all of a sudden saying: “Hello everyone, I would like to introduce you to my wife” must be three seconds away from having a stroke or a psychotic breakdown, or he’s a complete narcissist. And I know this doesn’t directly relate to my above comment on English culture, but I’m just trying to illustrate how aspects of culture can be so disparate that they radically change a people’s world view in a way thatks way beyond any notion of cultural stereotypes. All this nonsense just to say that, yes, people are people no matter where on earth, but cultural differences play a much, much bigger role than you would think, and there are things one whole country will agree is plainly rude, where an entire different country will find that very thing endearing
@@Herfinnur cultural stereotypes was probably not the right phrase for what I meant. Tricky to explain. One's brain normalises the environment to a baseline. So, if someone speaks a certain way - tone, internation, loudness, the sound of phonemes (with bite, attack or soft) - the baby learns intent through all of that and it is normalised. So... Mark's criticsm *in English* would not even be understood by someone in Feroe Islands for example and they wouldn't necessarily have a feel for the meaning of the tone or sound of the communication. Their understanding, and therefore thoughts as to whether it is harsh or not, will only come from the translation into their own language. A good translator will then express the SAME amount of harshness of criticsm in the tone, internation, body language, choice of words as Mark did in English .. At which point, the people hearing that accurate translation (in every sense) will show the *same* variety of response to the criticism as those understanding English. The difference will actually come when different cultures ostensibly use the same language ... when really they dont, because of subtle differences in meaning and expression. I would guess that a "have a nice day!" culture in the US may well feel criticism is harsher than is intended in UK English. There would need to be a cultural translation. I hope that makes sense ( I doubt it).
@@natdenchfield8061 Ah, no I get it now! Or at least some of my experiences resonate with your words. Just like everyone who isn’t a native english speaker has no problem saying or hearing “fuck” in all kinds of innapropriate settings! I’ve found that A) if there’s a topic that makes me emotional or upset, it helps to talk an even also think about it in a foreign language B) when I’m home on the Faroes and someone books me to sing something in Faroese, I all of a sudden have to rewire my performance instincts to NOT make a conscious effort to embody the emotions of the composition, because if I try as hard as I do when singin German, I will immediately start to cry, no matter if the lyrics are funny or even make sense. Your mother tongue somehow sits in a different part of your brain, closer to wherever the emotional center is, and a lot of those emotions are then again tied to what the exact phrasing means to you or your childhood experiences. And to your point: I can’t take it when someone says: “why did you do that?” regardless of the tone of voice, language or setting which probably doesn’t make sense to non-faroese, but on the Faroes that’s pretty much the first thing you’ll hear when you get hurt or have an accident or something breaks, regardless of whether anyone is at fault. People don’t even mean anything by it, and those same people also hate hearing it
When it comes to dynamics I think both Ed and Paul failed. Both sounds really squashed. All of your three mixes respectively gives three different flavours, where the PDP mix reflects the original music style the best and to my ears would be the one you can listen to several times without severe fatigue.
I liked what Ed was attempting with his modern mix. And it had a character that Mark mentioned as more "commercial". Personally I could have handled a smidge less of that as you could hear that and it felt somewhat exaggerated/audible compression. I wouldn't mind Mark's mix with a tiny bit more of what Ed had. And likewise I'd like Ed's mix dialed back a bit towards Mark's. I wonder what Ed had on his Master Bus and how much of a role that played too.
Please note that this is NOT a personal attack on Paul Third! Paul and Ed took our multitracks with NO direction from us, and NO brief from us, and mixed the tune. A genre neither of them are familiar with. We heard Ed’s mix first and he took our negative, but hopefully constructive feedback, ran with it, and sent back an incredible mix! Paul chose to go his own way and do ‘his thing’ and that’s absolutely fine. The truth is that we prefer Ed’s (even over our mix!) but that is NO reflection of Paul’s skill and talent - a mixer and UA-camr we have nothing but love and respect for! They mixed it for their podcast, and to have two very similar mixes would have been somewhat boring. So this is NOT a criticism of Paul in any way! Love ya Paul! ❤
Gentlemen, thanks for taking the time to analyse our mixes and give us your professional feedback! Sam, it was great to get your insights as an artist and producer, too.🤘🙏
Could not make it to the livestream, but it was an interesting watch! Keep up the great work, guys!
Ed's mix is great! Perhaps the high mids feel a bit busy in places but it is providing energy and a very small thing to be concerned about. Nice work!
There's so much I resonate with in terms of doing atmos first. When I started learning it I was in the mindset that I'm basically starting to learn mixing from scratch, after a couple of experiments I realized, that you can just do one mix and export all the folddowns you need and it works great. I think if I started to learn atmos and think about things, like "how do I do 2bus processing" and stuff like that, it would be detrimental. Instead of trying to try to make atmos into something it is not, I adjusted my approach to the format and let it guide me. And I've arrived to pretty much same conclusions as you guys. :)
I feel like I've come so far from where I was in february, looking back at what I did with this song then, and the difference between what I made then compared to now. So very glad I got an invite a few years back! PDP has been a foundational step in my progress! Side note: MARK unleashed is FUN to watch. Let him off his leash all the time, and you'll get MORE viewers / subbers :D I swear. I promise. meow.
You guys keep saying things word by word what I believe in or have in my head 🙂 I’m spending less and less time on youtube for the same reason I stopped reading forums ages ago. It’s full of misleading information and bulls#it “you must do this and that on kick, vocals…etc tutorials”. Then you got this “vintage and expensive is good, but everything else is bad” mentality. Too many arguments about what is better than the other…Btw I’m pretty sure the above are people in their bedrooms who never saw a client.
…meanwhile I just keep making music and create great memories with awesome artists. For me that’s what this is all about. I’m having fun 🙌 None of my artists care what mic I use or what I do during mixing. They have a sound / picture in their heads and we paint that canvas together. From the first second when we do a meeting to make plans for the project, throughout recording and producing until the last listening session it’s all about that. Or what kind of effect does each part of the song have on the target audience?
The internet says it’s 99% about mixing and 1% about everything else. Might sound strange but I’d say the way I work, we spend 20%-30% mixing and the rest on everything else.
Excited to finally meet you guys this year. 🙌
Amazing! Thanks for the comment! Are you going to GearFest? If so, we can’t wait to meet you too!
Great listening to your take/discussion on all the elements of this song, highlighting the large and sometimes small but critical things in a polished, professional recording. It's a great track 👍🤓
That would be great to have Ed on to describe his process and also a vid on the mastering would be very popular I'm sure.
Wow love Ed’s mix! Sounds super spacious
The bit at about 29 minutes on how over important the mix has become is so true. I haven’t thought about the artistic v technical approaches before but it’s spot on, and explains why I rarely know what I’m doing when I have to try and mix anything! I like Steve albini’s (rip) philosophy I’ve trying to get as close to the sound you want as possible at the recording stage so that mixing is straight forward and easy. I’m sure millions of other people have said that too but I live by it now - I see it as a failure of my recording misadventures if I’m having to do anything major from a post processing perspective.
A lot of the soothing and noise reducing software works better on poorly recorded tracks. Thats kinda where the market is with them. A lot of new artists are recording on garage band or other free/cheap software at home. So, these kind of plugins make sense in the editing stage, if needed before any mixing is done.
A lot of the time with home recordings people skip the editing or even arranging (and sometime it feels its even the writing) stage and try to fix everything in the mix.
I can't really comment as this is something that has only very recently been revelation to me. Start with a good song, arrange it well (with mixing in mind), record is well with feel and then edit all before mixing it. When the penny dropped its transformed the way I approach music production. I'm now confident the projects I'm working on now will blow my previous stuff out the water. Its all a learning process.
I believe the Reason we do the Atmos mix like the Stereo is so when apple streams it they play both at the same time... the system they use is made to play the stereo along with the atmos mix ... So if the atmos/Stream is not quick enough on your device you hear the stereo mix plays :) Now i mix my Atmos 1st then fold down the track to stereo so they are both pretty much identical. I have not idea if they allow two very different mixes to play together if they are not both the exact same time code.. ?
I liked the PDP mix.
Oy (Oi? Oj?) Oyj?) No livestream today?
I prefer Ed's mix, by the way. It sounds more lively and open and dynamic than almost any "commercial" music I've heard in recent memory. But then I'm also in a period where I can't take the sound of compression. I've ended up mostly listening to late 80s early 90s recordings or to jazz and classical
Ps- I actually loved the snare choice
Plug In Paralysis! I don't plug ins. Over time I assembled a huge pile of free ones but now I mainly use native Reaper plugins. My template has three plugins per track: EQ some sort of compressor - both turned off and ReaFir to deal with the interference from heavy power lines outside, (some weird peak just above 20Khz and other bits),. I turn them on or add if I need them. Going IN I don't use any plugs though will use an outboard compressor on my bass. I don't mix well but I don't have paralysis anymore.
I am not a professional and am not in the industry .. but I can see Paul's angle here as someone opening a studio for tracking and likely hoping to provid a mix for those recordings. He may just be looking to be known for a particular style and sound, a form of niching down..
Thank you mark I doint use plugins at all I mix analog and have a very small rack of hardware.
well done boys
Is Ed's mix lighter on low end? Or is that my headphones? Felt like PDP mix was more bass/kick forward, and I missed that in Ed's.
As someone learning to mix (for my own use, not to necessarily become a 'mixer') I'm wondering if I'm wasting my time with stereo techniques ... everything relating to making space in the frequency response seems like it may soon become an outdated idea . Perhaps I need to bypass and go straight to Atmos and go back to those stereo techiniques as suplementary skills later. (Spelling is also a supplementary skill by the way .... ).
To go against the obvious grain, I thought Paul's mix was great and head-and-shoulders above Ed's; that mix could easily have been from the 70's, a la Earth Wind & Fire, and the great brass mix/setting of levels reminded me a lot of the live sound from Vine St horns on Phil Collins' later live tours. The brass, particularly had great presence, without sounding shrill, and the attack was was very polished and, as I'm guessing, the compression of volume he used to get that affect didn't sound in the least bit obvious. I suspect some serious side-chaining went on here, and to very good effect too.
edit - to use PDP's own comment, albeit in the reverse, I thought Paul's mix wasn't particularly technical and it didn't make un-necessary effort to make every instrument/track have it's own place all of the time. Like I said, I think he used side-chaining to good effect and that kept the overall vibrancy well and truly alive.
edit 2 - I've just listened to PDP's mix, I didn't spot it first time I watched this pod. I think Paul's mix is closest to the PDP mix, but where they differ is the low-end instruments are more prominent, without being evasive, on the PDP mix and that gives it a more polished sound. The BV's are better placed too, most prominent that the other two mixes, but in an impactful way rather that over-bearing. I think the PDP mix is a good example of combining a technical understanding of what's going on, but without removing energy or drive.
What's important about these mixes is the better mix makes you want to listen to the complete song, and probably multiple times, whilst the less appealing mix would probably see me turn it off after 30 seconds if that were on the radio.
Hi I am visually impaired do you have any Multi tracks that I can I have to practice with please.
Kind regards,
Jack,
Just wondering why you have an old eMac under the desk?
Haha we have literally EVERYTHING in our studio. You find weird stuff everywhere you look!
@@PresentDayProduction It's always handy. I still use mine to run Logic Pro 7 on Mac OS9 and apps such as 'thOnk_0+2', which is still great for granular fx and textures.
If saw people saw Mark's polite and measured criticism as rude or mean, then that must be down to british culture or maybe even culture in the English language sphere. It would perhaps also explain why youtubers see comments as rude that we here find good natured. The criticism you get in Germany or Austria or the Faroe Islands would have been several million times harsher and I personally don't have a problem receiving that kind of criticism.
I mean, how the hell could you be more polite and measured than Mark was without it becoming smarmy or condescending?
Serious people who want to learn want to hear truthful opinion. Personally I'd prefer to hear the fly on the wall conversation no matter how painful it may be 😊
As I understood it, it was the reaction in the UA-cam comments Mark was talking about. They will be from all over the world .
... and one can't generalise about anyone's sensitivity to criticism based on where they are from - humans are different and individual, no matter the stereotype of the local culture they come from.
@@natdenchfield8061 But “cultural stereotypes” is not a blanket term you can throw over any mention of cultural differences. The fact that Faroe Islanders don’t present themselves or new people to other people, for instance, is frequently (actually always) perceived by foreigners as rude and closed off, but the fact of the matter is that it simply isnkt a concept Faroe Islanders understand, for instance. To Faroe Islanders, someone all of a sudden saying: “Hello everyone, I would like to introduce you to my wife” must be three seconds away from having a stroke or a psychotic breakdown, or he’s a complete narcissist. And I know this doesn’t directly relate to my above comment on English culture, but I’m just trying to illustrate how aspects of culture can be so disparate that they radically change a people’s world view in a way thatks way beyond any notion of cultural stereotypes.
All this nonsense just to say that, yes, people are people no matter where on earth, but cultural differences play a much, much bigger role than you would think, and there are things one whole country will agree is plainly rude, where an entire different country will find that very thing endearing
@@Herfinnur cultural stereotypes was probably not the right phrase for what I meant.
Tricky to explain.
One's brain normalises the environment to a baseline. So, if someone speaks a certain way - tone, internation, loudness, the sound of phonemes (with bite, attack or soft) - the baby learns intent through all of that and it is normalised.
So... Mark's criticsm *in English* would not even be understood by someone in Feroe Islands for example and they wouldn't necessarily have a feel for the meaning of the tone or sound of the communication. Their understanding, and therefore thoughts as to whether it is harsh or not, will only come from the translation into their own language.
A good translator will then express the SAME amount of harshness of criticsm in the tone, internation, body language, choice of words as Mark did in English ..
At which point, the people hearing that accurate translation (in every sense) will show the *same* variety of response to the criticism as those understanding English.
The difference will actually come when different cultures ostensibly use the same language ... when really they dont, because of subtle differences in meaning and expression.
I would guess that a "have a nice day!" culture in the US may well feel criticism is harsher than is intended in UK English. There would need to be a cultural translation.
I hope that makes sense ( I doubt it).
@@natdenchfield8061 Ah, no I get it now! Or at least some of my experiences resonate with your words. Just like everyone who isn’t a native english speaker has no problem saying or hearing “fuck” in all kinds of innapropriate settings! I’ve found that A) if there’s a topic that makes me emotional or upset, it helps to talk an even also think about it in a foreign language B) when I’m home on the Faroes and someone books me to sing something in Faroese, I all of a sudden have to rewire my performance instincts to NOT make a conscious effort to embody the emotions of the composition, because if I try as hard as I do when singin German, I will immediately start to cry, no matter if the lyrics are funny or even make sense.
Your mother tongue somehow sits in a different part of your brain, closer to wherever the emotional center is, and a lot of those emotions are then again tied to what the exact phrasing means to you or your childhood experiences.
And to your point: I can’t take it when someone says: “why did you do that?” regardless of the tone of voice, language or setting which probably doesn’t make sense to non-faroese, but on the Faroes that’s pretty much the first thing you’ll hear when you get hurt or have an accident or something breaks, regardless of whether anyone is at fault. People don’t even mean anything by it, and those same people also hate hearing it
When it comes to dynamics I think both Ed and Paul failed. Both sounds really squashed.
All of your three mixes respectively gives three different flavours, where the PDP mix reflects the original music style the best and to my ears would be the one you can listen to several times without severe fatigue.
I liked what Ed was attempting with his modern mix. And it had a character that Mark mentioned as more "commercial". Personally I could have handled a smidge less of that as you could hear that and it felt somewhat exaggerated/audible compression. I wouldn't mind Mark's mix with a tiny bit more of what Ed had. And likewise I'd like Ed's mix dialed back a bit towards Mark's. I wonder what Ed had on his Master Bus and how much of a role that played too.
Another no show, you leave me no choice, I will have call the police on you.