TSRB 160 - Automatic Episode Transcript - Please excuse any errors, not reviewed for accuracy

Benedikt: Hello and welcome to the Self Recording Band podcast. I'm your host Benedict Tine, and today is part three of Home Recording 1 0 1. If we were to start over in 2023, this is what we would do, and as always, I'm not doing this alone, but with my friend and co-host, Malcolm Owen Flood. Hello, Malcolm. How are you buddy?

Malcom: Hey Benny. I'm great, man. How are you, sir?

Benedikt: I'm grade two. Um, got a little, I think I caught a little bit of a cold or whatever, so I have a, yeah, no, I don't feel at, at my best, but um, yeah, other than that it's good.

Malcom: Well, you look great, man.

Benedikt: that's good to you. Thank you. You too. So this is, so sorry.

Malcom: our first part three of any, like, have we ever done a three parter episode

Benedikt: I'm not entirely sure. Probably. I think we've done two partners a couple of times, but

Malcom: we've done two parters. Wow. That's exciting.

Benedikt: Yeah.

Malcom: exciting is that I got an email from Benedict today saying that he has RSVP to my wedding.

So I'm very excited. uh, it's now you're committed. You gotta come to Canada

Benedikt: Yep. I'm absolutely going to Canada. This tune. I can't wait. This is gonna be awesome. My first trip to Canada and obviously, uh, this stuff gonna be the first time that we meet in person too, although we are like in contact for, I don't know, four or five years now. Um,

Malcom: so crazy.

Benedikt: yeah, totally. I'm so looking forward to that. This is gonna be super amazing and, uh, yeah, can't wait. Thank you for inviting me.

Malcom: my pleasure, man. Thank you for coming. It's gonna be great.

Benedikt: Yeah. Now, um, the, it's always, when we don't record on a Monday, it's always kind of hard for me to start at the episodes because like the rhythm is different, . So this time it's, it's a Wednesday, it's not a Monday. So it's not like the typical weekend banter, all that. So, uh, I don't know. Do you have anything to share with us before we start the actual episode? And there's always, if you're watching on YouTube guys, you can, uh, skip the banter and move right to the start of the actual episode. But I just have to ask, welcome, uh, if there's any story you want, he wants to share.

Malcom: I don't think so. Oh, I had, it was my birthday on the weekend,

Benedikt: Oh yeah. Oh God, I can't, okay. Officially. Okay. Yeah, officially on the podcast. I, I wrote, sent you a message, but still, happy birthday Malcolm

Malcom: Thank you. Yeah. You can tell how little it matters once you turn 32 that like you just don't care about your birthday anymore because I literally couldn't remember. You're like, what'd you do this weekend? I'm like, Hmm. I don't think anything happened. Right. It was my birthday,

Benedikt: Yeah. That's the No, it does, it does matter for sure. And uh, yeah, I hope you had a great time buddy. Um, yeah, that's all I can

Malcom: it was, it was good, man. Yeah. Thank you. Uh, it didn't get up too much. Um, I mean, no, I had a cool weekend. I, like, I went on like a crazy wilderness, uh, photography adventure all day Saturday. Cruised a good chunk of the island, just going to different spots. So, had a really fun day playing with all my toys there. Um, but as far as the music world goes, I, I don't got any banter for our audience today,

Benedikt: Okay, then let's, let's just skip it and move right to the episode. Let's just quickly recap. So this is part three because it's a big like topic, and as I said, we're gonna talk about if we were to start over in 2020. Three, this is what we would do. We start like at the, the basics because we've covered a lot of like pretty advanced topics already on this show, and now we're taking a step back and basically put ourselves, try to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who's just starting out trying to record their own music and, um, We've covered the gear already in part one, like some big picture stuff that's always important. Then we covered the gear, uh, things that we would buy, things that you absolutely need, things that you probably don't need yet or like, and also like what actually matters when it comes to gear and all of that. So we've covered that, and then in part two, we, uh, talked about. How to set up the doll and interface like your recording program and interface. Um, how did that, you have to understand the basic functionality and layout of a doll. We talked about that. Uh, we talked about making sure how to make, um, how making sure that signals actually get in and out of your computer and interface. Uh, that you have to avoid clipping, use the correct inputs on your interface, all that sort of basic, but very important stuff then. And we stopped at like figuring out how to record without latency. And this got all technical and we talked about buffer sizes and, and the, the basic settings that you do, um, probably once and it's more of a set and forget thing in your doll. So we, we covered all of that and now we move on to a. Things that are, that are still left when it comes to operating the gear you just purchased and, and basic skills you need to learn. If you wanna record your first, um, few songs on your, on your computer, and. We said it last time, and we should say it again. This is not only for the absolute beginners. I, I'm pretty sure that people who've been recording for a while can get something out of these episodes too, because sometimes we need to hear basic, important concepts, concepts over and over again to really, um, get the idea to remind ourselves of those things that are really important. And there's always the, like, occasional nugget, you know, the occasional thing you might not have thought of that's in these episodes. So I, I absolutely encourage you to keep listening even if you're recording for a while. Uh, this is, this is relevant stuff for all of us, I think, and even Malcolm and I always learn something from these episodes when we do the research and when we talk about these things on the show, right?

Malcom: definitely.

Benedikt: Cool. All right. So yeah, let's continue. So the next thing on our list here is to figure out the internal door routing. So panning groups, buses, sends returns, et cetera. So at this point, you should have the gear that you need. You should know how to get sound in and out of your, uh, program of your recording software. You should know like the basic layout of the software. Now, the next skill you need to learn at least the basics of it for now. , like the signal flow inside the d a w, the the recording program that you use. So, How does sound like travel through a channel? How does it, like where does it go from there? What does panning actually mean? Uh, what are groups and buses and sends and returns and that kind of stuff. So you basically just need to know how to send a signal from point A to point B and the different ways to do that. And you don't need to know everything about this when you're just starting out. But like some, some basic core concepts are really important. And I think we mentioned it in a previous episode where we said, Everyone who's ever used a basic analog recording desk with like analog channel strips and then a summing section and sends and returns, everyone who's, who knows how to operate that has a clear advantage over, over those people who don't, who haven't, because this is exactly what happens inside the door. And once you get the basic, you know, studio signal flow thing, once you get those, uh, things, you can apply that knowledge to almost every single doll. And, uh, and I, I think it really. To learn that sort of stuff. So if you have like a, a small mixer or whatever in your jam space, uh, learning that and figuring out signal flow there helps you in the door as well, because the, those principles apply across the board.

Malcom: Totally. Um, so one good thing that I think everybody could try, uh, to help you learn the different types of routing in, in your do, and, and this is actually what I did is I, I loaded a template. Most dolls come with, like, when you create a new session, there's some template options. It'll be like basic recording session or like live band or. Fill mix or whatever it looks like. All these different template options and click whatever seems most relevant to you. It's gonna load up a bunch of tracks, um, including different ox tracks, probably a master bus, um, maybe, maybe some parallel buses. It, it depends on the template you choose, but it's gonna come up with a bunch of stuff. And if you haven't looked at, uh, these track types before, you're not gonna know what they are or how to send audio to them. And then load in some audio and just try and send it everywhere. Um, so you'll, you know, maybe you've gotta just throw in a kick file onto a kick drum track and now you wanna send it to, uh, the drum reverb. Uh, for whatever reason, you just gotta figure out how to do that and it. Lets you visually see these different track types inside of a do and also try to manipulate them and you can get like, you know, visual feedback if you're seeing level coming into them through the meters in your do and hopefully hear it as well. And that's just going to let you kind of have a playground to experiment with and, and actually learn what all of these things do. It's kind of a fun way of just like kind of swimming in the dark until you figure it.

Benedikt: Hundred percent agreed. Yeah. Uh, the visual thing is, is big for me too. Like just, uh, see where the meters come up as soon as you send something somewhere and just know that every um, so. You know, on every channel the signal comes in. It's like, let's say that the signal comes in at the top, goes through the channel in a certain order. Sometimes you can change the order of things, but it will go through whatever plugins are on that channel, and it will go through, if there's a, like a built-in channel strip, it will go through that and it eventually arrives at the bottom where there's a fader and a pan knob, and there are scents. And just know that. Sends, if you have them already, maybe you have to create 'em or maybe they are there. But those are just additional faders. Basically these are our volume knobs and every one of those, like the main fader and those sends are uh, enable you to set the volume that you send this, uh, this, this track to, uh, to, to certain direction. So, uh, destination. So. Without any sands engaged in just the main fader, this will send your signal to the assigned output. So you have your channel with the signal on it. You assign an output to it inside the door, usually your master out if you didn't create a group or something, and that main fader will set the volume that arrives at this. Destination, the master output, like the summing stage where all the individual tracks get some together. And now if you create an additional like group or um, return track or ox channel, whatever it's called in your D, then you have. Ascend control where you set the level that you're gonna be sending to that new track, and that is just another fader. It looks different usually, but it's just another fader. And if you turn it up, signal will arrive at this new destination. It's just a copy of the same signal, and now it goes to whatever main destination you have. Plus the new one that you added. And you can have multiples, right? You're just basically sending the signal in parallel to different destinations. And the way you figure that out is exactly what you just said, Malcolm, can you just, uh, create an example track? You create a bunch of different types of, of tracks available in your door and ox track group, whatever, and then you just change the main destination and see where it. The, the main output. Um, and see what that, what that does when you change that. And then you just turn up the individual sentence and see where the level goes up. And so you'll learn what you actually do there. And so that, that's, that's what I would do. And you have to understand that the pan knob that is usually above the main fader, that can be viewed as a volume tool too, because what it actually does, Whenever you send your track to a stereo destination, so let's say it's a kick drum, like in your example, and it's a mono file, it doesn't have a left or right. It's the same on both channels, right? If you send that to a stereo track, like the master output, where. , everything that arrives there could potentially be stereo. It's two channels left and right. Uh, whenever you do that, you have a pen knob on the track that you're sending there, and you can set that to either left or right or center or anywhere in between. And what it does, it just sets a balance. Be like, it basically lets you say, Hey, I want a little bit of volume on the left side and a little more volume on the right side, or I want exactly the same volume on both sides. Or I want no volume on one side, and all the volume on the other side. And so it's almost, you can almost use this as like, Volume sliders that you can balance against each other. And so that's the, the pan up. And if you're sending it, I'm saying this because sometimes people get confused if they're sending a signal to a new channel that they created a group or or ox channel or whatever, and then the pan up disappears or appears to be. Doing nothing really. Then the reason for this could be that you created a mono destination, and if you send a file to a mono trekk, you cannot pan it because the mono trekk only has one channel. So, you know, panning it doesn't move it to either side, you know? So the concept of stereo versus mono is something you need to look up if you don't, if you're not familiar with that, like what mono is, what stereo is, and then you need to know which types of channels are available in your door, how. Set the output of each of any channel so that it goes to its main destination and how to use the sends to send it to additional destinations in parallel to the main thing.

Malcom: Yep. Yep. This, uh, it's one of those things that until you and I talk about it, Benny, it's like, oh wow, this is confusing

Benedikt: Yep.

Malcom: you know? Uh, and then it doesn't. It's one of those things that you can get by without having a full technic. Cool understanding as long as you can make sense of it in your own way. But it takes a lot of experimentation visually seeing it and visually hear or not audibly hearing it , not visually hearing it. Um, and yeah, you just gotta get in there, dig into it, experiment, and it'll all start kind of coming together and you'll be able to troubleshoot and, and follow the signal path through your jaw and, and get it where it needs to go.

Benedikt: Yeah, totally. Before we move on to the next point, let's give some, some, um, base like example applications of this, like, just just to, to make it a little less abstract and, and easier for you to understand. So, scenario one, most basic scenario that most of you will start with is, , you create a bunch of channels for different instruments. So you have maybe a kick drum, a snare drum, or maybe a stereo channel for the entire drum kit. Um, you have a bass guitar, um, you know, two rhythm guitars, whatever in the vocal or something, you know, like you have your basic core tracks, and each of those sources lives on one audio track in your doll. Now, if you don't do anything, all of these channels will typically. To your main out, whatever that's called in your dorm, stereo out master channel, whatever, mix bus. Uh, so they get some together and arrive. Like one destination. Um, and there you have your, your mix, like the, the one, the one thing that comes out of your speakers. So that's the, the basic configuration. So each channel will have an input, which is typically the mic, and we talked about it in the last episode, where like how to set that up so that your door knows where the signals coming in from. So that's the input channels of your interface. And then you have the outputs on each channel. That is typically the. as long as you stick to the default setting. And that is typically your main out of the interface, uh, of the, the, the doll. So, A couple of channels all go to the same place. Now, scenario two could be you have five different drum tracks and then you have a bass and guitar and vocals and so on. And now let's say you wanted one fader or one channel to control the volume of all the drums, and you don't wanna touch all the five faders together all the time. So what you could do is you could create a group, or depending on your dog, could be called bus. UX track or whatever, and now you could, instead of the main output, you could send all the drum tracks to that group. Now they would arrive at the group. You can still set the individual levels, but now they would arrive at the new drum group that is like all your drums, and that one fader would send all the drums then to the main output. So you kind of have the step in between where you sum the drums before you send it. Total sum of your mix. You can do the same things with all vocals or all guitars. And scenario number three would be maybe to have, you know, a couple of individual channels. A couple of groups, your main mix, and then you could have a channel that. All your sources can share and, and like add different amounts of it to, to whatever you want. So that could be a reverb that you set up on a channel. And now, so you created this new track, an UX track for example, uh, where effects return, whatever it's called in your dock. And you put a reverb plug in there and now you send a little bit of your SNA drum to that and a little bit of the vocals to that and the little bit of a guitar to that. And. , um, all your tracks that you want reverb on, you send this to the reverb track, and then the fader of that reverb track determines the overall amount of reverb in your mix. So if you turn it down, there's no reverb at all. If you turn it up, there's more reverb. And how much reverb will be applied to the individual sources is determined by the individual send levels that you send to that reverb. So these were three different scenarios, um, that, that just hopefully. Understand why, why it's important to, to get the routing and signal flow in your door.

Malcom: Yeah. One more thing to think about here is uh, if you're recording something, if you wanna record anything, you need to have an input assigned. If you want to hear it, you have to have an output assigned,

Benedikt: Yep.

Malcom: but, You don't need an input to necessarily have audio on a track , um, because an input is PR is earlier in the signal chain than the audio clip itself. So once something is recorded, you no longer need that input to be there. So if, or if you drag a, an audio file into a doll onto a. It doesn't need an in an input cause an input is only tied to the physical or, or, or digital input earlier in the chain. So I think it's just good to know that the clip of audio that you're actually listening to is after the input assignment.

Benedikt: Very good point. Yes. So if you're only working with like loops, pre-made stuff, recorded things, and you don't record your own original stuff, then you can ignore the input input part entirely.

Malcom: Except for with what you had mentioned there, um, your, your folder tracks, your, your oxes, your effects sends. They need an input because they don't have a clip of audio on them. They're receiving audio from somewhere else digitally. So an input is still relevant there. Um, but as far as when there's an audio clip, there's no input required.

Benedikt: Yes, totally. Yeah. Um, yeah, absolutely. And this is also something Yeah, good that you mentioned that, because that's also something that helps you get this concept if you just pay attention and look at what happens when you create different tracks. Because in most stars, I think if you create, let's say an UX channel or um, whatever it is called, like if you create something like that and. You wanna send something to the channel on, on the sand, it usually shows you whatever the input of that a is called. So in some doors it's just the name of the channel. But for example, in in Logic, I remember you can create a. , I dunno, ox one as your first like auxiliary channel that you add. And then that ox one will have bus one as an input. And then if you wanna send something there, you'll have to send it to bus one and you'll see that if you, as soon as you create these things, these options become available. So now if you send whatever you send to bus one will arrive at a channel that has bus one as its input, and if you remove that input, it no longer arrives anywhere. So ev, every channel either has to have a. on, on, its, uh, like an audio clip on the channel itself, or it has to have an input assigned that you send stuff.

Malcom: Highly recommend that, uh, if you're confused by the terminology, because all dolls do things a little bit differently. Like you said, they might be called an effec. They might be called an ox or a bus or whatever. Um, who knows, but they could label it. I would encourage you to check out, just search up your DA routing instruction or tutorial or something in, in YouTube. You're gonna find something specialized for your situation. That will be quite helpful. Shameless plug, I do have one coming for Pro Tools, but most of our audience doesn't use Pro Tools , so it's not gonna be useful for a lot of you. I mean, it all kind of applies. Like I could watch a Logic One and apply it to Pro Tools for sure. It, it all is routing signal flow, but it's just the. End up with locations of where you're gonna see things different. So you might as well look up one that actually applies to your do

Benedikt: Yeah, totally. I like it. I'm looking forward to that video, dude. Is it like a, a very basic, like signal flow thing or is it an

Malcom: super basic, like it's gonna be a couple stages. Like the first one's gonna be literally just track types and then routing, like Yeah, ground up.

Benedikt: Cool, because I have one too, where I walk people through my template, um, a mixing template, but I don't cover really how to, how to like, create these tracks. Like I just show the template in, in how I set things up in my groups and buses. So it's all there, but I don't necessarily show how to, you know, create the new track, assign the input and all of that. I just show, you know, the tracks I have in the template. So, um, a more basic version is better for, for this. When does this video come out? Because it might be already out by the time this episode airs, and then Wayne can put it in the show notes, but I'm not sure.

Malcom: Uh, I don't think it will be out quite yet by then. Um, so, so just go subscribe to my channel, Malcolm on Plug . And then wait.

Benedikt: Yeah, yeah. And then wait, do that Malcolm on flat on YouTube. Perfect. Absolutely. But this is helpful, so absolutely. Plug it. Um, cool. Now one final thing I wanna add to this before we move on, and this. again, back to the example of, or like to the situation where you use a small like analog mixing desk. The whole inputs and outputs and what goes where becomes really obvious if you think about it, um, from this perspective, from an analog setup. So, because what happens is, and this helped me a lot like at the concept, so if you imagine even a small, like just a few channels like Antelope mixer, you. An input, which is the mic input, or you know, a line input, whatever. This is where the signal comes in. Everybody knows that there's just, there's only signal on a channel if you plug something into it, right? So this is your input. It has like, you know, you know, you plug something into it, you have an input now. It travels down the, the, the channel strip until it arrives at the fader. And with the fader you send it to your master. And with the master volume, you turn up the overall volume of whatever you're mixing on this board right Now, if you wanna, um, use Ascend, for example, like the whole ox bus, whatever thing we just talked about. If you wanna do that, you would have to use a cable, um, find the, , you know, the check where it says like, um, send one or something. Connect that, like put a cable in there, connect it to an effects unit. Um, Connect the output of that effects unit back to where it says return one on your board, and then if you turn up, send one on any channel, it will send signal out of this output to the effects channel and back into a return. And on that return you have an additional fader and now you can blend the two. So there's the effects unit won't receive anything until you physically connected. Some send on your board and the return channel won't receive any signal until you connect its input to the output of the effects unit. Right? So in the analog world, it's crystal clear that you always need connections, physical connections, cables between those points and the, it's exactly the same in a doll. The, you know, every output has to have some input somewhere else, and every input has to have its source somewhere, right? You just have to connect them virtually and, and imagine those cables. But it, it's exactly the same thing. You just have to always, Find an output for every input and, and vice versa.

Malcom: Yes, totally, totally. Next thing, and this is. An equally important, and I bet equally overlooked thing for people jumping in is learning the different editing tools available in your da because there's a lot of options, um, and there's a lot of ways of doing the same thing. , you know, like I can edit drums a totally different way than Benny might, but we get to the same place um, and, and it's, it's actually kind of fascinating that there's like these tools in, in pro tools, for example, that people use as their, like their mainstay, what their, the, the. It's where they live. They, they use those tools every day. And I don't use them like all year because we just do things differently. But you want to know both because you're gonna find one workflow works better for you, you know? So some people are really heavy on like elastic audio kind of processing and edit that way. Or other people like myself are more slip editing people, so we try to. Stretching and compressing audio and just chopping files, I guess if it was tape or something. Um, and there's, there's no right or wrong, it's just different workflows. They're, they're different tools for different purposes, really, at the end of the day. But you want to know how to do both because it's like incredibly helpful and nothing will speed up your workflow faster and get you recording your songs quicker than understanding your different editing tools.

Benedikt: Hundred percent agreed. Um, and you. even if you plan to outsource that or don't wanna dive into editing in depth yet, you will have to do some editing on the fly. There's no way around it. You will want to clean up some things. You might want to loop some things, or, you know, copy and paste things. It's inevitable. It will come up very, very quickly. Um, so, so just getting familiar with those tools absolutely helps. Also, another shameless plug here, I don't know if it's gonna. Could be out by the time this episode comes out, but we are releasing, um, a very, very in depth, but also from the beginning, like starter friendly course on, uh, editing drums, uh, at the self recording band.com. So it's not out yet, but it's a very comprehensive in-depth drum editing course that covers it all from slip editing to time stretching comparison between the two basic editing, uh, basic editing principles, and, uh, full set of multi-tracks that you can, like, where you can take. Practice along with the course and like all the ins and outs. Thomas did this for us. He edits my, he's been editing my drums for years now, and he, he's an absolutely amazing at it. Um, and, and this is such an in-depth comprehensive course that the, even if you don't edit drums, what you learn there, you can apply that to all the other sources maybe except with the exception of like vocal tuning, but everything that ha that has to do with like timing correction. If you can't edit a complex multi-track drum set, you can almost edit everything else. Like there's always specific things to, to. You know, instruments, but the basic principles apply because it's the most complex thing to edit.

Malcom: Yes. Yeah, that, that's like such a great , great way to go about it cuz like whatever problem you could run into, you will run into with drums. So you have to figure out all these different ways to get around them. Um, so yeah, incredibly helpful, doing it that way. And it's not just for editing. Um, like I think when you're starting out, Knowing these different, uh, like editing selections and stuff like that is just helpful because you're accidentally gonna select one and not know why you can't do whatever you've been doing every other time you're in your do. So, you know, you might have like just your, your kind of, uh, edit selection tool on, which just allows you to. Jump around, uh, your dawn and highlight stuff and listen to that region or whatever, but then all of a sudden you click the scissors and, and you don't realize that now you can't do that anymore. All you can do is chop stuff and you're just, every time you try and go somewhere else in the song, you split your wave file and you're just cutting stuff up and it's just gonna frustrate you. You wouldn't know that unless you're familiar with your toolbar that lets you select your different editing modes. You're going to have a singer that is talking right up until he sings, and now you don't want that talking in the song, so you have to know how to select that, chop it outta there. It it's just like an essential way, uh, navigating your session. This is all it is. Editing is a byproduct of knowing these tools, but navigating your session is really the required reason for knowing these tools.

Benedikt: Yep, 100%. and I don't know, should we talk about like the specifics or like the, the common things that, like a few common tools that you'll find in your doc? Probably. I mean, we can't explain the whole editing on, on one episode ob obviously, but maybe some, you mentioned some, some terms now, some, some specific tools that we should address. I think just so people know what they definitely will, will need to look for and, and, and get comfortable with.

Malcom: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think let's try to,

Benedikt: Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned

Malcom: is something I could, I could have prepped more for, but, uh, but let's,

Benedikt: Yeah, but, but like just a few. Just a few. I think you need, you mentioned the scissors, so I think you need to know how to split any like event or like, um, whatever it's called in your doll. Any block of, of audio, any waveform display, um, how to split that so you can, um, delete one part of it or move it somewhere else, or copy and paste something. So you need to know how to do that, how to cut and. make, make two out of one, basically. So there's probably a tool that's called scissors or there's like a, a command where it's um, divide at cursor position or whatever.

Malcom: Split clip, uh, trim clip. Uh, trim's not really the right word, but split clip's probably a word that you'd see in a do. Yeah. But, but yeah, you're right Benny. You just need to know how to do that. And you need to know how to grab a clip, like an object tool, um, so that you can grab the chunk of audio that you've now made and move it and drag it around and move it in time in the session. Um, that's, that's very necessary too. So those two absolutely crucial. You're gonna need to know how to fade something, fade something in and out, or cross fade, cross fading. Wow. Yeah. I can't believe we've never actually really made an episode on just

Benedikt: That's

Malcom: cross fading something. People don't know what that is when they start, um, but you, it is, uh, the most used thing. um, real quick cross fadings, when you just fade the end of one clip. , uh, and the start of the next clip so that they overlap. And this stop prevents audio from making a popping noise when we're fusing them together. So if we're editing two takes together, you gotta cross rate 'em together. That's the, the real simple.

So you need to know how to do that. Um, what else

Benedikt: The, the fade in, in fade outs actually serve the same purpose. So if you clip. If you divide something where there's a spot where audio is playing and in most spots audio is playing because even background noise is audio and like there's rarely true silence. So it's just a good practice to follow that. Whenever you cut anywhere, just make sure you make a little, like very short, fade in or fade out, depending if it's the end of the beginning of a track to avoid any clicks and pops there. So let's say you clean up the talking before the actual vocal take. You make a cut, you delete the stuff you don't need, and then you make a, like a, a tiny short fade in on the actual vocal take so that there's no weird click or pop noise before the vocal starts.

Malcom: Yeah. Yeah. Every. In a session should have a fade on the top and tail of it. That's gonna blow some minds, I think. But it's true. And I've assigned hot keys to speed this up for me, . And, and I've, I use other tools just to auto fade things as much as possible. Um, and you'll just get real automatic at it. Um, you'll be clicking save and fade constantly while you're working.

Benedikt: Totally. Yeah. So fades, cross fades, um, object tool where you can move things, dividing, cutting, whatever you wanna call it. And then maybe also, like dragging, you mentioned that before too, where you, you grab the clip, not the entire clip and move it at. As a whole, but you, you grab the end of it or the beginning of it, and then you can trim it and, and drag just the beginning or the end. So the, the audio crop, yeah, the audio stays where it is, but you can trim the beginning or the end instead of like having to cut and then delete. So if there's just one word that you wanna get rid of in the beginning of something, you can just. Grab that beginning end of, of the, um, of the, the clip, and then you move it to the right until the word is gone. Everything else stays where it was, and if you wanna undo it, you just grab it again and open it up again. It's not gone forever unless you consolidate. So that's also good to keep in mind. It's always there in the background. You can remove it from the session temporarily, but it's not destructive until you print it.

And so if you made a mistake, you can just drag it to the other side and it will appear again.

Malcom: Yes. Yeah. I don't think a lot of people know that actually that's, it's an intuitive thing to us, but for a brand new beginner, they probably don't realize that the audio file is always the same length as whatever it was recorded. So when you, you know, Split delete. That other half still exists. It's just hidden now it's just not being referenced. Um, so it's still there somewhere you can get it back. Even if you select a whole clip and click delete, it just removes it from your timeline. It still exists in a bin somewhere so you can actually go find it. Nothing's really ever lost unless you find a way to like hard delete something, which is pretty hard to.

Benedikt: Agreed. I think that's basically it with like basic editing functions because everything else, like time stretching and stuff like that is a little more advanced and there's, you know, I think that's too much for this episode, but, um, That what we just mentioned and maybe then, you know, the basic copy paste commands. I think you should know those too. Um, that will get you at least to a point where you can rearrange things, you can delete errors, you can clean up things, you can get rid of unwanted, um, you know, noise in like silent parts. And I think that's enough for most people when they start out. And if you wanna outsource the actual. Correction of the, of the, of the feel or intonation or whatever. And then the mixing, we don't even need to know more than that really. That's really enough to just clean up your sessions, um, make 'em less cluttered, rearrange stuff. And, and I think, yeah, I think that that covers it for the beginning. So,

Malcom: Yeah. No, that's great.

Benedikt: Cool.

Now, next thing, midi, learn how to deal with MIDI and basic MIDI functionality. We are not the most experienced people. I have to say that when it comes to midi, I mean we know how to operate it, how to use it. We use it in the sessions all the time, but like people who are like beat makers in Ableton, so they will know a lot more about MIDI probably than we do. But still, I think you sh you should still know what, like how it works. , um, at its core and, and, um, how you can edit it. Because some of the editing functions are similar to what we just said when it comes to audio editing. Some are a little different. Um, but I think just learning what MIDI is, how it basically works, this is something everyone should do because you will, you will come to a point where you need it. If it's like programming drums for a demo, programming a baseline, um, triggering samples, whatever, like there's, at some point you will need mid. , and it's also not too hard to learn if you just sit down and do some research for an hour or so. It's a concept. I don't know how old it is. It's like 30, 40 years old. I think probably 40 at this point. Um, it, it hasn't changed much since its, its invention. It's a very basic, um, computer sort of system, uh, that still exists today and is used today. It's very simple at its core, and I think you can learn it easily and I don't think we have to. too much in depth here. Just just know that you have to, that just know that it's not audio. It's like different from audio. A mini track doesn't have audio on it. It's just commands the tell a software tool to do something basically. And you, you just do some research and, and learn how MIDI works, I'd

Malcom: Yeah. It, it's one of these funny things where I think our audience, the people listening to this podcast probably actually do want midi a lot more than like, than you and I,

Benedikt: Mm-hmm.

Malcom: they, they need to know how to use it better than we do. because they're creating music. They're writing music, they're using those tools, you know, like, like programming drums or, or using virtual pianos, organs, whatever it is. Uh, even MIDI bass. Like, it's, it's pretty limitless how much you can accomplish with MIDI to make your records sound awesome. Where we don't have to deal with the programming in using it and creating it because we're receiving the tracks to mix. So it's, it's a, it's a funny little blind spot for us. Um, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make an effort guys to to get better at programming just so I can communicate with you all better.

Benedikt: Yeah, it's a good point. Absolutely. Good point. And especially these days when you, uh, with all these like one, one man, one person type of, of artist and bands. Yeah. Maybe he's absolutely relevant and much more so than for us, probably. Yeah, you're totally right. And, and but what, but still, it's fascinating to me that I, oftentimes, that's why I mentioned it. Oftentimes people send me, Stuff that I should like, that they want me to listen to, like for demo purposes or whatever. And they will send a mid file, like a dot m i d file.

Malcom: Yeah, yeah,

Benedikt: And or M I d I, whatever the file form it is, and then say, Hey, listen to this. And I'm like, yeah, I can load that into my doll. But I, I'm, this might turn out completely different than it, like it

Malcom: yeah.

Benedikt: to how it was on your end because it doesn't have audio and it, it's just, uh, the commands that tell any sampler, you know, to do X, Y, Z. And if you're lucky, My dog recognizes it and opens up the correct, simpler, and I can hear it, but could be that I don't hear anything because the mid file doesn't have any audio information on it. And so a lot of people use MIDI and they use it every day and they compose music with it, but they never really stop to think how it actually works. And then they think like exporting the mid file enables someone else to listen to it, which is not the case. You'd have to turn that into an audio file first, and you need, so you need to understand the basic concept of it and that the mid file itself is just a very, very, very, File type few kilobytes that just have like a note on note off. How long is the note and which note am I playing? Basic information, but the actual sounds come from. A sampler, some, some tool that generates sounds based on the MIDI commands that it receives. That's how many works, and that's the concept you need to understand. And once you get that, then you can, it's easy to collaborate because then you know, okay, if the other person wants to hear what I've programmed, I have to give them not only the mid, but I either have to print the audio outputs of the sampler I used, or I have to make sure they have the same sampler so that they can load up the mid and hear the same thing.

Malcom: Yeah. Yeah. If you send me drum mid and I think it's a piano, it's gonna, it's gonna be weird,

Benedikt: For sure, and even if you know it's a drum thing, you could hear, you know, all Toms, where it's supposed to be symbols or whatever,

Malcom: It could be mapped totally wrong. So yeah, you gotta know that. As far as the editing tools for MIDI and programming goes, it's actually kind of similar in a lot of ways to the editing tools for audio in that like you're gonna need to to crop the length of. Things, maybe select something, delete it or move it around. But you've got this added piano roll, mid roll where you can, if you drag it up a spot, you know, you've got up and down. It's not a new track, it's just a different note. Um, so you're gonna need to understand that there. And then the pencil tool is really the big difference. The pencil tool is what's gonna allow you to write your midi notes. So you're actually inputting, uh, data into the mid, into the piano role to create the noises you want to hear. Of course that's if you're using a mouse and not like a mini keyboard or, or drum pad or something like that,

Benedikt: Yep. Yep. True. The pencil tool also exists for audio, but it just creates an empty region with no sound in it usually. So there's uses to that, but.

Malcom: yeah, and, and I think a pro tool is the pencil tool for audio is actually an automation tool.

Benedikt: Yeah, that, that, that one too.

Malcom: automation curves.

Benedikt: Okay. Good. Midi. Now next one, learn how plugins work and get familiar with the basics. I don't think, or we both, I think we both agree that you don't need a lot of plugins when you start out with the exception of like things that your dog just doesn't offer. But you really need everything your dog already offers. You should start with that before you go out and buy something new. Just explore those things first that you already have. But I think at some point, once you, once you got familiar with all the things that we've mentioned already, I think you should get familiar with, um, a few basic plugins too that your door already has. And those are, in my opinion, e. Compression and like effects, like reverb and delay. That's what I would start with. Then you can focus on like saturation, all the other effects. But like you, you, you definitely, whatever you do, you at some point you have to know how to use an eq. You have to use compression. At some point, you will, you will want to use compression at some point, and you'll want to use some type of effects, like typically reverb delay, and then whatever your genre requires.

Malcom: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So starting out, if you're brand new to this, you're gonna want to go and see what is available in the included plugins in your do and figure out the tool that kind of works best for you. Uh, maybe look up a tutorial for each one of those. You'll, you'll find something. Um, but there, if you have experience with a different plugin from a different do or whatever, it'll. Transfer over. They're all unique, but they're not unique enough that I wouldn't be able to operate any EQ in the world. You know, , it's, it's, once you have one down, they, they're all gonna kind of make sense. But if you're looking at one for the first time, it doesn't make sense yet . So you're gonna have to either just play around with it or find, uh, read the manual or whatever. Um, but do figure out, yeah, like you said, Benny eq, compression, reverb, and delay. Those are the four most popular in the world for sure.

Benedikt: Yeah. Yeah. One thing I want to. Attitude. The whole plugin thing is, that's something I've discovered when, when I was like working with, with coaching students and people I was helping with at d y recordings, a lot of people. Start discovering like an exploring plug-ins by loading up track presets, which are often entire chains of plug-ins on their tracks. And so, especially if you were like in more of the, the, um, one of the dos that are, you know, made for creators and, and it's meant to be intuitive like GarageBand or logic, even like these types of doors. There are certain types of tracks that you can create. So you can create a guitar track or a piano track or whatever and select a certain preset, and then it does that. And people use that a lot because the software encourages you to do it. And so I think there's a problem with that. It's fun because you have a great, like an immediate fun starting point. If you know what you're looking at and how to change it if you don't like it. But most people when they start out, when they start by creating, um, a guitar track and they pick one of the presets based on the name or whatever that they think fits, and then it, it creates a track with like five plugins on it. Uh, an ammp sim and you know, an effects rack with some sort and a compressor and whatnot. If they don't like the result, they are completely lost and don't know what to do because they don't know which of the plugins is causing what they don't like. Then they just just switch to a different sort of, um, preset until they find something that is kind of usable, but they never really find something that really fits. And it makes it hard, in my experience. It makes it hard for a lot of people to really learn their tools. So I'd say. Play around with that and have fun, of course. But I'd say when you create a guitar tone, for example, focus on one piece at a time. Like start with just choosing an amp and then a cap, and then you know, the virtual mic or whatever. Or like maybe pick a preset inside the ampm if you want, but then if you wanna process it further, Add an EQ intentionally. If you wanna tweak something, if there is too much lows or highs or not enough of something, add an EQ and try to fix that. If you think it's too dynamic, add a compressor and figure out how to compress it to make it less dynamic. If you want to add a certain characteristic, pick a plug-in that does that, learn that and figure out how to add it. But if you start with an entire chain, it's very hard to find the problem to isolate the problem, and very hard to learn the individual tools. So, Um, yes, it's fun, but it doesn't really help people learn the tools a lot, I think, and being intentional that building your own chain from scratch, piece by piece and learning what happens when you add a new one. So what happens if I add a river? What happens when I add a compressor? What happens? What can I do with an eq? Basically, if you do that intentionally and build your chain, then um, you'll learn a lot. You can use the, the preset, for example, and bypass all of the plugins except for like the amp or the first thing that generates the sound and. Enable them one by one and spending some before you enable the next one, enable one. Um, hear the difference when you bypass it. Play around with it a little bit until you think you get the idea. And then once you know that, then enable the next one and see what that does, but don't have the whole chain on and then try to figure out what to change or what the problem is.

I've just seen that so many times. Um,

Malcom: Yeah. I want to tell everyone listening if, if you are in that position where you're using a track piece set, I want you to make this your motto. Just assume that. Whenever you use a track preset, assume it's making it worse, , because it probably is and it's probably cranking it louder, so you can't even tell, um, and, and you think it's better, but make the assumption that no matter what, when you use a preset, that it's making it worse and do what Benny said. Bypass everything and then use it as a tool. Like what I do think it is great for is discovering plugins. It's gonna load up a bunch of plugins that you maybe haven't seen before and it's given you a chance to experiment with them and see what each one does and maybe figure out, um, what ones you like the workflow of. That's a big part of it for me, is just being like, oh, I like the, the user interface of this. I can make sense of it. And when I try to make it sound some a certain way. It does kind of turn out that way. It's a tool. I understand. Um, so use it to find tools, uh uh, but don't think that it's gonna give you results. And I would say that's usually true of presets inside of, in specific plug-ins as well. So if you open up a compressor and it's got like a snare compression preset, it's probably garbage because there's just no one size fits all for like anything. It just never really works. So you can use it to see what happens, but just assume that it's not.

Be as good as it could be.

Benedikt: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, yeah, totally. With things like compression, like how could you, I don't even wanna start, like there's so many different ways and, and different, yeah. But. . Um, it's great for discovering, as you said, and it also, again, just shows how important it is to first learn like what a plugin actually is, that there's an order of things, the signal flow that it goes from top to bottom or whatever your layout is. Um, learn how to use and like add and remove plugins, the different categories they are, like eq, compression, like the basic things. Um, to learn that first because only then can you intentionally go in and like bypass one. Change settings on one, remove one. If you don't like it, add another one. So the, the core concept of this, this modular thing that you have there, this is what you under have to understand first. And I say that because what I've also seen is when people use like a, a piece of gear, an external piece of gear, like in, in, in one example that comes to mind was some modeling. Amp, an hardware modeling amp, not a camper, but. , I don't know what it was, but like some, um, modeling digital AMP and it didn't have a really great intuitive user interface. A lot of it was happening under the hood and like there was a lot of shared controls and knobs and things. And the person I was, I was trying to help was, um, just selecting a, a preset on this amp and it had like delays and pedals and um, reverb and an amp and whatever, and he was just switching through. Different tones and couldn't really find one that he entirely liked but also didn't know how to change it. And it was not really intuitive because he didn't understand the, the different blocks available to him and then he could like turn some off, change another one, add one, you know? And so in your do, it's a little better because you see it right in front of you. But in both scenarios, you'd have to first understand the concept that there is like a. A chain of things that you go through and that this individual blocks and modules that you can deactivate or remove entirely and add, and only if you get that, you know, that you can actually do something about it and you can, you know, you just, there's no way around knowing that because if you don't know it all you're left with just switching through presets and you don't really know what to do.

Malcom: Yeah. Um, and this brings us to what we didn't even put in our outline, but it's totally relevant, is that you need to know how the, the insert section of a track, uh, in your doll works. So where you actually get to place these plug-ins on the track, how to select and search for them and how to bypass and enable them as well, and understand the order of the plug-ins because the order that you place them makes a huge difference. Um, so if you're feeding an EQ into a compressor or a compressor into an eq, that's different. Um, so it is, uh, it's like a whole nother little routing thing, but it's, it is very. It's just probably gonna be an order on the track that you're looking at, but you just need to understand how to u utilize it.

Benedikt: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Learn how plugin's working. Get familiar with the basics Now next one, create, uh, a simple folder structure and backup system that ensures you can quickly find your songs and evolution the results of your hard work. So this is not folders inside the doll, but like on your computer organizing your work. This is like really important I think, because when, once you start, yeah, because once you start making music, you know how to record something. Stoked and excited, and you wanna do it all day, which is what most people are like. Uh, you're gonna be creating a lot of stuff. You're gonna be experimenting with a lot of things. Um, and if you don't. and most people just do it and then sometime later figure out how to organize things or they have this huge pile that they need to sort through. Uh, I'd say it's much better to get that to, to figure that out in the beginning and to start it off right basically. And it has, it can be very, very simple, but it can, it's gonna save you so much time and it's gonna make it so much more fun. Um, If you just organize your different sessions, your different songs, your, your, um, backup system and all of that. So I remember when I, when I started out, I just used whatever default folder location my program gave me. I dumped all of it into one folder. I had different sessions. I didn't name them properly. Uh, you know, the typical mess that a lot of people have on their computers and ev and the more I did it, the more, the more difficult it was to find like certain. Places in time, basically where I wanted to look something up, where I wanted to go back to another version, or I wanted to switch. Sometimes it was even difficult to switch to an entire new song because I didn't remember how I labeled it or when I created it and all these things, and so get that right from the beginning. Just make a dedicated folder for each song or project or session or however you wanna do it. Find a way to do backups frequently because you don't wanna lose your hard work. Um, come up with a labeling scheme or whatever. Just think about that stuff once, think it through once. Come up with an easy system that works for you. Doesn't have to be crazy complicated, and then just stick to it and you'll thank yourself for doing that later because it's, yeah, it, once you get past, like making one or two songs, if you have like dozens of them on your hard drive in different sessions, it's just a mess. If you don't do.

Malcom: Oh, it's such a mess. Yeah. Um, I would say this is probably the most, I'm gonna venture to guess here, that a lot of our audience doesn't have this figured out

Benedikt: Yep.

Malcom: Um, and it, it's, it's not until you make a mistake and lose something that you're gonna figure it out. Unless you listen to us right now, and you don't want to you don't wanna wait until you make a mistake and you lose something. It's such a bummer. Um, so one folder for. Uh, like yeah, one folder that holds all of your sessions. So, and ideally each session has its own folder as well, and inside of that folder, there should be everything that is related to that session should live there. And so you, if you can't find the audio files for the song you're working on, like inside of your computer, like not in your, do you, you're, you're using them there, but on the like, Actually where those files live in, in an audio files folder. If you can't find those, you don't understand your routing. So you need to be able to do that. If you can literally go locate that stuff with ease, uh, then you probably have a pretty good understanding of your folder structure and you're probably not gonna lose something. Um, the mistake I made starting out was I did have, uh, a central like folder for where I started all my sessions, but then when I would do a Save As and make like a new date or whatever, or version or whatever, uh, which is a topic in itself, how to label sessions. Um, no wonder this is a three part episode. These, all of these things are like, oh, I could talk for an hour on this

Benedikt: Yes, absolutely. And Will do.

Malcom: Uh, but like I, whenever I would do a Save As and make a new date or something, I would save that to a different place. I'd be like, oh, I'm gonna want this one like in an hour or tomorrow, so I'm just gonna save it to my desktop. And now it's like two different places. It's just, it's a disaster waiting to happen.

Benedikt: Yes, so, so much. And even if you don't lose things, I can say I've never lost something really critical. At least I can't remember. But even if you don't lose it, uh, people will push through and deal with this mess for a, for a very long time. Uh, not realizing how much time they're wasting, basically. So even if you don't lose. Your work, it's still valuable and, and a good, like, a good thing to, to just do properly because, uh, it's gonna be so much more fun. Think about like, , you're getting into your home studio. You have a limited amount of time or whatever, um, between other things you have to do, and you just wanna get back to that one idea you had yesterday because you have a new idea that you want to add or whatever, and you just wanna be able to quickly do it. And then if it takes you like half an hour to even find the right session and then to, you know, all these things, then, then sometimes inspiration is gone or you're not, you don't have enough time and whatever. And if you just can, if. Can sit at your desk and immediately start because it's crystal clear, you know, where to find things. It's such a better workflow, such a better experience. And I'm just amazed at how long people are willing to live with this mess before they start sort of, um, getting some sort of system in place with that. And I was the same thing. Like, I've worked like that for a very long time, actually. And, and until I, I realized that it's so easy and sometimes it's the little things like. This like past year, I had, um, a realization that, I mean, other Cubase users might, LA might laugh now, but. . I've been mixing music professionally for a decade now, um, and more than a decade. But last year I discovered that you could, um, create and save different like labeling schemes for like exporting, uh, multitracks and versions in Cubase. So you can have, like on the export window, you can have like a preset for, um, You can just save exporting presets, basically. And I always did that manually. I always was typing in my final name and I was, or copy and pasting my final name, and I was like switching to different sort of export settings and stuff. And once I figured out that you could actually make presets for that and then just click instrumental version, Whatever revision one or, uh, final master or mix revision two unmastered or whatever, I can just click these things now and it will create, it will always label it the exact same way. It will select the right tracks that I need for this export. It will put it in the right folder and all of that. Um, I can't believe I've done that manually for years and, and obviously making mistakes while I was doing that. So sometimes it's just a little bit of effort. You do one time you come up with a labeling scheme, you come up with a folder structure, some sort of system takes you half an hour to do and. Action. This half an hour will save you hours and hours and hours in, in the future. So yeah, it's like, I think, I think this is really important and it just, everything that lets me be more creative and focus more on the music and have like peace of mind that I don't lose anything and I can find everything quickly is like a, a absolute win for me. And I will embrace it and spend some, some time, uh, getting that right so that I don't have to st spend time anymore.

Malcom: It was, uh, I mean, if you're, if you're newer and haven't listened to like all of the hundreds, , almost hundreds, uh, or yeah, we're, I don't know, this is like a hundred and. 59 episode, uh, 59th episode I think right now. But, uh, if you don't know my history, I st. I, one of my first starts into audio was getting an internship at a, a nice recording studio and the first thing I was drilled on was our full like folder and file structure. It was so important that I understood it so that I couldn't mess up any of the projects we were working on for clients. And I like, if I didn't understand that, I wasn't even allowed to bring my own stuff in because like, It couldn't just get lost in, I couldn't accidentally save my audio files into somebody else's session or something like that. It was really important that I understood where things lived, how to find it, um, where to put my own things, and also how to even label things so that all of our labeling was universal as well. Across the thing. It was like a huge workflow thing that was immensely important.

Benedikt: I, it's interesting that this was one of the first things you, you've, you've learned there, but Yeah, I can totally see it. I mean, uh, nothing's worse for a commercial studio than like losing their clients' files, right? Or

Malcom: Yeah,

Benedikt: wasting time on every project.

Malcom: Yeah. And, and you know, file management when you're a professional or maybe, uh, if you're an artist that makes a lot of recordings, like you're, you're just making tons of recordings, file management's gonna eat up a lot of your time. And there's nothing I dislike more than spending time on file management and be like, my hard drive's almost full. Again, I gotta. Figure out if everything's backed up and what I can delete and all that stuff. If you don't have an organized file structure and folder structure, that takes ages. Cause you have to go hunting for these files that you can delete and you don't want that. If you're living all over your computer, it's gonna just take you so long.

Benedikt: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Anything else to, to add to this? Didn't we miss anything on our list? Because we are already, um, approaching an hour here on this podcast, so,

Malcom: Feel like we have given an extremely in depth three part guide to what you need to have under your belt. Uh, if you're starting audio in 2023 or if we were starting again, what would be prioritizing? So I'm feeling good about this and I hope it has, uh, Uh, help people that are new to it, but also given people that are already on their way, a little kick in the butt to go and like spend the time on the stuff that they've just been making do without understanding. Because all of these things really do help and it's just gonna make it quicker and easier and probably yield better results in whatever recordings you're doing moving forward. It is, like you said, if you spend 30 minutes on getting something right now, it's going to pay dividends on how much a returns in time saved, moving.

Benedikt: Yes, totally. And also, do you realize that we've been talking for three hours on this now and haven't even. Started to discuss like any specific mixing techniques or any, you know, like that, which means that if. You can watch YouTube videos on mixing all day and mixing tutorials, different techniques and stuff you see online from producers you admire. You can do that all day. As long as you ignore these basic things that we've been covering in these three episodes, it won't help you much like you have to, to to know that stuff first, and then you can use this knowledge and these basic tools that you now are familiar with to learn. To build upon that and learn like new concepts, new techniques, and and, and, uh, get better over time. But if you just got your first recording gear and you maybe just figure out how to plug things together, and it kind of, it kind of works, but you don't really know how, and then you immediately go to YouTube and watch like advanced mixing tutorials, you are missing out and you are not making progress as fast as you could. So please, Please listen to these basic episodes. Please take these concepts seriously, learn those tools, and then you can dive into all the advanced topics you want and get better over time. But like the fanciest mixing trick won't help you if you ignore any of these things that we've talked about

Malcom: Yep. . For some reason that just like made me think if like I was trying to become like an artist or a painter in something and I just like went and bought all these different like, colors of paint and stuff like that. But I like can barely write. I've got like the messiest writing in the world. I can barely read my own writing, like what a like stupid route that would be to go, you know, just like getting all of these tools and learning how to mix colors and stuff like that. But I like need to focus on being able to like write my name so that I can read it

Benedikt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exact. Exactly. Exactly. Totally, totally. So I think this, I also think that this was a good, a good series, a good one. I really hope people, um, listen to or watched all three of those. And as always, if you have any additional questions or if some of the concepts were too confusing still for you or you have any, um, things you wanna add to this, There's no dumb questions, first of all. And then also, we always appreciate your, your input and your ideas for future topics. And so just reach out to podcast at the surf recording band.com. Send us an email. Give us, uh, tell us if you found the episode helpful, tell us if you didn't find it helpful. Give just any feedback is appreciated. So really, really reach out to us, uh, to us. Also, uh, if you enjoyed these episodes, please take a screen. Post it to your socials. Tag us at Malcolm own Flood at Benedictine on Instagram, comment on YouTube, wherever you'd consume this. Just let us know if you appreciated it and if it helped or if there was something you didn't quite understand and we're looking forward to this.

We're reading all of it and we're trying to get better every single time, but we can only do that if you give us the input, right? So please reach out.

Malcom: Yeah. Thank you so much for listening to everyone. See you next week.

Benedikt: See you next week. Bye-bye.

Malcom: Bye.