#168: Mastering Music Production: Insights and Strategies with Lij Shaw (Recording Studio Rockstars)
November 12, 2024 • 49 mins
Curious about mixing music or want to level up your music production skills? Join me in EP 168 of the Inside The Mix podcast as I sit down with Lij Shaw, award-winning producer and owner of the Grammy-awarded Toy Box Studio. Lij brings a wealth of experience and shares his practical approach to balancing the simplicity and complexity of music mixing. From gear discoveries on eBay to his insights as a longtime podcaster, Lij’s journey provides a unique perspective on dedication, community, and artistry in music.
In this episode, we tackle practical techniques to streamline your music production workflow, inspired by a listener's challenge to manage track organization and MIDI conversion. Lij and I explore how mix templates, separated technical tasks, and effective session setups can make mixing a smooth, enjoyable process. Plus, you’ll learn how tools like poetry scores can inspire lyrics, helping you produce creatively while staying efficient. Whether you're an aspiring producer or a pro, this episode is packed with actionable strategies and real-world advice.
In This Episode, you’ll Learn:
- Mixing Essentials: How to simplify your mixing workflow by rendering MIDI to WAV files and organising tracks for easy access
- Mix Templates: The benefits of using mix templates for a consistent, professional sound across your projects
- Creative Lyric Writing: Transforming poetry scores into lyrics and enhancing songwriting
- Effective Workflow Tips: Separating creative mixing from technical tasks to avoid burnout
- Stress-Free Recording: Setting up a comfortable recording environment for seamless production
Tune in and discover strategies to make mixing music and music production not only manageable but rewarding.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lij Shaw (00:00):
You want to learn some simple stuff that will help you
out at first, and then you canget more complex as you go.
I'm way more.
It's funny to say this, butI've got a much more complex way
of approaching things now andsimultaneously I treat it in a
much simpler manner now.
Marc Matthews (00:37):
I'm much bolder about doing less on a mix and
welcome to the Inside the Mixpodcast.
I'm Mark Matthews, your host,musician, producer and mix and
mastering engineer.
You've come to the right placeif you want to know more about
your favorite synth musicartists, music engineering and
production, songwriting and themusic industry.
I've been writing, producing,mixing and mastering music for
(00:57):
over 15 years and I want toshare what I've learned with you
.
Hey folks, welcome back.
I am very excited.
I'm thrilled for today's guest,or rather this episode's guest,
the award-winning music andpodcast producer, recording
engineer and owner of theGrammy-awarded the Toy Box
(01:19):
Studio in East Nashville, lidgeShaw Lidge.
How are you today?
Thank you for joining me on thepodcast.
Lij Shaw (01:25):
My pleasure, mark.
It's great to be here and it'sgreat to get to meet all your
listeners who, I understand, areall music makers and aspiring
music makers, and songwritersand people who just want to make
cool tunes.
Marc Matthews (01:38):
They are indeed, and I'm going to hazard a guess
and say a large number of themprobably do listen to your
podcast as well, as I doroutinely communicate with the
listeners and they say theylisten to XYZ on other podcasts.
So no doubt that.
But we'll get into to yourpodcast shortly.
But yeah, it's.
It's always nice to haveanother podcaster on the show
because, as you were mentioningearlier, it can be quite a solo
(02:00):
effort being a podcaster.
So, yeah, it's always nice tohave another one on the show,
and you, they're always going tohave a good microphone as well,
which is always good.
Lij Shaw (02:09):
And this is my dedicated video mic.
It's not actually my podcastingmic, but it's the one that I
made sure sounds good on video,so hopefully it sounds good.
It does, indeed, it does indeedyou know it's funny, you
mentioned it, so it really istrue.
Marc Matthews (02:20):
Podcasting can be a little bit of a lonely
business, in the same way thatmaking music in your home studio
can feel that way you know,yeah, most definitely find
yourself sort of alone doingyour stuff, your creation yeah,
I, I totally agree with that andI was just saying off air
actually, um, with your podcastitself, so it's for the audience
listening.
Um, I'll tell you what it isnow.
(02:41):
It's recording studio rockstars and I was listening on my
listening to it on my run todaywith your conversation with
Brennan, which was reallyinteresting when you were
talking about eBay and I wassaying to my fiance the other
day that I cannot remember thelast time I bought something on
eBay, but I did used to buyloads of gear on.
When I say gear, I'm talkingabout I say gear like guitars
(03:01):
and whatnot.
Over in the UK.
Gear can often mean somethingelse.
Lij Shaw (03:05):
Well, you guys refer to here.
We talk about gear for thestudio over there.
You guys talk about your kit,right?
Marc Matthews (03:13):
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,talking about your kit.
So, yeah, I remember buyingloads of guitars and pedals and
whatnot on there, but no, it wasa really interesting
conversations.
So, audience, once you'velistened to this one, go and
check out that um conversationif you're one that feels some,
or listen to some, nostalgiawhen it comes to buying, buy kit
or gear.
However you want to call it um,but lidge um a bit more on your
(03:34):
bio here a chart toppingproducer and engineer, but also
the host of the number oneitunes podcast recording studio
rock stars, where you shareinsights from over 480
interviews shameless self-pluggot my own t-shirt on.
This is my uniform when I go toevents and stuff if I'd known
that I would have worn my insidethe mix podcast hoodie, but I
(03:56):
do have my mug here, so I've got.
Lij Shaw (03:59):
Oh nice there you go.
Marc Matthews (04:00):
There's my shameless and can your listeners
go get a mug if they want uh, Ithink I don't think my store's
up and I'm going to have todouble-check.
Lij Shaw (04:08):
You don't have to do that.
Marc Matthews (04:09):
I was giving them away for free, so I cannot
remember if the store's still upand running.
It might well be.
I never plug it.
Lij Shaw (04:17):
Maybe I should All right, everybody, give Mark a
hard time and get him to makethose mugs available to you.
Marc Matthews (04:22):
Yeah, in fact, I will say that I think, yeah,
this is the old logo, so I doneed to get some new stuff with
the new logo and the hoodies aswell.
So, yeah, I should have worn myhoodie as well.
So what I was saying there wasabout 480 interviews with top
recording engineers, mixers andsongwriters worldwide.
(04:43):
You've been in the gamepodcasting game game for a while
now.
I think you were saying 10years, is that right?
Lij Shaw (04:47):
Yeah, it's been about a decade now already since I
started, and when I started it Ihad been really interested in
podcasting myself.
I'd just been listening toother ones, and then I got this
idea.
I was like you know, what do Ilove more than anything is
talking about making records inthe studio, recording songs,
writing songs, all of it.
So why not just make a podcastabout that?
Marc Matthews (05:09):
Exactly.
No better reason.
It's got to be something you'recliche, passionate about,
hasn't it?
Yeah, otherwise, you can soonAgain.
We were discussing off air thata lot of podcasts don't get
past the 10 or 20 episode mark,and probably for that reason.
So, yeah, I think it's like 90a podcast, which is crazy
considering how well, it's likerecording in your home studio.
Lij Shaw (05:31):
You, you love it, but as you do it, it's still going
to turn into work yeah, you'regoing to hit that point where
it's a real pain in the butt andit's like if you don't love it,
you're not going to pushthrough and get.
Get to the other side of that,yeah.
Marc Matthews (05:45):
I totally agree.
There are elements, as much asI love podcasting, but there are
parts of it where it is kind oflike that man, I've got to do
that again every week, I won'tlie and it's mainly when it
comes to social media marketing.
Lij Shaw (05:56):
That's where I grimace every time an episode goes live
.
Marc Matthews (06:10):
And I've never heard a musician talk about the
frustrations of having to putthemselves out there on social
media either.
Right, yeah, exactly, exactly,it's that necessary evil.
I even might be the strong word, but yeah, I'm gonna roll with
it.
I'm gonna roll with it.
Um.
So, lidge spent your careerhelping musicians and producers,
as you, as you've justmentioned, then, uh, with
recording studio rock stars andobviously with the the um,
producing and recording audioengineering as well.
So today's topic is inspired byone of the podcast's listeners
(06:31):
and his name is tony.
I won't, I won't read out hisfull name, he'll.
He'll know who he is tony, yourock, he does, indeed, he does
there.
There we go.
A big shout out for you there,tony.
So his pain point is this, whenit comes to mixing, is the
amount of time it takes to setup a session, and he says
rendering midi tracks to wowfiles, grouping, editing,
(06:51):
putting individual tracks inorder, not to mention loading up
all the necessary plugins.
And he says he finds the wholeprocess quite tedious and, if
anything, he says, it seems toget longer each time, which
isn't ideal.
So this episode, folks, lidgeis here to share his best tips
for improving workflow in musicproduction and mixing.
(07:12):
You know it, yeah, so we'regoing to get loads out of this.
So my first question so, asTony mentioned then, about
setting up a session cansometimes take quite a while.
Maybe you could talk about sometechniques or shortcuts to use
to streamline that initialsession setup Audio files,
(07:35):
organizing everything beforemixing, basically.
Lij Shaw (07:38):
So, tony, first off, you're 100% correct.
It is a total pain in the buttto do all the stuff you
described and it is timeconsuming, and it also can leave
you feeling like, by the timeyou've got through all that
stuff, you're depleted and soyou got nothing left more for
(07:59):
the creative, fun part of it,which is the music making,
mixing should feel like aperformance.
It should feel like you'remaking music.
If you're a guitar player, likeI am, for example, I think you
want mixing to feel like you'vepicked up a guitar and you're
playing a song with your bestfriends and having a great time,
(08:20):
and so the best strategy fordoing that I find, and have
heard from countless otherpeople, is to simply isolate and
set aside the different times.
So, for example I'll just go tothe guitar analogy again you
(08:42):
might not want to set up andrestring your guitar at the same
moment that you want to pick upyour guitar and play it right.
So you would want to probablydo that at a different time,
where you get the guitar intoperfect playable condition and
then, when you sit down toactually play or write a song,
you just pick up the guitar andstart playing.
(09:02):
And so I find for mixing it'sthe same thing.
It's just another form of aninstrument that we need to get
ready when we're going to sitdown and do the work we want to
do.
So if you can literallyseparate your times, where you
sit down at one point and allyou're doing is getting it ready
to mix and then you just put itaway with no obligation to do
any mixing yet, and then youcome back next time knowing that
(09:25):
it's ready for you, where youcan just sit down and quickly
mix, I think you'll find thatthat makes it a lot more
enjoyable and it could alsoleave you feeling a lot more
empowered, in that when you sitdown to mix, maybe you sit down
and you mix it in you know, halfan hour the first time, because
(09:49):
you didn't have to put in allthat work, and so you just kind
of go through and do a quickbalance and maybe you bounce
that mix and print it and put itaway again and maybe come back
another time and mix it.
You know, and maybe you'velistened to that rough mix or
that first mix that you printedMaybe you come back with a
couple of notes to yourself andvery quickly do another version
(10:09):
of the mix and put that away andthen come back again when I'm
mixing.
But then there's also a lot ofstuff that I'm just not going to
know until I listen back to itin the car afterwards,
especially in home studiosituations where I'm trying to
(10:30):
stay in the inspiration momentbut the sonics might be limiting
, there might be limitations towhat I can hear in the bass and
the drums and the vocal leveland all that kind of stuff, and
it can be really really helpfulto hear it outside of that
control room context, forexample, listening on the phone
(10:51):
speaker later in the kitchenwhile you're making coffee or
something like that, orlistening in the car driving
around.
Those could be places whereit's really easy to hear
something that you missed thefirst time, and so giving
yourself the ability to kind ofprint a mix quickly with some
fundamental decisions and thenhave a chance to listen to it
(11:12):
and come back and make quickerchanges could be an inspiration
for you.
I got lots more to say on it,but I'll let you share the mic
with me, mark.
Marc Matthews (11:21):
What I was gonna say.
There is what you mentionedabout there about separating
sessions, and really does mirrorsomething I was chatting with
to someone about the other daywhich was about, uh, the sound
design and the songwritingprocess, and it was, uh, I think
it was on the podcast, so itmight just been a general
conversation, and I was askingthe question do you sound design
(11:43):
at the same time as you aresongwriting?
Because, because for me I dothem separately.
That way I've got separatesessions.
I know today I've got this idea, this sound I want to recreate,
and that is my session, ortoday or this morning, whatever
it may be, and then later I willthen move on to the actual
songwriting process.
But it kind of does echo whatyou said there about having
(12:03):
those separate sessions, in thatyou have one session which is
where you're going to be settingup your project, getting it
ready to go, and then comingback to it later with a
different mindset, ready to gowith the mixing process, which
is, uh, you know what I'vealways and I I don't know why I
haven't done this before becauseI do it with sound design and
music production, but I alwaysgo straight in, straight into
mixing afterwards without takinga break, and I never thought
(12:24):
actually it'd probably be.
Do me some good to take a breakin between, um, which makes
perfect sense, it really doeswell?
Lij Shaw (12:31):
I, I think it's.
You know, there's a certainelement of like you just created
this thing, so you want to nowkeep working on it, that's fine,
as long as you're having fun,keep, keep moving forward.
But just, you know, we've allgot our own personal version of
what part of this feels likework and what part of this feels
like fun.
So I think it's a question offinding ways to separate the two
(12:52):
so that you don't feel guiltyabout stopping in the middle of
of a process.
You know, like, if you do thework part and you're like cool,
I accomplished that and set itaside Because I mean, it's
really easy to like makesomething, and then I think all
of your listeners can appreciatethis it's very, very easy to
make something and then listenand come back later and go, wow,
(13:14):
that sucks, yep, so that'snormal.
Everybody feels that Like, pickyour most favorite famous
artist.
I promise you that they feelthat way too.
Marc Matthews (13:25):
Yeah, most definitely I.
I do all the time I do it with.
Uh, actually, to be fair, do Ido a podcast?
I think when I record tutorialepisodes for the podcast,
sometimes I I watch back and I'mthinking I could have done that
better I'm gonna, I'm gonna.
Lij Shaw (13:37):
I'm gonna remind you of this mark the first podcasts
you did.
You were grueling over them,you were probably beating
yourself up.
You probably edited yourselfinto a black hole.
Marc Matthews (13:46):
Oh, 100 I.
I I've had.
Uh, I was chatting with anotherpodcaster when I was on their
podcast a few weeks back and Iwas saying that when I first
started podcasting it was justthat I was editing crazy amounts
uh, dead, dead air and whatnotand it was taking me so long and
I was thinking, oh man, um, ifI can't do this every week, this
is going to take me a while.
(14:06):
But yeah, a hundred percent.
And then as time progressed, Ibecame a bit more well, it
didn't take me so long and Iwasn't being so harsh a critic
on myself.
But then when I listened to thefirst episode it's also the
delivery as well it's a lotdifferent.
So, audience listening, if yougo back and listen to episode
one of this podcast, you'll findthe way that I deliver now is
probably a lot different to theway I was delivering it in
(14:28):
episode one as well, which isinteresting, yeah.
Lij Shaw (14:31):
You learn to do things like self-edit when you're
speaking.
Yeah, because you go throughand you edit what was said so
many times that you begin torecognize all these details.
How many times you say um, howmany times you repeat a sentence
that was one of the ones thatwas weird to discover is like oh
wow, originally, when I'mtalking, I would start a
(14:55):
sentence and then start it overagain.
Weird stuff like that.
You just really get to know,and that's true for music too.
That's one of the reasons whyit's okay to put in all that
time editing at first, becauseyou begin to really discover
things.
You discover that, oh, when Ichanged from this chord to that
chord, I kind of missed thebeginning of the next chord and
(15:16):
I didn't notice it until Iedited it carefully.
Marc Matthews (15:20):
Yeah, it's what you mentioned there about when
you listen back to your voice orwhat you're saying on that
podcast, the one that stuck outfor me was that when the
interviewee had finished talking, I was almost not always, but
like 70, 80% of the time usingthe same word to then start
talking myself, and I was like,okay, I've got to self-edit and
(15:40):
start using a different word ora different foundation for me to
then build on what I want tosay.
So, yeah, it's really, reallyinteresting.
Lij Shaw (15:47):
Right, so you can start every sentence with
something new, like butterfly orspatula.
Marc Matthews (15:52):
Yeah, yeah, little Easter eggs, as we say in
each episode.
See if the audience could pickthem out when I'm using just a
random word to start a sentenceand see if they can get it.
Yeah, I might introduce that inepisodes going forward.
So, audience, listen out forthat.
I'm going to put Easter eggs ineach episode.
See if you can pick out whatthat word is for that particular
one.
Lij Shaw (16:11):
I got more thoughts about speeding up the workflow
there.
So one of the things there'sthis concept of a mix template,
and that is a huge time saverbecause what you do is you
essentially create somethingthat represents a baseline setup
(16:31):
for mixing that includes a lotof the stuff that you like.
So that's going to varydepending on who you're talking
to, what kind of music you'redoing, what kind of mix you're
setting up for.
But, for example, let's justtake a really basic idea.
Let's just say you've got livedrums, which tend to be one of
the more complex things we canrecord in a studio, and I
(16:53):
understand probably a lot ofyour listeners are using
in-the-box drums, digital drums,but still the digital drums
might lay out in yourmulti-track DAW like kick, snare
, toms, hi-hat, overheads, roomsand everything like that, so
they may end up looking likemulti-track mics and in order to
(17:14):
mix that, you may want to dothings like collect them all
together into a track grouping.
You might want to have certainplugins on the kick and the
snare that do things that reallymake them punchy or give you
the ability to sculpt the lowfrequencies carefully In real
drums.
In the studio you might havegates, that sort of try and get
(17:38):
rid of the sound of the bleedfrom the other things.
With your digital ones theytend to be recorded so well.
You're not going to need quiteas much of that stuff you
probably won't need any of it,in fact but you might still want
to do some EQ moves.
Eq is one of those things thatis sort of universally useful
across all styles of music.
(17:59):
And then you might want to takeall those drums and have them
all bussing or routing togetherthrough a master output.
Sometimes it's called a foldertrack, sometimes it's just an
auxiliary bus, whatever it isthat you're using to do that,
that, and then on that you know,routing that bus, routing for
(18:21):
the drums.
Maybe you want to have acompressor and another EQ or
something, or a tape thing thatmakes it sound like old school
drums or something like that.
So by setting up all of thatbeforehand as a template where
everything is sort of got a,it's an empty track, maybe
there's no actual drums on it,but it's got the right plugins
(18:43):
on it.
The levels are generally whatyou would have done when there
were actually drums on them, andthen it's going to the output
fader.
That could be your drum mixingtemplate, and you might have a
template for mixing thatincludes all the instruments you
(19:03):
might ever typically use.
So in my studio, if I have alive band in here, it might
include kick tracks, you know,snares, toms, hi-hats, overhead
mics, ambient mics.
For the drums it might have thestereo room mic that's upstairs
and all of that is routedthrough a drum output.
And then I might have a basstrack that has, you know, an
(19:27):
input where the bass player isgoing to record.
We do a lot of direct bass now.
The plugins for bass amps soundso good that you're welcome to
go record a real bass amp.
But you might actually just becreating more work for yourself
than you need to do, since theplugins of amps can sound so
good now that you can reallydial it in and make it sound
(19:50):
right for the mix when you'releaning into the mix.
But, for example, I might havethat track, might already have
five options for bass ampplugins preloaded on it so that
I can just enable one and see ifthat's the right bass amp for
that song when I'm in the mix,when I'm actually mixing.
And then same thing for guitars,vocals you know vocals
(20:13):
typically might want a varietyof plugins on them, like
compression and EQ, a de-esseryou might want to have something
to control the sibilance.
Once you've done all thatcompression with vocals, once
you add all the compression thatyou want and the EQ to sort of
make the vocals pop, now all ofa sudden you've made all the S's
(20:34):
sound insanely loud, and sothat's why you need to put a
de-esser to take that sibilanceback under control on your vocal
track.
And then also you'll do thingslike exaggerate all the breaths
so that it sounds like peopleare gasping on a microphone when
they take a normal breathbefore a line.
And those are the reasons whywe have all those special tools
(20:57):
like Waves.
De-breath will help with that alittle bit.
But honestly, when it comes tobreaths, since songs aren't all
that long they're three minutesand there's only so many lines,
it's easier for you to just goin and manually adjust those if
you want to.
I'm probably getting a littleoverly technical.
Marc Matthews (21:13):
Yeah, one quick question on the breath there,
because I do see conversationsonline where some might say
leave breaths in attenuating byX amount, get them gone totally.
Where do you stand on breathsin a mix?
Lij Shaw (21:33):
I do a variety of things.
Sometimes I blow it off, andjust, it's one of the beauties
about mixing quickly, especiallywhen when you're doing rough
mixes is you can do less of allthis trickery and just really
try and do a great balance ofall the instruments and and you
know, get the look.
We all know what our music'ssupposed to feel like to us.
So just go for that first, dojust go for the feeling of it
and then print that mix, becausethen you'll have something to
(21:56):
listen to and then, when you'relistening to it, you'll get a
better sense of like oh wow,those breaths sound ridiculous.
Or you might not notice them atall, and if you don't notice
them at all, then it's not aproblem.
Don't fix it, you know, if itain't broke, don't fix it.
That's what we say here.
Marc Matthews (22:10):
It's kind of like don't look for the, don't look
for the problems that, yeah,yeah, you're actively looking
for those for an issue, you'reprobably going to find it.
But I I love what you saidthere about that printing that
initial just what is essentiallyjust the balance, isn't it?
You're just getting the gettinga balance bit of panning and
whatnot, and then that's yourinitial sort of creative vision
for it, and then you can use allthe other processing that you
(22:31):
have available to you to thenfurther refine and enhance it
and get you that finished mixultimately.
Lij Shaw (22:36):
And those are tools and techniques that you will
learn and acquire and put intoyour own toolbox as you learn
them.
You don't have to worry aboutknowing them all right straight
out of the gate.
You want to learn some simplestuff that will help you out at
first, and then you can get morecomplex as you go.
I'm way more I swear it's funnyto say this, but I've got a
(23:00):
much more complex way ofapproaching things now and
simultaneously I treat it in amuch simpler manner.
Now I'm much more, I'm muchbolder about doing less on a mix
I love that.
Marc Matthews (23:13):
I'm gonna get that as a soundbite for the
episode because I think that'sfantastic.
I'm much bolder at doing less,because I think that's that's
because you can overkill it.
And I used to do a thing abouta year ago which was, I think,
with the producers pub whereprobably named it incorrectly.
But I gather other artists onand we chat about, uh, music
production.
They play some music and wecritique it and whatnot.
And also another feature we dois the producer kickstarts as
(23:36):
well, where the audience come onand chat about a pain point.
But a lot of the time it isjust overdoing stuff, just doing
too much.
And the coaching I do we werediscussing off air coaching and
I often get coachees come in andthey'll go through their mixing
process X, y, z and I'll gothrough just the basics, for
example, setting a staticbalance and they'll be like, oh
really, I didn't realize that'sall I needed to do.
(23:56):
In that instance I'm like, yeah, you're just over complicating
it oh, I was just going tocomment on that.
Lij Shaw (24:00):
So the static balance is a great way to do it.
And then when you're listeningback to the static balance and
you discover you know what thevocal is too loud in the verse
but it's too quiet in the chorus, then then you know Eureka.
Now you know that it's okay tobring the level down in the
verse a little bit on the vocaland bring it up in the chorus.
(24:21):
But trying to like decide allthat stuff before you've arrived
at something that you feelconfident about is a recipe for
just going in circles.
I mean a lot of it is just assimple as that.
Your listeners.
What might be a funny thing tosay is they may feel like
(24:41):
beginners about maybe thesongwriting or the production or
the how to do all the technicalstuff in the studio, but just
based on the fact that they'relistening to this podcast right
now is an indicator to me thatthey are already actually
experts at music.
And this all goes back to afamous quote from Ira Glass, who
(25:06):
said you begin as an expert inyour taste in music.
So you've spent years and yearspossibly listening to music and
so you have a strong feelingabout what's good.
You know what's good.
So your level of expertise isup here as far as what you think
(25:27):
about music.
But in the creating of it youfeel like your expertise is way
down here and so you're justtrying to, like, work your way
up to match your, your um.
You know your expertise intaste and that can take a whole.
You know lifetime of practiceand body of work and all that.
So don't sweat it too much,just just trust your own
(25:50):
impression of what you think isgood and just keep trying to
work your way, one step at atime, towards that yeah,
fantastic advice.
Marc Matthews (25:57):
Totally agree with all that.
Um, just circling back to whatyou said there about the
templates are going right backto the beginning here of this
particular section.
So you mentioned there abouthaving sort of a mix template or
recording recording template.
Do you have different templatesfor different sort of phases of
the production process of likesongwriting mixing?
Yes, although I don't get toocaught up in that of phases of
the production process of likesongwriting mixing.
Lij Shaw (26:16):
Yes, Although I don't get too caught up in that,
because one of the problems withfocusing too much on templates
is you spend all your time thereinstead of on making the song.
So I, very specifically nowhave arrived at a system that
works great for me.
In fact, I just like, literallyjust last night, the last
(26:38):
member of seven house guests whoare here with me over the
weekend making music togetherjust split.
So I had a house full of peoplein the studio, full of friends
and guests, and we recorded fivesongs, from demo sketch to
something that sounds like it'sready for um.
You probably could just releaseit as is.
(27:00):
You know, I'm, of course,knowing me.
I'm going to go back in and I'mgoing to work hard on the mixes
and work hard on the masteringand like tweak more things and
check the vocal notes and allthat kind of stuff but, I'll get
to all that.
When I get to it right now I didthe rough mixes really, where
it's like you just go for thefeeling and everybody left
feeling really, really excitedabout it.
But that process for me issomething that is probably a
(27:23):
longer story than we can getinto on this whole, just on this
podcast.
But it involves working with agroup of friends where, in this
instance, we do something wecall poetry scores, where one of
the people involved is a writerand a poet and he really wanted
(27:43):
to hear other people singingthis stuff, so he sort of shared
it with the group of us.
Each of us was taking one ofthe poems and saying, oh, I'm
going to go make a song out ofit.
And then it sort of relievesyou of the responsibility for
the lyrics.
You're like great, I've alreadygot the words, now I just got
to figure out how do I put thisinto a fun song.
(28:04):
And then that becomes a reallygreat, simple, creative process.
You're like OK, it's like asongwriting exercise.
So for that first stage of it Ihave been using just my phone to
write the song and I think fordifferent people they got
different techniques, but for meI am using an app that is
(28:27):
actually discontinued at themoment, but maybe it'll come
back one day.
It's called Spire and it's fromiZotope.
They created a little batterypowered you know recording
device with an app on your phoneand it's pretty brilliant.
You could have the lyrics rightthere in the app and then you
(28:48):
can record multi track rightthere and it makes it really
easy for punching in and stuffand it's very simple.
So there's other apps that workgreat for this too.
You could do this on yourcomputer in the studio.
I personally find that if Itake a guitar and a very simple
iPhone recording studio and I goto some inspiring place, then
(29:09):
it opens up my mind and mythinking and my creative ideas
in a new way, where being in thestudio might feel, can feel
creative like that, but it couldalso feel like I'm thinking
about other responsibilities orI'm thinking too much about,
like you know, the finishedproduct and I just need to think
about the song.
So so in that, in that respect,the song, the initial song
(29:32):
sketch, is the way I like torefer to it.
I would recommend that you finda system that is ultra simple
and has like don't worry aboutplugins, don't worry about
anything.
You might want sound effects.
You might want effects becausethat can inspire the idea.
So you know, a big reverb mightmake you sing a different way,
(29:53):
a cool delay effect might makeyou play a new guitar part that
has a rhythmic element, ordistortion might give it an
attitude that inspires you.
But I'll do that separately.
And then when I come in torecord the band in the studio, a
first part of our templatemusically is literally um
(30:15):
charting out the song.
I'll arrange it out on paper sothat we know exactly how many
bars there are.
Um, we can still make changes,but at least it gets everybody
quickly on the same page so thatwe're not I mean I just I'm
sure everybody's familiar withthis like with the no guys.
It's the second verse, is thatextra third chorus, and now we
(30:35):
forgot how the ending goes.
And if you can find a simplesystem where one page of paper
sort of outlines the song andit's easy for everybody to know
what that means, it's going tomake that process really a lot
quicker.
So once we get the band in thestudio, then my first template
(30:55):
in the actual Pro Tools, whichis what I use for a lot of
recording, although I useAbleton Live, I use Apple Logic.
I'm teaching myself Reaperright now, which is a really
great one.
Studio One, you know, mixbus 32.
These are all great, greattools for recording.
Did I forget anybody?
(31:16):
I probably did Cubase, oh myGod, cubase is brilliant.
And if you're curious aboutCubase, go check out Mixdown
Online with Chris Salim.
He's an expert at teaching thatand a great YouTube channel.
But so anyway, just regardlessof which one of these you use,
for me the starting templatewith the band in the studio is
(31:38):
going to be having all themultitracks there, where all the
inputs are going and theinstruments are set up.
So back to your setup question.
I set up my studio for thistracking session a week ahead of
the session because I had tofly to New York and go to the
AES conference all week and Iflew back here on a morning
(31:59):
flight.
I was basically a red-eyeflight, landed in Nashville,
went straight to the studio andeverybody started arriving and I
knew that I would not have anytime to set anything up when it
was time to record.
So again, it's that idea ofseparate the setup from the
session.
If I had tried to do thesetting up, the mics and the
instruments when it was time torecord, which I did.
(32:21):
That when I was starting out.
It was a nightmare, oh my God.
I would just be unraveling andjust breaking down in stress and
I probably would have had noability to actually play the
music and had no fun.
So I did all that beforehandand when you set it up
beforehand then you can just berelaxed about it.
(32:42):
You can just put on some musicand like kind of la-di-da around
the studio slowly setting upthe drums and the mics and
everything, because you're notunder too much pressure.
So my template for that wouldbe a template where all the mics
inputs are line checked for allthe band members.
I have things in that like maybethe drums are pre-routed to a
(33:05):
folder that has the plugins onit that I might use for when I
go to the mix.
But plugins introduce latency,so I have all the plugins turned
off while we're tracking.
But plugins introduce latency,so I have all the plugins turned
off while we're tracking and Iuse a system called Pro Tools
HDX, which is just a very lowlatency thing so you don't hear
an echo in the headphones.
But whatever you're using, youeither have an app that has a
(33:27):
mixer, headphone, mix in it orsomething, but your interface
and your DAW, I promise, hassome way to hear yourself
clearly without any delays orechoes.
The place where you might runinto latency delays and echoes
is if you have to use a VSTinstrument to do your thing and
you've got MIDI and you have toturn up the buffer.
(33:48):
Then you might have to dealwith setting that right.
But for me, I'll have all thatstuff.
I'll have a master fader thatalready has, you know, maybe a
compressor and an EQ and a tapesimulator and then a limiter on
it and then maybe even a and Iknow this sounds techie, you
(34:09):
don't have to use all this stuff.
No, no, go ahead, but I'll have, and then maybe I'll have a
meter plug-in on the end, and sowhat I do is I actually turn
that off at first, so it'sdisabled, so that none of my
tracks go through it when we'rerecording, because I don't need
any of that stuff.
I just need everybody to hearthemselves in the headphones.
I'll have a click track in thesession template so that I can
(34:35):
easily set the tempo of the song, turn on the click track.
Now everybody's hearing it.
I get a little more complex herein my studio, which is set up
more like a pro studio.
So, for example, the drummerwill hear the band playing, but
they also get a separate feed ofthe click track that goes to
their headphones, which is a lotlouder than the rest of us,
because the drummer is going toneed to hear the click really
(34:58):
clearly to be able to stay on it.
And let me preface this Ifthey're using a click, you do
not have to use a click track.
You only want to use a clicktrack if it's the right choice
for the song you're doing andfor the production.
Marc Matthews (35:13):
Yeah, lovely stuff all of that there.
When you mentioned click tracks, it reminded me when I was in a
band.
I was in a metal band, as theaudience knows, because I
probably bang on.
You guys needed a click track wedid indeed, yeah, and our
drummer was fantastic.
He, he made, he bought us timefor my deficiencies in my guitar
playing when it came torecording.
So he'd bank us time because hewas so good at recording drums
(35:33):
that I knew I had a bit of extraleeway.
Well, I had leeway when it cameto my guitar playing, when, uh,
when it came to recording,because I was not as excited as
he was on drums, but, yeah, mostdefinitely in metal, for
example.
Yeah, it just reminded me whenyou said that there, but no, all
really interesting stuff.
I just want to circle back to um, the grouping side of things.
You mentioned there aboutgrouping drums and I know again,
(35:55):
it's a conversation I've hadfrequently with the audience and
listeners and whatnot on socialmedia.
But when you are presented witha project, let's say it's just
drums, guitar, bass, vocal,maybe some synths, some MIDI
synths or whatever it may be,maybe you could talk a bit about
your grouping of thoseinstruments and how you would,
particularly with drums, do youput all the drums in one a
(36:17):
really nice way, you know, andthat could just be as simple as
(36:37):
a compressor across it whichgives it a little bit of, you
know, compression.
Lij Shaw (36:43):
It might be a tape plugin or something that get, or
a console emulation plugin thatgives it a little bit of a
sound.
I mean, you know, we all haveagain to that idea of like being
an expert at listening.
I'm 57.
So I certainly grew uplistening to records that were
recorded on gear that is fromyou know, from another time or
(37:07):
from another style of studiothan just a laptop, you know,
and a computer.
So there might be a plugin thatI want to put on that gives it
some of that quality of thatsound, cause maybe to my ear
that sounds like oh, now thedrums sound right, you know, and
I think, depending on the styleof music you make, again,
there's going to be a thing thatthat's the kind of stuff you
(37:29):
might want to put on the, on thegrouping bus that represents
what you do, you know, your,your metal music.
There's a whole slew of guitaramps, guitars, styles of drums,
styles of drum, cymbals All thatstuff is relevant and there's
probably certain recordingstudios and recording gear that
(37:52):
sounds more like the rightanswer to you than than might,
you know might work for anAmericana folk session in
Nashville.
So I think it helps to justkind of do a little bit of
homework on the style of musicyou like too, and see what kind
of stuff they used and look forthose sorts of plugins if you
want.
You know, but, um, but that'show I would group it, uh.
But then at the same time youmight find that grouping all the
(38:15):
drums together sort of squishesthem together too much, and now
you're like, oh, I can't, Idon't, the kick and the snare
doesn't have that punch that Iwant.
So you might want to also havethe kick and the snare sort of
going directly to the stereo bus, you know, outside of the group
at the same time, and maybethat gives you a little bit of
(38:35):
both worlds.
You know outside of the groupat the same time, and maybe that
gives you a little bit of bothworlds.
You know that might soundcomplicated to explain it, but
let's just imagine all the drumsgo through this stereo grouping
bus, but the kick and the snarealso has an additional send
that goes straight to the mix,you know, so that it's got a
clarity to it.
Those are the kinds of thingsyou can experiment with you know
and sort of see what soundsbest to you.
(38:57):
And when you get there throughtrial and error and you start
arriving at things that soundbetter to you, this is how you
develop your template.
You know, this is how youdevelop your mix template.
And so then when you come backin and do your next project and
this is where it gets a littletricky you're like what did I do
on the last project thatsounded so good, so you want to
make sure you keep some of thatstuff somewhere nearby so that
(39:18):
you can, like in Pro Tools, Ican import all the track
settings from one session toanother and so I might import
particularly from song to songin a record.
This is where that happensmostly for me.
I'll mix the first song and Iget something that really is
working now.
So then I'll go to do the nextsong and I'll import all the
(39:40):
settings of the first song overon top of the tracks on the
second song and that's how Istart out with a new mix
template for the second song isby bringing over all the same
mix settings of the first song,for example I do do the same in
logic.
Marc Matthews (39:56):
Uh, you can import um tracks, auxiliary
sends with the processing, yeah,and the plugins and also the
automation as well, if you'renot entirely sure why I would do
that.
But you can import all that inlogic as well, because logic is
the door that I use, and I douse reaper as well.
Logic's so great it is, it'sfantastic I was.
Lij Shaw (40:12):
I did a.
So my brother has a musicschool in Brooklyn and he sent
over 25 to 30 kids band songsfor me to mix and I have to and
I've got like one day to do it,so I'm like all right.
Well, obviously I'm going tohave to have a template.
That's really fast.
So I would.
I think I set up I sort ofpreemptively set up the template
(40:37):
a little bit, or he sent overthe first song first and I kind
of get a thing going, then Ijust import it over to the other
one and then Logic had addedthe auto mastering plugin
feature and so I would do themix really quickly and then I
just hit auto master and likelisten to him, like did it?
Did it screw it up?
No, it sounds pretty good printthat you know it's.
Marc Matthews (40:56):
It's really good.
I'm um, I've been eulogizingabout the uh logic pro 11 in a
few episodes probably about 10or so episodes ago with the stem
splitter, and I did a fewepisodes on using the stem
splitter and comparing it toother stem splitter applications
like rip x door and g audio andwhatnot.
So, uh, yeah, absolutely lovingthe uh.
The only thing I find is thisis going a bit off topic now
(41:17):
with with logic pro 11 and thestem splitter.
You do have to have an m1processor, so it gets you a bit
there.
But that's right, right yeahthat's if you need to have that,
but if you're using the same Iuse the stem splitter stuff, but
I use it.
Lij Shaw (41:30):
I don't know if I use it in places.
It was originally intended.
I I'm not like pulling outtracks and doing remixes of
things, yeah yeah, but I use theiZotope stem splitter that
comes in Ozone and RX when I'mmastering a record I'm like, hey
, you know what?
I think I want a little morevocal or I want a little more
kick or snare.
(41:50):
I find it a little bit reallyhelps it come out.
And then the other place thatwas really cool is on guitar
sketches all the way at thebeginning of a project okay,
yeah when I was doing.
What was it?
It was, um, I did, uh, well, no, I had one where the guitar
player was sending me his sketchand he strums his guitar and
(42:10):
sings and there's, there's aguitar strum that I recognize
all the way from the beginning.
That just drives me bananas.
I call it jung-ja-gung-ga-junga, where people are like
jung-ja-gung-ga-junga,jung-ja-gung-ga-junga, and it
can be OK on some songs, buttypically it's just a default.
So my thinking as a producer onthat song was like all right,
(42:31):
it's got that guitar strum,which really distracting and
it's going to make everybody inthe band think we're doing this
boring, light, fluffy song.
And then his vocals on top.
So with the stem splitter Ijust threw it in there and it
was amazing.
It just sucked the vocal rightout, it removed the guitar and
all I was left with is a vocaltrack and I'm like, ah, now I
can listen to the song, vocalonly and imagine something
(42:54):
totally different underneath it.
For you know, imagine a pianopart, or imagine like power
guitar or something.
Marc Matthews (43:00):
Yeah, yeah, I love that use case that's a
great use case for it, causeI've been not struggling but
I've been trying to find my ownuse case for it, having done all
these tests, but that I reallylike when it comes to actually
demoing it across.
Lij Shaw (43:11):
Any of your listeners.
Let's say they are.
They sketched an idea on avoice memo app, um, on you know
iPhone and they're like Icompletely screwed up the guitar
playing it sucks.
Or I hit the wrong chord on thepiano.
Try the voice, try that.
Just throw it into the stemextractor.
Suck your voice out.
Now you've got your cool lyricand melody idea.
You can even rearrange themelody a little bit, pulling it
(43:33):
into logic or whatever, and youmight be able to rescue that
good idea I love that Greatstuff, great advice, litch Great
advice.
Marc Matthews (43:41):
So we're coming towards the end of our
conversation.
Lij Shaw (43:44):
It's too soon, man, it's too soon, I know I know I
haven't got that.
Marc Matthews (43:46):
I've only got through about two of my
questions.
I always do that I go off ontangent.
So I'd be doing you adisservice if I didn't give you
the opportunity to talk a bitabout your podcast and a bit
about what you're doing at themoment, and also maybe if you've
got something for our listenersthat they could consume
Absolutely so.
Lij Shaw (44:04):
My podcast is called Recording Studio Rockstars and
it's interviews with producersand engineers bringing you into
the studio to learn fromrecording professionals so that
you can make your best recordever and be a rock star of the
studio yourself.
I just quoted the intro of theshow to you right there.
Marc Matthews (44:22):
I know, I know Very good.
Lij Shaw (44:23):
That's what happens after 500 episodes, right?
So it's really great.
It's going to be a totalvariety of guests on the show.
Some are very techie, some aresongwriter-focused.
It's different styles of music,but I promise you you will find
somebody that really isinteresting to you.
So go give it a listen.
They're long form episodes, twohour interviews.
(44:45):
Um so, lots of just casualtalking about making records,
tons of great ideas being sharedon the show, and along with
that I created a free coursethat is just for you.
It's called mixmasterbundlecomand it's an introduction to
getting a professional soundingmix in your studio so that you
(45:07):
can take your tracks fromsounding like basement demos to
sounding a lot more like a promix.
It's a really just simpleintroduction to it, so you won't
have to get too advanced andtoo technological, but,
especially if you're doing bandmusic, it'll give you some great
ideas for how to get the stuffto just sort of leap out of your
speakers.
So again, just go tomixmasterbundlecom and you can
(45:30):
check that out.
And if you just go to thewebsite
recordingstudiorockstarscom, Ithink we have 10 different ways
to join the email list so thatyou can know about each weekly
episode and just be able to getaccess to all the information
that's there.
Marc Matthews (45:44):
Amazing.
I will put a link to all ofthat, so the website and also
the freebie as well, and I'llput links to that in the episode
description.
So, audience listening, do goand check that out.
And, of course, if you're notalready a follower, do go follow
Lidger's podcast as well,because it's brilliant.
As I said right at thebeginning, I was listening to it
today on my run with Brennanand start with that episode
(46:06):
because I thought that wasreally good.
In particular, there was aconversation that you were
having with him about when hewas just starting out and
waiting tables and his thoughtprocess thought process
surrounding that, which Ithought was really really
insightful and very useful forthe audience listening, if
you're in a similar positionwhereby you are thinking, day
job, I want to be in the musicindustry and how you, how you
(46:27):
juggle those two.
Lij Shaw (46:28):
So how much of do you have listeners who really want
to do this professionally aswell?
Marc Matthews (46:33):
Yeah, it really does range from those who do it
as a sort of hobby and have theday job and then want to just
release music of their ownaccord and just get better at
doing it.
But then there are others whodo want to pursue music, whether
that's audio engineering orproducing, as a full-time
occupation.
So it really does range betweenthe two.
Lij Shaw (46:53):
Well, it's a special time now if you want to do it
professionally because there'sso much gig.
What's the word I'm looking for?
There's like a gig economywhere you can just turn the app
on and go deliver food, or turnthe app on and do ride shares,
and it's much trickier in someways.
When I was starting, whereyou're like, I don't even know
(47:15):
what job I could do, because Ineed.
If somebody calls me for astudio session, the answer is
always yes.
So delivering pizzas was myfirst one and I until I did a
u-turn in an intersection andtotaled my car and I was like
all right time to get seriousabout the music and that's a,
that's a side, isn't it that, um, you need to maybe think about
doing something slightlydifferent at that point.
Marc Matthews (47:37):
No, fantastic lidge, it's been an absolute
pleasure chatting you, on thechat with you today on the
podcast, and it's actually thefirst one, first interview
post-summer in 2024, so uh,right on yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's been a few months nowsince I've had someone like me,
I'm starting up the interviewseason too yeah, yeah, I've got
a lot lined up now.
So, audience listening there,you'll find there's gonna be a
lot more interviews leading upuntil sort of the end of 2024
(47:59):
and into into 2025 and, uh, yeah, some exciting ones ahead.
No spoilers, but it's been anabsolute pleasure and, um, I
will catch up with you soon allright mark.
Lij Shaw (48:09):
Thanks so much and thank you to your listeners for
joining us.
Marc Matthews (48:12):
Folks, before you go, I want to hear from you.
I want to know your favoriteepisode of the Inside the Mix
podcast.
Alternatively, you could justreview this episode.
Click the SpeakPipe link in theepisode description and you can
record an audio messagedetailing your favorite episode
and why, and also give yourselfa shout out.
All you need is your mobilephone.
(48:33):
You don't need a SpeakPipeaccount.
You don't need to download anapp.
It's just like sending me anaudio message via WhatsApp or
whatever messaging platform youuse.
As soon as I get your audio,you will be entered in that
month's draw to win a Starbuckscoffee voucher, and if you don't
like coffee, just give it tosomeone else and pretend that
you bought it for them.
(48:54):
All you need to do is clickthat speak pipe link and send me
an audio message reviewing thisepisode or a previous episode
and give yourself a shout out.
You want to learn some simple stuff that will help you
out at first, and then you canget more complex as you go.
I'm way more.
It's funny to say this, butI've got a much more complex way
of approaching things now andsimultaneously I treat it in a
much simpler manner now.
Marc Matthews (00:37):
I'm much bolder about doing less on a mix and
welcome to the Inside the Mixpodcast.
I'm Mark Matthews, your host,musician, producer and mix and
mastering engineer.
You've come to the right placeif you want to know more about
your favorite synth musicartists, music engineering and
production, songwriting and themusic industry.
I've been writing, producing,mixing and mastering music for
(00:57):
over 15 years and I want toshare what I've learned with you
.
Hey folks, welcome back.
I am very excited.
I'm thrilled for today's guest,or rather this episode's guest,
the award-winning music andpodcast producer, recording
engineer and owner of theGrammy-awarded the Toy Box
(01:19):
Studio in East Nashville, lidgeShaw Lidge.
How are you today?
Thank you for joining me on thepodcast.
Lij Shaw (01:25):
My pleasure, mark.
It's great to be here and it'sgreat to get to meet all your
listeners who, I understand, areall music makers and aspiring
music makers, and songwritersand people who just want to make
cool tunes.
Marc Matthews (01:38):
They are indeed, and I'm going to hazard a guess
and say a large number of themprobably do listen to your
podcast as well, as I doroutinely communicate with the
listeners and they say theylisten to XYZ on other podcasts.
So no doubt that.
But we'll get into to yourpodcast shortly.
But yeah, it's.
It's always nice to haveanother podcaster on the show
because, as you were mentioningearlier, it can be quite a solo
(02:00):
effort being a podcaster.
So, yeah, it's always nice tohave another one on the show,
and you, they're always going tohave a good microphone as well,
which is always good.
Lij Shaw (02:09):
And this is my dedicated video mic.
It's not actually my podcastingmic, but it's the one that I
made sure sounds good on video,so hopefully it sounds good.
It does, indeed, it does indeedyou know it's funny, you
mentioned it, so it really istrue.
Marc Matthews (02:20):
Podcasting can be a little bit of a lonely
business, in the same way thatmaking music in your home studio
can feel that way you know,yeah, most definitely find
yourself sort of alone doingyour stuff, your creation yeah,
I, I totally agree with that andI was just saying off air
actually, um, with your podcastitself, so it's for the audience
listening.
Um, I'll tell you what it isnow.
(02:41):
It's recording studio rockstars and I was listening on my
listening to it on my run todaywith your conversation with
Brennan, which was reallyinteresting when you were
talking about eBay and I wassaying to my fiance the other
day that I cannot remember thelast time I bought something on
eBay, but I did used to buyloads of gear on.
When I say gear, I'm talkingabout I say gear like guitars
(03:01):
and whatnot.
Over in the UK.
Gear can often mean somethingelse.
Lij Shaw (03:05):
Well, you guys refer to here.
We talk about gear for thestudio over there.
You guys talk about your kit,right?
Marc Matthews (03:13):
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,talking about your kit.
So, yeah, I remember buyingloads of guitars and pedals and
whatnot on there, but no, it wasa really interesting
conversations.
So, audience, once you'velistened to this one, go and
check out that um conversationif you're one that feels some,
or listen to some, nostalgiawhen it comes to buying, buy kit
or gear.
However you want to call it um,but lidge um a bit more on your
(03:34):
bio here a chart toppingproducer and engineer, but also
the host of the number oneitunes podcast recording studio
rock stars, where you shareinsights from over 480
interviews shameless self-pluggot my own t-shirt on.
This is my uniform when I go toevents and stuff if I'd known
that I would have worn my insidethe mix podcast hoodie, but I
(03:56):
do have my mug here, so I've got.
Lij Shaw (03:59):
Oh nice there you go.
Marc Matthews (04:00):
There's my shameless and can your listeners
go get a mug if they want uh, Ithink I don't think my store's
up and I'm going to have todouble-check.
Lij Shaw (04:08):
You don't have to do that.
Marc Matthews (04:09):
I was giving them away for free, so I cannot
remember if the store's still upand running.
It might well be.
I never plug it.
Lij Shaw (04:17):
Maybe I should All right, everybody, give Mark a
hard time and get him to makethose mugs available to you.
Marc Matthews (04:22):
Yeah, in fact, I will say that I think, yeah,
this is the old logo, so I doneed to get some new stuff with
the new logo and the hoodies aswell.
So, yeah, I should have worn myhoodie as well.
So what I was saying there wasabout 480 interviews with top
recording engineers, mixers andsongwriters worldwide.
(04:43):
You've been in the gamepodcasting game game for a while
now.
I think you were saying 10years, is that right?
Lij Shaw (04:47):
Yeah, it's been about a decade now already since I
started, and when I started it Ihad been really interested in
podcasting myself.
I'd just been listening toother ones, and then I got this
idea.
I was like you know, what do Ilove more than anything is
talking about making records inthe studio, recording songs,
writing songs, all of it.
So why not just make a podcastabout that?
Marc Matthews (05:09):
Exactly.
No better reason.
It's got to be something you'recliche, passionate about,
hasn't it?
Yeah, otherwise, you can soonAgain.
We were discussing off air thata lot of podcasts don't get
past the 10 or 20 episode mark,and probably for that reason.
So, yeah, I think it's like 90a podcast, which is crazy
considering how well, it's likerecording in your home studio.
Lij Shaw (05:31):
You, you love it, but as you do it, it's still going
to turn into work yeah, you'regoing to hit that point where
it's a real pain in the butt andit's like if you don't love it,
you're not going to pushthrough and get.
Get to the other side of that,yeah.
Marc Matthews (05:45):
I totally agree.
There are elements, as much asI love podcasting, but there are
parts of it where it is kind oflike that man, I've got to do
that again every week, I won'tlie and it's mainly when it
comes to social media marketing.
Lij Shaw (05:56):
That's where I grimace every time an episode goes live
.
Marc Matthews (06:10):
And I've never heard a musician talk about the
frustrations of having to putthemselves out there on social
media either.
Right, yeah, exactly, exactly,it's that necessary evil.
I even might be the strong word, but yeah, I'm gonna roll with
it.
I'm gonna roll with it.
Um.
So, lidge spent your careerhelping musicians and producers,
as you, as you've justmentioned, then, uh, with
recording studio rock stars andobviously with the the um,
producing and recording audioengineering as well.
So today's topic is inspired byone of the podcast's listeners
(06:31):
and his name is tony.
I won't, I won't read out hisfull name, he'll.
He'll know who he is tony, yourock, he does, indeed, he does
there.
There we go.
A big shout out for you there,tony.
So his pain point is this, whenit comes to mixing, is the
amount of time it takes to setup a session, and he says
rendering midi tracks to wowfiles, grouping, editing,
(06:51):
putting individual tracks inorder, not to mention loading up
all the necessary plugins.
And he says he finds the wholeprocess quite tedious and, if
anything, he says, it seems toget longer each time, which
isn't ideal.
So this episode, folks, lidgeis here to share his best tips
for improving workflow in musicproduction and mixing.
(07:12):
You know it, yeah, so we'regoing to get loads out of this.
So my first question so, asTony mentioned then, about
setting up a session cansometimes take quite a while.
Maybe you could talk about sometechniques or shortcuts to use
to streamline that initialsession setup Audio files,
(07:35):
organizing everything beforemixing, basically.
Lij Shaw (07:38):
So, tony, first off, you're 100% correct.
It is a total pain in the buttto do all the stuff you
described and it is timeconsuming, and it also can leave
you feeling like, by the timeyou've got through all that
stuff, you're depleted and soyou got nothing left more for
(07:59):
the creative, fun part of it,which is the music making,
mixing should feel like aperformance.
It should feel like you'remaking music.
If you're a guitar player, likeI am, for example, I think you
want mixing to feel like you'vepicked up a guitar and you're
playing a song with your bestfriends and having a great time,
(08:20):
and so the best strategy fordoing that I find, and have
heard from countless otherpeople, is to simply isolate and
set aside the different times.
So, for example I'll just go tothe guitar analogy again you
(08:42):
might not want to set up andrestring your guitar at the same
moment that you want to pick upyour guitar and play it right.
So you would want to probablydo that at a different time,
where you get the guitar intoperfect playable condition and
then, when you sit down toactually play or write a song,
you just pick up the guitar andstart playing.
(09:02):
And so I find for mixing it'sthe same thing.
It's just another form of aninstrument that we need to get
ready when we're going to sitdown and do the work we want to
do.
So if you can literallyseparate your times, where you
sit down at one point and allyou're doing is getting it ready
to mix and then you just put itaway with no obligation to do
any mixing yet, and then youcome back next time knowing that
(09:25):
it's ready for you, where youcan just sit down and quickly
mix, I think you'll find thatthat makes it a lot more
enjoyable and it could alsoleave you feeling a lot more
empowered, in that when you sitdown to mix, maybe you sit down
and you mix it in you know, halfan hour the first time, because
(09:49):
you didn't have to put in allthat work, and so you just kind
of go through and do a quickbalance and maybe you bounce
that mix and print it and put itaway again and maybe come back
another time and mix it.
You know, and maybe you'velistened to that rough mix or
that first mix that you printedMaybe you come back with a
couple of notes to yourself andvery quickly do another version
(10:09):
of the mix and put that away andthen come back again when I'm
mixing.
But then there's also a lot ofstuff that I'm just not going to
know until I listen back to itin the car afterwards,
especially in home studiosituations where I'm trying to
(10:30):
stay in the inspiration momentbut the sonics might be limiting
, there might be limitations towhat I can hear in the bass and
the drums and the vocal leveland all that kind of stuff, and
it can be really really helpfulto hear it outside of that
control room context, forexample, listening on the phone
(10:51):
speaker later in the kitchenwhile you're making coffee or
something like that, orlistening in the car driving
around.
Those could be places whereit's really easy to hear
something that you missed thefirst time, and so giving
yourself the ability to kind ofprint a mix quickly with some
fundamental decisions and thenhave a chance to listen to it
(11:12):
and come back and make quickerchanges could be an inspiration
for you.
I got lots more to say on it,but I'll let you share the mic
with me, mark.
Marc Matthews (11:21):
What I was gonna say.
There is what you mentionedabout there about separating
sessions, and really does mirrorsomething I was chatting with
to someone about the other daywhich was about, uh, the sound
design and the songwritingprocess, and it was, uh, I think
it was on the podcast, so itmight just been a general
conversation, and I was askingthe question do you sound design
(11:43):
at the same time as you aresongwriting?
Because, because for me I dothem separately.
That way I've got separatesessions.
I know today I've got this idea, this sound I want to recreate,
and that is my session, ortoday or this morning, whatever
it may be, and then later I willthen move on to the actual
songwriting process.
But it kind of does echo whatyou said there about having
(12:03):
those separate sessions, in thatyou have one session which is
where you're going to be settingup your project, getting it
ready to go, and then comingback to it later with a
different mindset, ready to gowith the mixing process, which
is, uh, you know what I'vealways and I I don't know why I
haven't done this before becauseI do it with sound design and
music production, but I alwaysgo straight in, straight into
mixing afterwards without takinga break, and I never thought
(12:24):
actually it'd probably be.
Do me some good to take a breakin between, um, which makes
perfect sense, it really doeswell?
Lij Shaw (12:31):
I, I think it's.
You know, there's a certainelement of like you just created
this thing, so you want to nowkeep working on it, that's fine,
as long as you're having fun,keep, keep moving forward.
But just, you know, we've allgot our own personal version of
what part of this feels likework and what part of this feels
like fun.
So I think it's a question offinding ways to separate the two
(12:52):
so that you don't feel guiltyabout stopping in the middle of
of a process.
You know, like, if you do thework part and you're like cool,
I accomplished that and set itaside Because I mean, it's
really easy to like makesomething, and then I think all
of your listeners can appreciatethis it's very, very easy to
make something and then listenand come back later and go, wow,
(13:14):
that sucks, yep, so that'snormal.
Everybody feels that Like, pickyour most favorite famous
artist.
I promise you that they feelthat way too.
Marc Matthews (13:25):
Yeah, most definitely I.
I do all the time I do it with.
Uh, actually, to be fair, do Ido a podcast?
I think when I record tutorialepisodes for the podcast,
sometimes I I watch back and I'mthinking I could have done that
better I'm gonna, I'm gonna.
Lij Shaw (13:37):
I'm gonna remind you of this mark the first podcasts
you did.
You were grueling over them,you were probably beating
yourself up.
You probably edited yourselfinto a black hole.
Marc Matthews (13:46):
Oh, 100 I.
I I've had.
Uh, I was chatting with anotherpodcaster when I was on their
podcast a few weeks back and Iwas saying that when I first
started podcasting it was justthat I was editing crazy amounts
uh, dead, dead air and whatnotand it was taking me so long and
I was thinking, oh man, um, ifI can't do this every week, this
is going to take me a while.
(14:06):
But yeah, a hundred percent.
And then as time progressed, Ibecame a bit more well, it
didn't take me so long and Iwasn't being so harsh a critic
on myself.
But then when I listened to thefirst episode it's also the
delivery as well it's a lotdifferent.
So, audience listening, if yougo back and listen to episode
one of this podcast, you'll findthe way that I deliver now is
probably a lot different to theway I was delivering it in
(14:28):
episode one as well, which isinteresting, yeah.
Lij Shaw (14:31):
You learn to do things like self-edit when you're
speaking.
Yeah, because you go throughand you edit what was said so
many times that you begin torecognize all these details.
How many times you say um, howmany times you repeat a sentence
that was one of the ones thatwas weird to discover is like oh
wow, originally, when I'mtalking, I would start a
(14:55):
sentence and then start it overagain.
Weird stuff like that.
You just really get to know,and that's true for music too.
That's one of the reasons whyit's okay to put in all that
time editing at first, becauseyou begin to really discover
things.
You discover that, oh, when Ichanged from this chord to that
chord, I kind of missed thebeginning of the next chord and
(15:16):
I didn't notice it until Iedited it carefully.
Marc Matthews (15:20):
Yeah, it's what you mentioned there about when
you listen back to your voice orwhat you're saying on that
podcast, the one that stuck outfor me was that when the
interviewee had finished talking, I was almost not always, but
like 70, 80% of the time usingthe same word to then start
talking myself, and I was like,okay, I've got to self-edit and
(15:40):
start using a different word ora different foundation for me to
then build on what I want tosay.
So, yeah, it's really, reallyinteresting.
Lij Shaw (15:47):
Right, so you can start every sentence with
something new, like butterfly orspatula.
Marc Matthews (15:52):
Yeah, yeah, little Easter eggs, as we say in
each episode.
See if the audience could pickthem out when I'm using just a
random word to start a sentenceand see if they can get it.
Yeah, I might introduce that inepisodes going forward.
So, audience, listen out forthat.
I'm going to put Easter eggs ineach episode.
See if you can pick out whatthat word is for that particular
one.
Lij Shaw (16:11):
I got more thoughts about speeding up the workflow
there.
So one of the things there'sthis concept of a mix template,
and that is a huge time saverbecause what you do is you
essentially create somethingthat represents a baseline setup
(16:31):
for mixing that includes a lotof the stuff that you like.
So that's going to varydepending on who you're talking
to, what kind of music you'redoing, what kind of mix you're
setting up for.
But, for example, let's justtake a really basic idea.
Let's just say you've got livedrums, which tend to be one of
the more complex things we canrecord in a studio, and I
(16:53):
understand probably a lot ofyour listeners are using
in-the-box drums, digital drums,but still the digital drums
might lay out in yourmulti-track DAW like kick, snare
, toms, hi-hat, overheads, roomsand everything like that, so
they may end up looking likemulti-track mics and in order to
(17:14):
mix that, you may want to dothings like collect them all
together into a track grouping.
You might want to have certainplugins on the kick and the
snare that do things that reallymake them punchy or give you
the ability to sculpt the lowfrequencies carefully In real
drums.
In the studio you might havegates, that sort of try and get
(17:38):
rid of the sound of the bleedfrom the other things.
With your digital ones theytend to be recorded so well.
You're not going to need quiteas much of that stuff you
probably won't need any of it,in fact but you might still want
to do some EQ moves.
Eq is one of those things thatis sort of universally useful
across all styles of music.
(17:59):
And then you might want to takeall those drums and have them
all bussing or routing togetherthrough a master output.
Sometimes it's called a foldertrack, sometimes it's just an
auxiliary bus, whatever it isthat you're using to do that,
that, and then on that you know,routing that bus, routing for
(18:21):
the drums.
Maybe you want to have acompressor and another EQ or
something, or a tape thing thatmakes it sound like old school
drums or something like that.
So by setting up all of thatbeforehand as a template where
everything is sort of got a,it's an empty track, maybe
there's no actual drums on it,but it's got the right plugins
(18:43):
on it.
The levels are generally whatyou would have done when there
were actually drums on them, andthen it's going to the output
fader.
That could be your drum mixingtemplate, and you might have a
template for mixing thatincludes all the instruments you
(19:03):
might ever typically use.
So in my studio, if I have alive band in here, it might
include kick tracks, you know,snares, toms, hi-hats, overhead
mics, ambient mics.
For the drums it might have thestereo room mic that's upstairs
and all of that is routedthrough a drum output.
And then I might have a basstrack that has, you know, an
(19:27):
input where the bass player isgoing to record.
We do a lot of direct bass now.
The plugins for bass amps soundso good that you're welcome to
go record a real bass amp.
But you might actually just becreating more work for yourself
than you need to do, since theplugins of amps can sound so
good now that you can reallydial it in and make it sound
(19:50):
right for the mix when you'releaning into the mix.
But, for example, I might havethat track, might already have
five options for bass ampplugins preloaded on it so that
I can just enable one and see ifthat's the right bass amp for
that song when I'm in the mix,when I'm actually mixing.
And then same thing for guitars,vocals you know vocals
(20:13):
typically might want a varietyof plugins on them, like
compression and EQ, a de-esseryou might want to have something
to control the sibilance.
Once you've done all thatcompression with vocals, once
you add all the compression thatyou want and the EQ to sort of
make the vocals pop, now all ofa sudden you've made all the S's
(20:34):
sound insanely loud, and sothat's why you need to put a
de-esser to take that sibilanceback under control on your vocal
track.
And then also you'll do thingslike exaggerate all the breaths
so that it sounds like peopleare gasping on a microphone when
they take a normal breathbefore a line.
And those are the reasons whywe have all those special tools
(20:57):
like Waves.
De-breath will help with that alittle bit.
But honestly, when it comes tobreaths, since songs aren't all
that long they're three minutesand there's only so many lines,
it's easier for you to just goin and manually adjust those if
you want to.
I'm probably getting a littleoverly technical.
Marc Matthews (21:13):
Yeah, one quick question on the breath there,
because I do see conversationsonline where some might say
leave breaths in attenuating byX amount, get them gone totally.
Where do you stand on breathsin a mix?
Lij Shaw (21:33):
I do a variety of things.
Sometimes I blow it off, andjust, it's one of the beauties
about mixing quickly, especiallywhen when you're doing rough
mixes is you can do less of allthis trickery and just really
try and do a great balance ofall the instruments and and you
know, get the look.
We all know what our music'ssupposed to feel like to us.
So just go for that first, dojust go for the feeling of it
and then print that mix, becausethen you'll have something to
(21:56):
listen to and then, when you'relistening to it, you'll get a
better sense of like oh wow,those breaths sound ridiculous.
Or you might not notice them atall, and if you don't notice
them at all, then it's not aproblem.
Don't fix it, you know, if itain't broke, don't fix it.
That's what we say here.
Marc Matthews (22:10):
It's kind of like don't look for the, don't look
for the problems that, yeah,yeah, you're actively looking
for those for an issue, you'reprobably going to find it.
But I I love what you saidthere about that printing that
initial just what is essentiallyjust the balance, isn't it?
You're just getting the gettinga balance bit of panning and
whatnot, and then that's yourinitial sort of creative vision
for it, and then you can use allthe other processing that you
(22:31):
have available to you to thenfurther refine and enhance it
and get you that finished mixultimately.
Lij Shaw (22:36):
And those are tools and techniques that you will
learn and acquire and put intoyour own toolbox as you learn
them.
You don't have to worry aboutknowing them all right straight
out of the gate.
You want to learn some simplestuff that will help you out at
first, and then you can get morecomplex as you go.
I'm way more I swear it's funnyto say this, but I've got a
(23:00):
much more complex way ofapproaching things now and
simultaneously I treat it in amuch simpler manner.
Now I'm much more, I'm muchbolder about doing less on a mix
I love that.
Marc Matthews (23:13):
I'm gonna get that as a soundbite for the
episode because I think that'sfantastic.
I'm much bolder at doing less,because I think that's that's
because you can overkill it.
And I used to do a thing abouta year ago which was, I think,
with the producers pub whereprobably named it incorrectly.
But I gather other artists onand we chat about, uh, music
production.
They play some music and wecritique it and whatnot.
And also another feature we dois the producer kickstarts as
(23:36):
well, where the audience come onand chat about a pain point.
But a lot of the time it isjust overdoing stuff, just doing
too much.
And the coaching I do we werediscussing off air coaching and
I often get coachees come in andthey'll go through their mixing
process X, y, z and I'll gothrough just the basics, for
example, setting a staticbalance and they'll be like, oh
really, I didn't realize that'sall I needed to do.
(23:56):
In that instance I'm like, yeah, you're just over complicating
it oh, I was just going tocomment on that.
Lij Shaw (24:00):
So the static balance is a great way to do it.
And then when you're listeningback to the static balance and
you discover you know what thevocal is too loud in the verse
but it's too quiet in the chorus, then then you know Eureka.
Now you know that it's okay tobring the level down in the
verse a little bit on the vocaland bring it up in the chorus.
(24:21):
But trying to like decide allthat stuff before you've arrived
at something that you feelconfident about is a recipe for
just going in circles.
I mean a lot of it is just assimple as that.
Your listeners.
What might be a funny thing tosay is they may feel like
(24:41):
beginners about maybe thesongwriting or the production or
the how to do all the technicalstuff in the studio, but just
based on the fact that they'relistening to this podcast right
now is an indicator to me thatthey are already actually
experts at music.
And this all goes back to afamous quote from Ira Glass, who
(25:06):
said you begin as an expert inyour taste in music.
So you've spent years and yearspossibly listening to music and
so you have a strong feelingabout what's good.
You know what's good.
So your level of expertise isup here as far as what you think
(25:27):
about music.
But in the creating of it youfeel like your expertise is way
down here and so you're justtrying to, like, work your way
up to match your, your um.
You know your expertise intaste and that can take a whole.
You know lifetime of practiceand body of work and all that.
So don't sweat it too much,just just trust your own
(25:50):
impression of what you think isgood and just keep trying to
work your way, one step at atime, towards that yeah,
fantastic advice.
Marc Matthews (25:57):
Totally agree with all that.
Um, just circling back to whatyou said there about the
templates are going right backto the beginning here of this
particular section.
So you mentioned there abouthaving sort of a mix template or
recording recording template.
Do you have different templatesfor different sort of phases of
the production process of likesongwriting mixing?
Yes, although I don't get toocaught up in that of phases of
the production process of likesongwriting mixing.
Lij Shaw (26:16):
Yes, Although I don't get too caught up in that,
because one of the problems withfocusing too much on templates
is you spend all your time thereinstead of on making the song.
So I, very specifically nowhave arrived at a system that
works great for me.
In fact, I just like, literallyjust last night, the last
(26:38):
member of seven house guests whoare here with me over the
weekend making music togetherjust split.
So I had a house full of peoplein the studio, full of friends
and guests, and we recorded fivesongs, from demo sketch to
something that sounds like it'sready for um.
You probably could just releaseit as is.
(27:00):
You know, I'm, of course,knowing me.
I'm going to go back in and I'mgoing to work hard on the mixes
and work hard on the masteringand like tweak more things and
check the vocal notes and allthat kind of stuff but, I'll get
to all that.
When I get to it right now I didthe rough mixes really, where
it's like you just go for thefeeling and everybody left
feeling really, really excitedabout it.
But that process for me issomething that is probably a
(27:23):
longer story than we can getinto on this whole, just on this
podcast.
But it involves working with agroup of friends where, in this
instance, we do something wecall poetry scores, where one of
the people involved is a writerand a poet and he really wanted
(27:43):
to hear other people singingthis stuff, so he sort of shared
it with the group of us.
Each of us was taking one ofthe poems and saying, oh, I'm
going to go make a song out ofit.
And then it sort of relievesyou of the responsibility for
the lyrics.
You're like great, I've alreadygot the words, now I just got
to figure out how do I put thisinto a fun song.
(28:04):
And then that becomes a reallygreat, simple, creative process.
You're like OK, it's like asongwriting exercise.
So for that first stage of it Ihave been using just my phone to
write the song and I think fordifferent people they got
different techniques, but for meI am using an app that is
(28:27):
actually discontinued at themoment, but maybe it'll come
back one day.
It's called Spire and it's fromiZotope.
They created a little batterypowered you know recording
device with an app on your phoneand it's pretty brilliant.
You could have the lyrics rightthere in the app and then you
(28:48):
can record multi track rightthere and it makes it really
easy for punching in and stuffand it's very simple.
So there's other apps that workgreat for this too.
You could do this on yourcomputer in the studio.
I personally find that if Itake a guitar and a very simple
iPhone recording studio and I goto some inspiring place, then
(29:09):
it opens up my mind and mythinking and my creative ideas
in a new way, where being in thestudio might feel, can feel
creative like that, but it couldalso feel like I'm thinking
about other responsibilities orI'm thinking too much about,
like you know, the finishedproduct and I just need to think
about the song.
So so in that, in that respect,the song, the initial song
(29:32):
sketch, is the way I like torefer to it.
I would recommend that you finda system that is ultra simple
and has like don't worry aboutplugins, don't worry about
anything.
You might want sound effects.
You might want effects becausethat can inspire the idea.
So you know, a big reverb mightmake you sing a different way,
(29:53):
a cool delay effect might makeyou play a new guitar part that
has a rhythmic element, ordistortion might give it an
attitude that inspires you.
But I'll do that separately.
And then when I come in torecord the band in the studio, a
first part of our templatemusically is literally um
(30:15):
charting out the song.
I'll arrange it out on paper sothat we know exactly how many
bars there are.
Um, we can still make changes,but at least it gets everybody
quickly on the same page so thatwe're not I mean I just I'm
sure everybody's familiar withthis like with the no guys.
It's the second verse, is thatextra third chorus, and now we
(30:35):
forgot how the ending goes.
And if you can find a simplesystem where one page of paper
sort of outlines the song andit's easy for everybody to know
what that means, it's going tomake that process really a lot
quicker.
So once we get the band in thestudio, then my first template
(30:55):
in the actual Pro Tools, whichis what I use for a lot of
recording, although I useAbleton Live, I use Apple Logic.
I'm teaching myself Reaperright now, which is a really
great one.
Studio One, you know, mixbus 32.
These are all great, greattools for recording.
Did I forget anybody?
(31:16):
I probably did Cubase, oh myGod, cubase is brilliant.
And if you're curious aboutCubase, go check out Mixdown
Online with Chris Salim.
He's an expert at teaching thatand a great YouTube channel.
But so anyway, just regardlessof which one of these you use,
for me the starting templatewith the band in the studio is
(31:38):
going to be having all themultitracks there, where all the
inputs are going and theinstruments are set up.
So back to your setup question.
I set up my studio for thistracking session a week ahead of
the session because I had tofly to New York and go to the
AES conference all week and Iflew back here on a morning
(31:59):
flight.
I was basically a red-eyeflight, landed in Nashville,
went straight to the studio andeverybody started arriving and I
knew that I would not have anytime to set anything up when it
was time to record.
So again, it's that idea ofseparate the setup from the
session.
If I had tried to do thesetting up, the mics and the
instruments when it was time torecord, which I did.
(32:21):
That when I was starting out.
It was a nightmare, oh my God.
I would just be unraveling andjust breaking down in stress and
I probably would have had noability to actually play the
music and had no fun.
So I did all that beforehandand when you set it up
beforehand then you can just berelaxed about it.
(32:42):
You can just put on some musicand like kind of la-di-da around
the studio slowly setting upthe drums and the mics and
everything, because you're notunder too much pressure.
So my template for that wouldbe a template where all the mics
inputs are line checked for allthe band members.
I have things in that like maybethe drums are pre-routed to a
(33:05):
folder that has the plugins onit that I might use for when I
go to the mix.
But plugins introduce latency,so I have all the plugins turned
off while we're tracking.
But plugins introduce latency,so I have all the plugins turned
off while we're tracking and Iuse a system called Pro Tools
HDX, which is just a very lowlatency thing so you don't hear
an echo in the headphones.
But whatever you're using, youeither have an app that has a
(33:27):
mixer, headphone, mix in it orsomething, but your interface
and your DAW, I promise, hassome way to hear yourself
clearly without any delays orechoes.
The place where you might runinto latency delays and echoes
is if you have to use a VSTinstrument to do your thing and
you've got MIDI and you have toturn up the buffer.
(33:48):
Then you might have to dealwith setting that right.
But for me, I'll have all thatstuff.
I'll have a master fader thatalready has, you know, maybe a
compressor and an EQ and a tapesimulator and then a limiter on
it and then maybe even a and Iknow this sounds techie, you
(34:09):
don't have to use all this stuff.
No, no, go ahead, but I'll have, and then maybe I'll have a
meter plug-in on the end, and sowhat I do is I actually turn
that off at first, so it'sdisabled, so that none of my
tracks go through it when we'rerecording, because I don't need
any of that stuff.
I just need everybody to hearthemselves in the headphones.
I'll have a click track in thesession template so that I can
(34:35):
easily set the tempo of the song, turn on the click track.
Now everybody's hearing it.
I get a little more complex herein my studio, which is set up
more like a pro studio.
So, for example, the drummerwill hear the band playing, but
they also get a separate feed ofthe click track that goes to
their headphones, which is a lotlouder than the rest of us,
because the drummer is going toneed to hear the click really
(34:58):
clearly to be able to stay on it.
And let me preface this Ifthey're using a click, you do
not have to use a click track.
You only want to use a clicktrack if it's the right choice
for the song you're doing andfor the production.
Marc Matthews (35:13):
Yeah, lovely stuff all of that there.
When you mentioned click tracks, it reminded me when I was in a
band.
I was in a metal band, as theaudience knows, because I
probably bang on.
You guys needed a click track wedid indeed, yeah, and our
drummer was fantastic.
He, he made, he bought us timefor my deficiencies in my guitar
playing when it came torecording.
So he'd bank us time because hewas so good at recording drums
(35:33):
that I knew I had a bit of extraleeway.
Well, I had leeway when it cameto my guitar playing, when, uh,
when it came to recording,because I was not as excited as
he was on drums, but, yeah, mostdefinitely in metal, for
example.
Yeah, it just reminded me whenyou said that there, but no, all
really interesting stuff.
I just want to circle back to um, the grouping side of things.
You mentioned there aboutgrouping drums and I know again,
(35:55):
it's a conversation I've hadfrequently with the audience and
listeners and whatnot on socialmedia.
But when you are presented witha project, let's say it's just
drums, guitar, bass, vocal,maybe some synths, some MIDI
synths or whatever it may be,maybe you could talk a bit about
your grouping of thoseinstruments and how you would,
particularly with drums, do youput all the drums in one a
(36:17):
really nice way, you know, andthat could just be as simple as
(36:37):
a compressor across it whichgives it a little bit of, you
know, compression.
Lij Shaw (36:43):
It might be a tape plugin or something that get, or
a console emulation plugin thatgives it a little bit of a
sound.
I mean, you know, we all haveagain to that idea of like being
an expert at listening.
I'm 57.
So I certainly grew uplistening to records that were
recorded on gear that is fromyou know, from another time or
(37:07):
from another style of studiothan just a laptop, you know,
and a computer.
So there might be a plugin thatI want to put on that gives it
some of that quality of thatsound, cause maybe to my ear
that sounds like oh, now thedrums sound right, you know, and
I think, depending on the styleof music you make, again,
there's going to be a thing thatthat's the kind of stuff you
(37:29):
might want to put on the, on thegrouping bus that represents
what you do, you know, your,your metal music.
There's a whole slew of guitaramps, guitars, styles of drums,
styles of drum, cymbals All thatstuff is relevant and there's
probably certain recordingstudios and recording gear that
(37:52):
sounds more like the rightanswer to you than than might,
you know might work for anAmericana folk session in
Nashville.
So I think it helps to justkind of do a little bit of
homework on the style of musicyou like too, and see what kind
of stuff they used and look forthose sorts of plugins if you
want.
You know, but, um, but that'show I would group it, uh.
But then at the same time youmight find that grouping all the
(38:15):
drums together sort of squishesthem together too much, and now
you're like, oh, I can't, Idon't, the kick and the snare
doesn't have that punch that Iwant.
So you might want to also havethe kick and the snare sort of
going directly to the stereo bus, you know, outside of the group
at the same time, and maybethat gives you a little bit of
(38:35):
both worlds.
You know outside of the groupat the same time, and maybe that
gives you a little bit of bothworlds.
You know that might soundcomplicated to explain it, but
let's just imagine all the drumsgo through this stereo grouping
bus, but the kick and the snarealso has an additional send
that goes straight to the mix,you know, so that it's got a
clarity to it.
Those are the kinds of thingsyou can experiment with you know
and sort of see what soundsbest to you.
(38:57):
And when you get there throughtrial and error and you start
arriving at things that soundbetter to you, this is how you
develop your template.
You know, this is how youdevelop your mix template.
And so then when you come backin and do your next project and
this is where it gets a littletricky you're like what did I do
on the last project thatsounded so good, so you want to
make sure you keep some of thatstuff somewhere nearby so that
(39:18):
you can, like in Pro Tools, Ican import all the track
settings from one session toanother and so I might import
particularly from song to songin a record.
This is where that happensmostly for me.
I'll mix the first song and Iget something that really is
working now.
So then I'll go to do the nextsong and I'll import all the
(39:40):
settings of the first song overon top of the tracks on the
second song and that's how Istart out with a new mix
template for the second song isby bringing over all the same
mix settings of the first song,for example I do do the same in
logic.
Marc Matthews (39:56):
Uh, you can import um tracks, auxiliary
sends with the processing, yeah,and the plugins and also the
automation as well, if you'renot entirely sure why I would do
that.
But you can import all that inlogic as well, because logic is
the door that I use, and I douse reaper as well.
Logic's so great it is, it'sfantastic I was.
Lij Shaw (40:12):
I did a.
So my brother has a musicschool in Brooklyn and he sent
over 25 to 30 kids band songsfor me to mix and I have to and
I've got like one day to do it,so I'm like all right.
Well, obviously I'm going tohave to have a template.
That's really fast.
So I would.
I think I set up I sort ofpreemptively set up the template
(40:37):
a little bit, or he sent overthe first song first and I kind
of get a thing going, then Ijust import it over to the other
one and then Logic had addedthe auto mastering plugin
feature and so I would do themix really quickly and then I
just hit auto master and likelisten to him, like did it?
Did it screw it up?
No, it sounds pretty good printthat you know it's.
Marc Matthews (40:56):
It's really good.
I'm um, I've been eulogizingabout the uh logic pro 11 in a
few episodes probably about 10or so episodes ago with the stem
splitter, and I did a fewepisodes on using the stem
splitter and comparing it toother stem splitter applications
like rip x door and g audio andwhatnot.
So, uh, yeah, absolutely lovingthe uh.
The only thing I find is thisis going a bit off topic now
(41:17):
with with logic pro 11 and thestem splitter.
You do have to have an m1processor, so it gets you a bit
there.
But that's right, right yeahthat's if you need to have that,
but if you're using the same Iuse the stem splitter stuff, but
I use it.
Lij Shaw (41:30):
I don't know if I use it in places.
It was originally intended.
I I'm not like pulling outtracks and doing remixes of
things, yeah yeah, but I use theiZotope stem splitter that
comes in Ozone and RX when I'mmastering a record I'm like, hey
, you know what?
I think I want a little morevocal or I want a little more
kick or snare.
(41:50):
I find it a little bit reallyhelps it come out.
And then the other place thatwas really cool is on guitar
sketches all the way at thebeginning of a project okay,
yeah when I was doing.
What was it?
It was, um, I did, uh, well, no, I had one where the guitar
player was sending me his sketchand he strums his guitar and
(42:10):
sings and there's, there's aguitar strum that I recognize
all the way from the beginning.
That just drives me bananas.
I call it jung-ja-gung-ga-junga, where people are like
jung-ja-gung-ga-junga,jung-ja-gung-ga-junga, and it
can be OK on some songs, buttypically it's just a default.
So my thinking as a producer onthat song was like all right,
(42:31):
it's got that guitar strum,which really distracting and
it's going to make everybody inthe band think we're doing this
boring, light, fluffy song.
And then his vocals on top.
So with the stem splitter Ijust threw it in there and it
was amazing.
It just sucked the vocal rightout, it removed the guitar and
all I was left with is a vocaltrack and I'm like, ah, now I
can listen to the song, vocalonly and imagine something
(42:54):
totally different underneath it.
For you know, imagine a pianopart, or imagine like power
guitar or something.
Marc Matthews (43:00):
Yeah, yeah, I love that use case that's a
great use case for it, causeI've been not struggling but
I've been trying to find my ownuse case for it, having done all
these tests, but that I reallylike when it comes to actually
demoing it across.
Lij Shaw (43:11):
Any of your listeners.
Let's say they are.
They sketched an idea on avoice memo app, um, on you know
iPhone and they're like Icompletely screwed up the guitar
playing it sucks.
Or I hit the wrong chord on thepiano.
Try the voice, try that.
Just throw it into the stemextractor.
Suck your voice out.
Now you've got your cool lyricand melody idea.
You can even rearrange themelody a little bit, pulling it
(43:33):
into logic or whatever, and youmight be able to rescue that
good idea I love that Greatstuff, great advice, litch Great
advice.
Marc Matthews (43:41):
So we're coming towards the end of our
conversation.
Lij Shaw (43:44):
It's too soon, man, it's too soon, I know I know I
haven't got that.
Marc Matthews (43:46):
I've only got through about two of my
questions.
I always do that I go off ontangent.
So I'd be doing you adisservice if I didn't give you
the opportunity to talk a bitabout your podcast and a bit
about what you're doing at themoment, and also maybe if you've
got something for our listenersthat they could consume
Absolutely so.
Lij Shaw (44:04):
My podcast is called Recording Studio Rockstars and
it's interviews with producersand engineers bringing you into
the studio to learn fromrecording professionals so that
you can make your best recordever and be a rock star of the
studio yourself.
I just quoted the intro of theshow to you right there.
Marc Matthews (44:22):
I know, I know Very good.
Lij Shaw (44:23):
That's what happens after 500 episodes, right?
So it's really great.
It's going to be a totalvariety of guests on the show.
Some are very techie, some aresongwriter-focused.
It's different styles of music,but I promise you you will find
somebody that really isinteresting to you.
So go give it a listen.
They're long form episodes, twohour interviews.
(44:45):
Um so, lots of just casualtalking about making records,
tons of great ideas being sharedon the show, and along with
that I created a free coursethat is just for you.
It's called mixmasterbundlecomand it's an introduction to
getting a professional soundingmix in your studio so that you
(45:07):
can take your tracks fromsounding like basement demos to
sounding a lot more like a promix.
It's a really just simpleintroduction to it, so you won't
have to get too advanced andtoo technological, but,
especially if you're doing bandmusic, it'll give you some great
ideas for how to get the stuffto just sort of leap out of your
speakers.
So again, just go tomixmasterbundlecom and you can
(45:30):
check that out.
And if you just go to thewebsite
recordingstudiorockstarscom, Ithink we have 10 different ways
to join the email list so thatyou can know about each weekly
episode and just be able to getaccess to all the information
that's there.
Marc Matthews (45:44):
Amazing.
I will put a link to all ofthat, so the website and also
the freebie as well, and I'llput links to that in the episode
description.
So, audience listening, do goand check that out.
And, of course, if you're notalready a follower, do go follow
Lidger's podcast as well,because it's brilliant.
As I said right at thebeginning, I was listening to it
today on my run with Brennanand start with that episode
(46:06):
because I thought that wasreally good.
In particular, there was aconversation that you were
having with him about when hewas just starting out and
waiting tables and his thoughtprocess thought process
surrounding that, which Ithought was really really
insightful and very useful forthe audience listening, if
you're in a similar positionwhereby you are thinking, day
job, I want to be in the musicindustry and how you, how you
(46:27):
juggle those two.
Lij Shaw (46:28):
So how much of do you have listeners who really want
to do this professionally aswell?
Marc Matthews (46:33):
Yeah, it really does range from those who do it
as a sort of hobby and have theday job and then want to just
release music of their ownaccord and just get better at
doing it.
But then there are others whodo want to pursue music, whether
that's audio engineering orproducing, as a full-time
occupation.
So it really does range betweenthe two.
Lij Shaw (46:53):
Well, it's a special time now if you want to do it
professionally because there'sso much gig.
What's the word I'm looking for?
There's like a gig economywhere you can just turn the app
on and go deliver food, or turnthe app on and do ride shares,
and it's much trickier in someways.
When I was starting, whereyou're like, I don't even know
(47:15):
what job I could do, because Ineed.
If somebody calls me for astudio session, the answer is
always yes.
So delivering pizzas was myfirst one and I until I did a
u-turn in an intersection andtotaled my car and I was like
all right time to get seriousabout the music and that's a,
that's a side, isn't it that, um, you need to maybe think about
doing something slightlydifferent at that point.
Marc Matthews (47:37):
No, fantastic lidge, it's been an absolute
pleasure chatting you, on thechat with you today on the
podcast, and it's actually thefirst one, first interview
post-summer in 2024, so uh,right on yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's been a few months nowsince I've had someone like me,
I'm starting up the interviewseason too yeah, yeah, I've got
a lot lined up now.
So, audience listening there,you'll find there's gonna be a
lot more interviews leading upuntil sort of the end of 2024
(47:59):
and into into 2025 and, uh, yeah, some exciting ones ahead.
No spoilers, but it's been anabsolute pleasure and, um, I
will catch up with you soon allright mark.
Lij Shaw (48:09):
Thanks so much and thank you to your listeners for
joining us.
Marc Matthews (48:12):
Folks, before you go, I want to hear from you.
I want to know your favoriteepisode of the Inside the Mix
podcast.
Alternatively, you could justreview this episode.
Click the SpeakPipe link in theepisode description and you can
record an audio messagedetailing your favorite episode
and why, and also give yourselfa shout out.
All you need is your mobilephone.
(48:33):
You don't need a SpeakPipeaccount.
You don't need to download anapp.
It's just like sending me anaudio message via WhatsApp or
whatever messaging platform youuse.
As soon as I get your audio,you will be entered in that
month's draw to win a Starbuckscoffee voucher, and if you don't
like coffee, just give it tosomeone else and pretend that
you bought it for them.
(48:54):
All you need to do is clickthat speak pipe link and send me
an audio message reviewing thisepisode or a previous episode
and give yourself a shout out.
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