JOEL WANASEK: Mastering the Low End, Brightness Without Harshness, Hiding Weak Vocal Performances

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by two notes. Audio Engineering two notes is a leader in the market for load box cabinet and mic simulators garner the days of having iso rooms or having to record an amp at ear bleeding volumes to capture that magic tone. The torpedo live reload and studio allow you to crank your amp up as loud as you want, but record silently. Check out www.two-nodes.com for more info. And now your hosts, Joel Wanasek and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:37):

All right, well welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast. I am Eyal Levi. With me is co-host Joel Wanasek. Joey Sturges is off training Dolphins still on vacation training dolphins. Yeah, that's what you do when you go on vacation. For a long time

Speaker 3 (00:52):

I thought he was petting sea otters, but fine training dolphins. I'll settle for that.

Speaker 2 (00:56):

The longer you're on vacation, the more likely you are to start doing stuff involving wild animals.

Speaker 3 (01:04):

It is true. When I was in Russia, I think I saw three dolphin shows, which were actually all kind of the same thing, but since they were in different locations, for some reason I felt like they would be different, but they weren't.

Speaker 2 (01:17):

What were the dolphin shows? Did they just do flips and wave?

Speaker 3 (01:21):

Yeah, they jumped through hoops on fire and shit and bounce balls off their nose and then everybody cheers and they play really loud music and it's fun.

Speaker 2 (01:29):

So I guess that the sea world hate hasn't hit Russia yet.

Speaker 3 (01:34):

Sea world hate, I guess I'm not from Florida, so I don't know about this sea

Speaker 2 (01:38):

World. No, there's a whole movement trying to shut down SeaWorld because they think that it's cruel and inhumane to make orcas wave those people to make orcas wave at you. Well, I mean it's like you take an apex predator and then you make it do stupid little tricks and wave. It's kind of hilarious, but alright, let's talk about other stuff that's hilarious. This is Mix Crit Monday. Let's start with a mix by Mr. Charlie Monroe. This is a song called Pansa. All right, and that was Pan Lasso by Charlie Monroe and I got to say, God damn, those sins are loud.

Speaker 3 (06:32):

You started with the sins, huh?

Speaker 2 (06:34):

Well, I've got other stuff to say, but I'm just thinking it sounds to me like he was making those as priority.

Speaker 3 (06:41):

Yeah, I mean I think all of these mixes this week here, I mean you guys haven't listened to the other two yet and we haven't discussed them, but I think overall these are definitely improvement over some of the ones we've done in the past, but this one I think needs the most work, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (06:58):

Yeah, it definitely needs some work. It reminds me of a mix we had by Alex Nala about a year ago where it was like all harps accord. Dude,

Speaker 3 (07:10):

That mix is infamous. I text him all the time and I'm like, Alex, that mix, dude, that harps chord three DV louder.

Speaker 2 (07:17):

Well, Charlie, turn your synths down. It's just, there's other things that I was thinking. I think that the kicks are super buried. The cymbals are super buried except for the ride snares over compressed sounds like a can. There's no low end push on this snares way loud. I'm hearing the high end of the base stick out too much. It's kind of like he's using the right technique on the base but in the wrong way. So it sounds like the base is split. I can't tell, but I'm just hearing. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (07:49):

I'm going to agree with you Al, on pretty much everything you

Speaker 2 (07:52):

Say. Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you. It just sounds like there's some weird grainy mids of the base that are just kind of sticking out weird and

Speaker 3 (08:00):

Yeah, but there's no base. No, the whole mix doesn't have any low end to it.

Speaker 2 (08:05):

Yeah, I've noticed that on a few mixes this time around that the low end is just weird, man, I don't know. I wonder how that happens where there's literally zero low end. I have to say that I think it's probably a listening environment issue though. I know that for instance, John Douglas, when he was learning how to mix, he was afraid of fucking up low end. So he would purposely underm mix it and his listening environment was fine. He just had a low end phobia I guess, which he controlled. He now has it. Now his mixes sound great, but there was a low end hole for a while. His mixes just because he was afraid of fucking it up, so he just, I guess subconsciously unmixed it.

Speaker 3 (08:55):

Well, I have another opinion too on this. I think that I agree with you that definitely there could be some listening environment issues, but I also feel like in terms of the actual learning curve of mixing, what separates the men from the boys to me is always that massive tight round bottom end. And that's the number one hallmark in my opinion, of just an absolutely well mixed crushing song. And all the A-list guys, they have badass low end and you immediately notice it when you hit play and you can hear it. They're all masters of the low end. They know how to make them low end translate, they know how to make it give you goosebumps and raise the hairs off your arm. And a lot of times I feel like in order to learn to get that good at low end management, it's just something that takes years and lots and lots of experience and people will overcompensate, they'll under compensate, they'll try a bunch of different tricks, but in the end there's a certain level of experience I feel like that comes in as well as having the correct listening environment because translation.

(09:55):

So I think there's probably some of that going on. He may be actually struggling with a lot of the low end because when I listen to this whole mix, I'm sitting there and I'm like, okay, the kick drum is buried, but where's the punch? There's no energy driving the track. And then I listen to the bass and I hear the swank and the clank and it's up there and it's jamming. I can hear the note of the bass, but what I can't hear is the actual bass part of the bass, which to me defeats the entire purpose of the instrument. So he's got to get some low end on his kick. He's got to get some low end on his base and that to me is the very, other than the balance issues, is structurally the first thing that's wrong with this mix. So if he gets that right, meaning there actually is bottom end on this mix and it has some energy and it punches together, aside from working out the major balance issues like the synths, this mix is definitely going to come up probably 40 to 50% in actual quality.

Speaker 2 (10:47):

Yeah, I totally agree. And when splitting the base, I know that you told me that you've never had this problem, but I've had this problem. I know that Andrew Wade had this problem. Sometimes you can end up with a base that sounds like two separate instruments, meaning you have a sub instrument and you have a high distorted instrument and they don't sound like they're the same instrument and it's something that you need to learn how to do. You need to work those crossovers better because you don't want them to sound like two separate instruments. That's not the goal. And what I'm hearing here is that it does, I can hear that there's the low end base. It's just super, super neutered and it does sound like it's two separate instruments. So what I'm hearing is this weird mid range attacky sort of thing, kind of playing around with the guitars and I know it's a bass because I know what I'm listening to, but that's not what it's supposed to sound like.

Speaker 3 (11:52):

Yeah. You know what, the other thing that's really crazy al, is that when the sub drops come in, they actually have just a massive sub push and the mix sounds so unbalanced and so obviously wrong when those come in because the sub drop doesn't just hit drop the sub and kind of meld away and fade back into the track. It's like you get this massive sub drop, you're like, hell yeah, but then there's no balls to back it up. The mix doesn't still sound heavy. You can actually hear the structural incompleteness of the bottom end. It's just not there. So it's like it drops off and it's just like what happened? Well,

Speaker 2 (12:26):

It's like it shows you the contrast. You get to hear a full low end for the first time and then it's like what happened?

Speaker 3 (12:36):

Yeah, it's like it literally points out the deficiency in the mix and it draws attention to the fact that it's not correct. I guess that's my point in a much more concise fashion. It just needs something, the sub drop should melt into the bass guitar. You should have enough body in the kick in the bass where when the sub drop hits, you can hear that there's a sub drop, but it isn't like sub drop and then it just fades out and there's nothing left on the bottom and it's just like a high pass mix.

Speaker 2 (13:02):

And by the way that I work that in, I know there's a few different ways to do this, but the way I do it is I'll throw a multi-band on the low end instruments in the mix, like the low end of the kick and the bass guitar and I will side chain them to the sub drop.

Speaker 4 (13:25):

Interesting.

Speaker 2 (13:26):

Just the subs so that when the sub drop happens, it ducks the low end of the kick in the base and then as the sub drop decreases in volume, the low end of the kick in the base come back up so that it doesn't ever feel like there was a drop off in low end. It works very, very nicely, but that's counting on the fact that your low end of your kick and your bass guitar are good to begin with.

Speaker 3 (13:55):

Yeah. What's interesting, and you may not believe me, but I've actually never done that, meaning that I've always never had to do any sort of trick to get my sub drops to sit. Because for me, I always focused on really dialing in my bottom EQ and creating enough headroom and space down there because like I said, usually you guys have definitely seen me mix by now. If you're part of nail the mix, if you're not, you should definitely sign up. But what I mix, I really focus a lot on creating enough headroom in my bottom end so when a sub drop does come in, I can still have massive base because a lot of the base frequencies that are being affected by the sub drop, meaning like 80 and down are open. It's just a lot of kick bottom right there. There's not a massive amount of just untamed bottom end.

(14:39):

So I've never actually had to tame mine like that except maybe very way back in the beginning. Sometimes I used to have to automate, but this is eight years ago or something like that before I actually knew how to mix. You can do it either way, but I think it's very important because sub drops are a very telltale sign for this type of metal mixing where the sub drop comes in and you can tell right away if the sub drop is screwed up and you can't hear it, or if it completely overpowers the mix or starts clipping the master, then there's usually some structural deficiencies in the mix in the bottom and that need to be addressed.

Speaker 2 (15:13):

Yeah. Alright, so

Speaker 3 (15:15):

Let's talk about the snare.

Speaker 2 (15:16):

Yeah, I was going to ask you what do you think about that?

Speaker 3 (15:18):

Well, 3D be too loud at least. Absolutely. It sounds like, I don't know, I hear transient and high end, but I don't hear any punch or body. It sounds like a wooden spoon hitting a bowl of mashed potatoes. It's kind of like snap splat and there's no crack punch thud body to it. It just needs to be revisited. I don't know. It sounds completely out of place for the rest of the song. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (15:45):

It totally is distracting.

Speaker 3 (15:48):

Yeah, add some 200 or something like that. It just needs some body or roll back some top maybe and maybe chill out on the reverb. I'm not exactly a hundred percent sure without listening to it again in detail, but it definitely has a little bit too much top end, a little bit too much of that massive reverb splatter thing and it just needs some punch all of the, it almost sounds like all the body of it was eqd out or they high cut with a shelf like four DB at 800 or something like that. There's just no body in the snare. It's really, really interesting.

Speaker 2 (16:23):

I also think that we talked about this on the podcast the other day with Irman. I'm starting to get annoyed when I can hear a snare roll and it all sounds like the same sample

Speaker 3 (16:36):

That

Speaker 2 (16:37):

Always used to annoy me, but now it kind kind of annoys me even more because there's so many options out there now to where you don't have to have snares that sound like that even if you are programming your drums. So take the time, make your snare rolls sound more real. Don't just let it sound like the same sample over and over and over again and then you won't annoy me so much and a less annoyed Al is a good Al. So with that, let's move on to the next song. This is by Nikita Zenovich. It's a song called Brain Intimate and I guess the band was called Hover

Speaker 5 (18:17):

Down reflected by this black, the Grass it the Rice.

Speaker 2 (23:06):

Okay. That was brain Intimate by Nikita Zenovich, and I got to say, man, there's a low end rumble coming from those guitars. If there was ever a good time to use multi-band compression to control the guitars, this would be it.

Speaker 3 (23:22):

Yeah, I'll definitely agree. But at the same time, I feel like while there's some, we'll call it low, mid, upper bottom issues, I feel like the first thing that really poked out to my ear was the top end. There's a little bit of a harshness up there on the two to three K. I mean even on the last mix, that's not something I mentioned actually now in retrospect, but I felt like everything, all these mixes that we are going to create here today, they're all of them. Like the top end, it's just a little bit on the bright, but not in the pleasant bright, but the harsh, bright, I agree. Something of it kind of rings my ears and there needs to be some more subtle frequency work on the top. I mean, getting a mix really bright is very, very challenging and takes a lot of work and a lot of years of experience. I generally tend to mix very bright myself, but even man, it is a struggle no matter how much you practice it, getting that top end just right where it sounds smooth and easy to listen to, but it's got some brightness to it and some aggression. That's a real art and something that no matter how many years you mix, you're still going to struggle with on and on and on.

Speaker 2 (24:27):

Well, it's just that whole, the classic struggle of how do I get it bright without making it painful?

Speaker 3 (24:33):

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 (24:34):

Then when getting rid of the pain points, how do I get rid of the pain points without neutering it? That takes forever. So I have an arrangement note on this. I know it's a mixed crit, but this arrangement note, I feel like it affects the mix and that's that the drum beats and the riffs are very jerky.

Speaker 3 (24:56):

Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:56):

They don't sound like they're very together, and so it's hard to feel a pulse with this stuff. And I am very familiar with bands that use metric modulations and odd times, and so I don't need my pulse handed to me or fed to me with a spoon. I don't need it to be for on the floor to feel a pulse, but I'm just saying that this stuff is super jerky and it's hard to get a pulse from it and you're going to have a hard time getting a low end that really pushes what this kind of stuff so all over the place and the elements aren't locking together, getting the low end, I feel like it's like you're fitting puzzle pieces together and the arrangement has to be there to allow those puzzle pieces to fit together. Even though you're doing it with frequencies, they need to be occurring over time. At the same time they need to be occurring over time in a manner that allows you to even fit them together in the first place. And with them not being tight and them being jerky all over the place, I feel like you'll never establish the right kind of low end bush on a mix like this.

Speaker 3 (26:17):

Just to pile on, I feel like one of the things I really struggle with with this style and genre, I mean when it's done right, it's great and it's amazing, but I feel like a lot of times guitar players, especially in this genre or these types of genres that are very similar to this, they like to try to be all techy because they think that it's good by, oh, here, check out this riff. It's really technical and all the guitar players are like, oh yeah, dude, that's really sick. That's really cool. It's got this really crazy syncopated rhythm. But the problem is that doesn't mean it's good. That doesn't mean, like you said, it has a groove, it has a head bob. It's something that you're going to remember that you're going to want to move to if you're in a pit or something like that.

(26:55):

It literally is just really jerky and it kind of, when I listen to it annoys me, but I don't know. I've always liked big groove metal. If you listen to classic Pantera or Kill Switch or those bands had rifts and everybody that listens to metal pretty much knows what the rift to the song wok sounds like. You know what I mean? It's very memorable. It's a cool rift. It's very unique. When I listen to a song like this, it's just chaotic. It doesn't bounce, it doesn't groove. It's just too much. Like here, look, I'm trying to write technical stuff just to write technical stuff,

Speaker 2 (27:32):

But let's take a band that is technical and does do odd times and stuff like that. Okay.

Speaker 3 (27:38):

Periphery

Speaker 2 (27:39):

Or Miss Suga and those two bands,

Speaker 3 (27:42):

They pull it off.

Speaker 2 (27:42):

Oh yeah, they pull it off with flying colors. I mean, they're grooving the whole time and they're doing crazy patterns the whole time and they low end as tight as fuck, and people can bob their heads to them even. They might not be able to count it, but they can certainly move to it.

Speaker 3 (28:01):

Yeah, it's got a feel and a swing and I feel like the overarching theme here, but I mean I know that's kind of off topic, but it's very, very important because it affects the mix and it's hard to mix something that's just all over the damn place. I mean, it's definitely, it's a challenge.

Speaker 2 (28:18):

I mean, when you're mixing, I know that I learned this one from Mark Lewis is to you pick a tone riff, right? Pick a tone riff and then loop the tone riff or pick a tone part a part that will allow itself to sound huge and nasty. And then you loop that and you work on that so you don't pick the blast beat or something to be dialing in your tones. You pick the tone riff and the tone riff can only exist if the arrangement allows it to exist, right?

Speaker 3 (28:53):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (28:54):

You can't have the tone riff without the right arrangement for it, so it directly affects your mix.

Speaker 3 (29:01):

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great point. It's very important when you're mixing to really find, it's like, for example, when you're mixing, let's just say a rock song starting with a chorus or a part of the song where every instrument is playing that's going to be playing and everything's maxed out and trying to get that to sound massive as opposed to starting in the verse of the song where there's a very loose amount of picking guitar and maybe some effects leads. There's not a really a riff going on. So it's hard to know how your rhythm based kick snare interaction is going to happen. That's a really great point. Another thing I really want to touch on this mix though, is the vocal top end. Now, like I said, the whole mix to me is a little bit harsh, but I feel like the vocals are extra sibilant in this song and those s's and stuff, they really pop out and make me go, Ooh, it's really rough. So I feel like that needs special attention in this song because aside from those couple of things, I don't really have a ton of notes on it other than the symbols are a little bit harsh and the vocals are just ragingly rough. They need a lot of work in terms of EQ or multi-band or something like that.

Speaker 2 (30:12):

I've got some other notes on this song. If you keep listening, it goes to this clean section and in this clean section, man, those Toms sound paper thin. And then I started to realize that throughout the whole song they just got to sound literally paper thin. I could flick them with my finger and maybe rip a hole in them. And then it sounds like

Speaker 3 (30:34):

That's a really good analogy.

Speaker 2 (30:36):

I mean, seriously, it sounds like they're hitting a piece of paper or something with chopsticks.

Speaker 3 (30:43):

Chopsticks and paper and wooden spoons and mashed potatoes.

Speaker 2 (30:46):

Yeah, chopsticks and paper. That's my new way for describing thin toms is chopsticks on paper,

Speaker 3 (30:54):

Food, drums.

Speaker 2 (30:56):

So in this clean part, it literally sounds like they're afraid of the clean vocals. And if you're afraid of clean vocals, maybe you need a different vocalist because why bury the vocals under the effects? Why bury the

Speaker 3 (31:15):

Metal cried, bro?

Speaker 2 (31:17):

Yeah, well just don't have clean vocals then the clean guitar is louder than the vocals. The vocals are just so buried under everything. It's like, what's going on here? So maybe that was intentional. If it's intentional, you got to ask yourself, why would you feel the urge to make the vocal effects louder than the vocal? Why would you feel the urge to have the accompaniment part, the guitar louder than the vocals? It's not like this was a part where something really interesting is happening in the music and you just have a background vocal, like a subtle thing. That wasn't it. This was a lead vocal part. So oftentimes when we don't want to admit something to ourselves, our subconscious will take over and influence our mix. And it's like we don't want to admit to ourselves that we don't like our vocals, so we're just going to turn them down and not realize that we're doing that or we're just going to turn that delay way the hell louder than it needs to be

Speaker 3 (32:19):

Compensating. Yeah, right?

Speaker 2 (32:21):

Yeah, exactly. Just some food for thought there. Thank you for submitting. Now let's listen to another song. This is Prove Me Wrong by Bobby.

Speaker 5 (32:57):

So there I have a ride. So got red, let's just buy lock. I'll keep my, I keep my I'll my, I bridge my breaking points my head down until I prove you

Speaker 2 (35:59):

You wrong. Okay. That was Prove me wrong by Bobby Ballow. And man, that snare reverb is louder than the snare.

Speaker 3 (36:08):

Now, hold on. I know Bobby, he's from my hometown, so we're going to be extra brutal on him

Speaker 2 (36:13):

And Bobby, this hurts us more than it hurts you, but just know that we love you. Alright, let me just say, I hear a weird Fay sound on the snare, and the only time I've heard that weird Fay sound is when samples are blended and phasing weird or when I'm just listening to the snare reverb alone, sometimes our verb will sound like that when I'm like,

Speaker 3 (36:39):

Oh, definitely. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:41):

And that's why I was saying earlier that a snare reverb sounds louder than the snare. Maybe that's what I'm hearing. However, maybe I'm hearing that he blended samples and didn't correct, didn't align them properly. But then this brings me to something else. There is no low end in this mix at all. It is just gone.

Speaker 4 (37:01):

Thank you.

Speaker 2 (37:02):

However, I can hear that there's low end elements in the mix, right? So I can hear that there's a low base that should have a big low end. So that's why I'm thinking maybe there's some phase problems and this mix all over the place. It could be that his low end is canceling itself and that the snare is canceling some.

Speaker 3 (37:23):

Yeah. Well, let's just start with the kick drum. I mean, if we want to go to the very, very bottom of this for me, no, the kick sub was kind of weak and it doesn't drive the energy of the mix. But on the top end of the kick, aside from the bottom end, I felt like usually you can get away with a lot of different really bright kicks in metal. But there's something about this particular kick and the way that it's eqd where again, there's a two to three K spike in it where it just kind of knocks my ears in the wrong way. And I feel like it needs to be eqd because I feel like you put the kick top in the wrong frequency in a way that it's harsh. So every time that kick ticks, I have a little bit of a cringe reaction. I'm like, ah, ah, I got to turn the speakers down. It's a little bit on the brutal side, so the kick needs some balls, but it also needs to be, the attack needs to be shifted around a little bit in the frequency spectrum.

Speaker 2 (38:15):

Yeah, I completely agree. And I feel like kind on the first mix of, in that range of the upper end of the kick, I'm also kind of hearing the bass guitar kind of in those upper mids in a weird way. And it's audible and congrats on that. But man, there's some strange bass frequencies sticking out. It just sounds like this weird cranky mid range thing that's kind of wanting to be a guitar, but kind of not.

Speaker 3 (38:48):

Yeah, I think the guitars are too boxy. So instead of being able to pick up some of that mid range opening there where there'd normally be a hole, what happens is, I feel like he put it in a range that it's a little bit of more of the harsher tone of the bass. It probably sounded really swanky, but the problem is it just doesn't sound, it's not the right place to put it in the spectrum. So I think if you readjust it, his guitary cue mid range a little bit, he might get a little bit more base note and he might be able to then go and adjust his top end on the base to make it a little bit more pleasing to listen to.

Speaker 2 (39:17):

Yep. I agree with that. And how about those vocals? It's just me, or do they need some help?

Speaker 3 (39:22):

Yeah, but one part in particular that really threw me is what's up with those bridge vocals at 2 35? I mean, that reverb is so off from how it sounds. I don't even know whatever plugin that is, immediately delete it from your computer and never use it again. It literally, it's pure rubbish rub rubish. Wow. He used formal word assistant, turned around and he's working on some stuff and he's really, he's like, what the fuck is that reverb? And he's like, what are you listening to? And I'm like, ha, there you go. So it's the wrong reverb. It literally sounds like someone set the mic up in the stairway or something and it just doesn't. Okay. The big thing with reverbs is if you're going to create an ambience in the song that has to match, okay, the first album I ever mixed, I sent over to James Murphy. We all know James, right? Al?

Speaker 4 (40:12):

Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:13):

From back in the day I was talking to James and I was like, James, check out my mix. What do you think? And he's like, dude, your reverbs don't match on your Toms, your kicking your snare. You don't have a cohesive drum sound. Just pick a reverb, dammit and use it. And I feel like he just pulled some, I don't know, man, it sounds way out of place. Does not fit in the track When the track comes in, it just sounds so vastly out of place after listening to that part. It's just completely the wrong effect for that part. Completely wrong.

Speaker 2 (40:41):

And man, okay, so I want to say the vocals need to be tuned, but it sounds like they kind of are tuned, but then he does this weird yodeling thing where it's like, you know what I'm talking about. Yes. Okay. Yeah, so there's this weird yodel and I don't know what to make of it. I really just don't know what to make of it because

Speaker 3 (41:10):

It

Speaker 2 (41:11):

Seems like it would be a tuning catastrophe. But it sounds like the target note is in tune, but then a yodels to these weird notes. And sometimes they're on and sometimes they're off. And when they're off, it makes me want to stick an ice pick in my ears. So I don't really know what to say about the yodeling other than, come on, stop yodeling.

Speaker 3 (41:37):

Yeah, like whoop the singer's ass and make him do it again or something. I don't know. It's goofy. Something's definitely not right about it. I mean, I wouldn't have let those takes fly personally.

Speaker 2 (41:47):

Hell no. Okay.

Speaker 3 (41:48):

I got one more massive issue. So you know how we have no low end down this mix. I can still hear the bottom end of the kick drum pumping the compressor on the faster kick stuff. So I feel like there's a little bit of a pumping going on in the mix. I can hear it sucking and on the faster kick stuff, which is really weird. Again, there's not really that much bottom end going on down there, but it's still tipping the compressor, which leads me to believe he's hitting it a little bit hot until he messages me after he hears this and tells me he's only doing a DB of reduction or something like that. So if that's the case, then it's probably a frequency related thing. There's some sort of frequency in the sub that's just way out of whack. And tell him just smacking the compressor in the wrong way.

Speaker 2 (42:31):

Bobby got a pizza shuttle application that Joel's,

Speaker 3 (42:36):

He's getting the local smash today.

Speaker 2 (42:42):

I didn't go to pizza shuttle when I visited you last time, and I don't want to go,

Speaker 3 (42:46):

We don't want end our damn careers, man. Come on.

Speaker 2 (42:49):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (42:50):

We've worked hard.

Speaker 2 (42:51):

No piece of shuttle. Alright, well

Speaker 3 (42:53):

No, I mean, I'll just say Bobby, aside from those issues, the mix overall, it's pretty decent. It's not like it's horrible. It's just some things, or I should say for all these mixes, it may sound like we make a bigger deal out of the stuff that is, but really we're picking five to 10% when you hit play and listen to these songs. None of them sound terrible. They're like, oh my God, this is completely messed up. So there's definitely, I think, okay, I'll put it this way. I think it's important to just focus on these little details because sometimes a mix is a synergy of the parts. It's a summation. So a little bit here, a percent there, a percent there, and all of a sudden, boom, you've got a 30 or 40% change in your mix and you really haven't done that much. But it's a difference between it being really, really good and not being something that's mixed cri mundane material.

Speaker 2 (43:45):

Yeah, I think that these definitely don't sound terrible, but these issues are, they're important enough for us to make a big deal out of. In my opinion. I think that these issues, if they get this stuff under control, these will be night and day.

Speaker 3 (44:06):

Yes. Now, it would actually be fun if we could find a way to combine all of the worst features of all of these into a single mix, like a wispy snare with yodeling vocals and no low end and boxy guitars that are harsh.

Speaker 2 (44:19):

That would be the sickest mix ever. Maybe on the next mix Rescue

Speaker 3 (44:24):

Someone please send that in. And can someone please send us a mix for mixed crit Monday that isn't metal crit. Metal mixes is fun and we love doing it and we all love metal. But guys, we'd love to hear something else. Send us a rock mix or hip hop or a trap song or something. Something interesting every month. Only the metal dude submit. No one else is mixing anything. Cool it seems like. So guys, please start sending us songs that are not just chugs and blast beats,

Speaker 2 (44:56):

Chugs and tugs. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I remember at one point in time some dude sent us a damn rap song, like one of the original mixed CRI Mondays, and that was,

Speaker 3 (45:08):

Yeah, and it was so much fun. It was awesome. I mean, I opened up my inbox and I'm all excited. I'm like, okay, metal song. Okay, metal song, another metal song. Really? Come on.

Speaker 2 (45:17):

Yeah. Well the thing is that still not that many people submit for mixed Crip Monday. They're all scared, I guess So

Speaker 3 (45:24):

Yeah, it should just be said that because this is a talk show and we have to make it sort of entertaining. We like to have a little bit of fun and we like to joke and have a little bit of a sarcastic sense of humor and make a big deal of things when sometimes they're not that big of a deal. So for those of you that are taking this really, really seriously, lighten up, relax, have a little bit of fun, smile. It won't hurt you.

Speaker 2 (45:46):

It's like pictures in the book, Danny. It can't hurt you. And with that, we'll talk to you guys next time.

Speaker 1 (45:54):

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