#232: Fix Muddy Mixes With Arrangement, Not Plugins

Clearer mixes don’t come from buying more plugins, they come from making better decisions. In this episode of Inside The Mix, Marc Matthews sits down with returning guest Tim Benson (Aisle9) to show beginner and intermediate producers how to get clearer mixes using arrangement, sound selection, and simple processing choices that actually translate.

This episode is for independent producers struggling with muddy, crowded mixes that fall apart on headphones, Bluetooth speakers, or in the car. Marc and Tim explain why clarity starts at the source, writing interlocking drum and bass parts, choosing sounds that live in different frequency ranges, and being ruthless about what truly earns a place in the arrangement before reaching for EQ.

From there, they break down practical mix decisions that deliver immediate results: why gentle high-pass filtering and small cuts around 200–400 Hz often outperform aggressive boosts, how thinning stacked hats and shakers reduces ear fatigue, and when adding “air” helps—or hurts—your mix. Compression gets a reality check too, with clear guidance on attack and release settings that protect groove, where firm control matters (vocals, bass, snare), and when colour is more useful than gain reduction.

You’ll also learn simple systems you can repeat in every mix: sidechaining kick and bass for headroom, panning colliding parts apart, automating short dips for vocals, and using the one-mute test to identify what’s adding music or mud instantly.

TL;DR: Clear mixes aren’t about plugins—they’re about arrangement, sound choice, and small, intentional mix decisions that reduce mud and improve translation.

If this episode helped your mixes, follow the show and share it with one producer who’s fighting muddiness in their tracks.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Listen to Phosphorescent

Chapters

• 0:00 Warm Welcome And Storm Chat
• 4:38 Setting The Goal: Mix Clarity
• 5:40 Arrangement And Sound Choice First
• 8:48 EQ For Space, Not Surgery
• 14:05 Managing Highs Without Harshness
• 18:31 Compression, Dynamics, And Transients
• 24:15 Minimalism, Muting, And Panning
• 28:43 Mix Bus Interplay And Balance
• 33:20 Practical Workflow Tips And Recap

Transcript

Tim Benson: 0:28

Yeah, for mixed clarity. Think think it starts with your arrangement and it starts with your sound choices. If you get those as close as you can to working well before you have to start reaching for lots of EQ and other things to solve problems, I would say that that is a very good place to start. So, you know, a bass sound, for instance, that works with your pad sound, that works with your guitar tone, that works with your vocal or whatever you've got in your track.

Intro: 1:00

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

Marc Matthews: 1:05

Welcome to Inside the Mix. A big welcome. The podcast designed to help beginner producers understand music production and mixing in a simple, approachable way. I'm Mark Matthews, and each episode focuses on practical tips, clear explanations, and small changes that can lead to big improvements in your sound. If you're learning at home and want to feel more confident finishing your tracks, make sure you follow the show and let's dive in. In this episode, it is the first one of 2026. Not the first episode, that is, but the first time I'm joined by returning, I was gonna say repeating, returning uh co-host guest, Tim Benson, aka R Nine. Now we had a good chin wag off there, but I'll say it as I always do. Hello, Tim. How are you?

Tim Benson: 1:48

Hello, mate. I'm good, thanks. And you?

Marc Matthews: 1:51

Yeah, I'm alright. I'm alright. It's it's wet, it's dreary, it's January, but I'm remaining upbeat.

Tim Benson: 1:58

Yeah, no, it's it's it it's blowing a hoolie out here, is what we would probably say.

Marc Matthews: 2:04

Yeah, it's indeed you are closer to the coast than me. I'm relatively close to the coast, but I'm not um as close as you are, and it is windy here.

Tim Benson: 2:13

Yeah, I've after my second wet walk with our dogs, I'm glad to be inside and not having to do that until tomorrow.

Marc Matthews: 2:22

Were you affected by the recent storm? Did I did that do any damage to us?

Tim Benson: 2:27

Didn't do any major damage to us, no. No, we were I think it missed us actually pretty much in the sense that it was much worse further down in Devon and Cornwall, wasn't it? So yeah.

Marc Matthews: 2:37

Yeah, Cornwall in particular.

Tim Benson: 2:39

Um yeah, a lot places without electric and places without water and all sorts of stuff, yeah.

Marc Matthews: 2:45

I saw one property and the roof had blown off. Um yeah, uh, I think the story was they were sat having dinner and they heard a noise and went upstairs, looked in the attic hatch, and uh they could see the sky, which which makes my my predicament with my chimney pale in comparison.

Tim Benson: 3:05

So you know God, yeah, makes you want to a bungalow that was built only you know sort of 20 years ago or something. Yeah, you you get a bit worried, is with uh some of these uh some of our houses are a little bit interesting, aren't they, Mark? Yeah, well, this is it.

Marc Matthews: 3:21

But you say with the bungalow, now my place is 200 years old, uh but the but the bricks like the chimney, if I try and put a nail in that or a screw, like it is it is solid, it is not going anywhere. It's just a shame that everything above the roof line is slightly ropey.

Tim Benson: 3:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Built they built things well back then because they're still here, most of them. So there we go. Yeah, yeah. And it's it's quite nice because I say nice, but whenever I lift floorboards or something like that, I find some random artifact from like the early, the early 20th, late 19th century, um, which is which is which is always good fun, or just a bottle of WKD, yeah. Which has happened. I found it behind my cupboards. Oh, that was funny. Excellent. Anyway, I digress, I digress.

Marc Matthews: 4:09

Yeah, yeah. So the the topic for this episode came about uh so I was contacted via my website, synthymusicmastering.com, and uh it was a very short contact, and it was uh because on there it says, What would you like to chat about basically? And it was a very short, I'd like um to have more clarity in my mix to paraphrase, or it might have been something on that, something along those lines. Clarity in my mix or my mixes sound muddy. Should have made a note, but it was it was something along that those lines. So I thought it would be a good idea to start the year or belatedly start the year with uh our thoughts around how we can make mixes clearer, add clarity to our mixes to reduce any. I don't like using the term muddiness too much, but just I'd prefer the to prefer to use the term clarity in particular, and uh maybe some pitfalls to avoid. So I've done enough waffling. Maybe if you want to start, mate, if you if there's if somebody were to ask you what would be the number one thing that you would look out for or recommend for mixed clarity, yeah.

Tim Benson: 5:12

For mixed clarity. I think I think it starts with your arrangement and it starts with your sound choices. If you get those as close as you can to working well before you have to start reaching for lots of EQ and um other things to solve problems, that I would say that that is a very good place to start. Um so you know, you you choose a bass sound, for instance, that works with your pad sound, that works with your guitar tone, that works with your vocal, um, or whatever you you've got in your track. Um it's you know, choosing sounds that don't sort of clash too much in their frequencies and sort of also writing parts that have enough space in them so that you know it's like it's funny, it's like you know, if you you can create a lot of sort of space in like the way you write a drum part and um a bass part so that they work together well and they don't kind of create a lot of these sort of build-ups of frequencies. Like, I mean, it's you know, for instance, you could side chaining your bass is a classic idea to get the bass so that it reduces when the kick drum happens, so that you don't have a kick drum happening and a large you know bass note happening at this exactly the same time and have a big swell of bottom end, so you know that can help get some clarity in your bass. Um, after these sorts of things, which you know, you you can work on your arrangement, then I think you are into the sort of realms of EQ, and I think EQ can be quite simple often to sort of you can use your sort of lower mids um and you know uh lower mids and low frequencies are often where the mud is occurring, so you know, maybe you've got unnecessary low end in in things that you need to filter off. Um, that can be useful using a sort of high pass filter and just sweeping out some of the real low end that you don't need. For instance, you've got a piano part. How much of the low end do you need in the piano part when you've got a bass part already in the track? You probably don't need a lot of what would be the left hand of a piano, the low end of a piano, um, if you've got bass in there, and it will just clash. So you may be able to filter out some of that. You may be able to filter out low end out of guitar amps and things like that, because you don't really need that kind of uh frequencies to understand what the guitar is doing. A lot of what the guitar really does is in the upper mids and stuff, so yeah, using your EQ to get it out unnecessary low-end frequencies and then maybe to carve out some of the lower mids where mud tends to sit. So you tend to get a real build-up of all these different instruments that cross over and have quite a lot of activity in that sort of 200 to 500, somewhere around that, or 200 to 400 sort of range, that kind of lower mid-range. And um, of course, we've got all kinds of clever EQs now from dynamic EQs and all kinds of clever stuff we can do, but often just a simple channel EQ is a good place to start, just to sort of reduce some of the mud in you know, and you don't want to take it out of everything, you want to try and work out which elements uh uh it's particularly problematic in or which elements you can remove it from, and it doesn't it declutters the mix, but it doesn't remove you know warmth and body from the mix too much because you don't want to lose all your warmth and body from the mix and make it thin, but you do want to reduce any kind of build-up of these frequencies, and you do tend to get them across all of the instruments, will have quite a lot of energy down in that two to four hundred range, and it can just build up across the mix and just reducing it a little bit with EQ. It's probably where I'd start, and I regularly when I'm mixing other people's projects, that is where I start is reducing those low frequencies and uh um sort of lower mid-frequencies that build up unnecessarily and and and start muddying things, really.

Marc Matthews: 10:30

Yeah, I I would agree with with everything you've said there. One thing that did come to mind was uh vocals, and I've seen projects and I've heard projects from people where um because you mentioned there that you don't want to remove too much, and I I know with particularly with vocals, I think you need to err on the side of caution sometimes with that because you can have quite thin sounding vocals. Because, for example, my voice is quite quite deep. So if I were to to attribute some of that to I'd lose a lot of the the body. Indeed, indeed, yeah, yeah. The the later in the day it gets, the deeper my voice gets as well, which is why I quite like recording these later. I should do those like uh those Calm uh the Calm app where I just tell a story, yeah.

Tim Benson: 11:13

But you're right, if that's where your voice sits and you've got that nice deep sort of resonance in your voice, you don't want to go and take it all out. That's kind of the character of your voice, but you might need to carve a bit out of some of the things that are around it, exactly. Yeah, so that there's room for it, is I guess a good place to start anyway.

Marc Matthews: 11:34

Yeah, and I think automation as well, automation can play a big, big, big part in that. And I I use uh as you do as well with automation to move things around. There's a lot going on in a particular section with some panning or maybe it's some time-based effects to push something back or bring something forward, or just volume, or EQ as well. I uh automate EQ, I do it a lot on kick drums to be fair, but more from a um a creative perspective rather than moving it out of the way of something, it's more for a for a creative sort of thing in particular. But one thing uh in particular when it comes to sort of EQ, I find is sometimes, and I do this more often than not now, is before I reach for an EQ, and because I've got something conflicting, um, one thing I think it's quite important for people to do is to mute that or drop it in level and think actually, is this contributing? I think that also comes back to arrangement, which is what we said right at the beginning. Um, and then actually, if I take this out and it has very little impact on the on the on the product as a whole, do I need it? Do I need to waste time with EQ in this instance, which I think is quite an important thing?

Tim Benson: 12:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I definitely agree with that. It's like it does it, yeah. If if I mean sometimes you just end up with parts that you came up with, and then you've added another part and you've added another part, and you sometimes have to start going back, yeah, but I really now this part is really signature and this is really working. Does that mean that that part I added earlier, is that actually now any use? Or is it just redundant and I've left it in the mix, you know, just taking up room? And I find that sometimes I'll have, you know, got too many sort of too many sounds as well that go in the same register. So try and think where they're sitting, you know. Um if you've got a uh if you've got a sort of nice tambourine part, it's not gonna be clashing with your um sort of low synth pad, but um, you know, your your sort of tambourine part might be clashing with the hi-hat part, and you might not need both of them, or you might need to simplify one uh if you're gonna have the other in, you know, or something, or you might need to ch change the sound of one uh a little bit, you know. So yeah, it's sort of it's when things sit in the same register that they tend to sort of, you know, cause take up space and cause clashing. I mean, we're talking more in the lower end of the mix, I know, when we're talking about mud, but it kind of I don't know. Do you think you can separate sort of high end is sort of do you think mud really means everything that's going wrong about the the lower end of the mix, or do you think it's clarity in the upper mix as well that we're talking about?

Marc Matthews: 14:27

I think I think it's clarity in the upper mix as well. Yeah. Because I think that can often be overlooked in what's what's going on up there. For example, particular genres maybe you've got a lot of um you mentioned tambourines there, but you might have a lot of tops going on, you might have shakers, crashes, hi-hats, and all this stuff happening. And if all that's happening in the same space, you're just going to get a massive energy buildup in the in the higher frequencies as well, which can sound quite harsh, quite busy, and can be very fatiguing on the ears as well.

Tim Benson: 14:57

Yeah, very fatiguing. Yeah, that's make everyone turn it down.

Marc Matthews: 15:01

Yeah, yeah. Especially if you've got a really bad playback playback system, and that might be like I've got these Bluetooth headphones and they favor like the upper mids, high frequencies. And if I listen to something that's remotely harsh, it makes me cringe, which is quite it's good and bad in a way. I never lit I never listen to my mixes on it because I would never make a decision on a mix based on those headphones. Um, but yeah, I think so. I think clarity also comes in the in the higher frequencies as well. Yeah, as well.

Tim Benson: 15:34

What do you think about using things like uh fresh air and some of these sort of like uh these kind of like I don't know if you've used that by Stephen Slow. Yeah, I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that some of these sort of things where sort of enhancements really to the high frequencies. Because um, I mean, that is that is always the question, is sort of you know, if you're lacking clarity in your mix, do you sort of add more detail the top end? And I think it can work myself, but I think you have to be judicious and sort of use it on certain elements and be cautious as to how much you're pushing in. Um, you've got to be careful because when your ears get tired as well and fatigued, and you get used to something, you have a tendency to just add a lot more top end in and then like discover later on that it's horribly bright, you know.

Marc Matthews: 16:26

But yeah, I use uh I use fresh air, I use it much like yourself, uh judicious uh judiciously, uh on hats, and to be fair, I use it less now. I think in the last few years, and um notably since I've moved into doing more EDM-based stuff, and I focus more now on getting the right sample, which is what I probably should have done way, way sooner. Um, so I use it less, but I still use it, I use it a lot on claps. I do like it on claps, can add some nice attack on claps, but that's that's about it. I never use it on a crash. I try and find the best sample for a crash, but I use it very sparingly, particularly with something like fresh air, because it will, and there's also you've got to be mainly you've got to be aware of the signal level with it as well. As soon as you even boost it a tiny bit, or you turn that knob, those because you can have it linked, you turn one and it does doesn't both, it will that your that signal level bumps up really quick, really fast. Um, and I find myself having to dip it by two or three dB. Otherwise, it just sounds way too loud. But I think like like I said, you just gotta I wouldn't use it on everything, otherwise it would just sound everything in that sort of upper upper up upper frequency range, all those instruments. I think it was because you can put a I've known people put it on a mixed bus as well.

Tim Benson: 17:48

Yeah, you've got to be very careful when you put anything on your mixed bus because just a tiny movement will add a lot to the overall thing at that point because you've probably got a lot of level going into it and you don't need much. But yeah, sometimes these things just work, you just that is what you need. But another thing I think that can cause mud in mixes is compression. It's not that compression is bad, compression is very good news, but um you've got to watch out a little bit because if you're over compressing everything and you end up with everything very undynamic and all a sort of maximum sort of you know, kind of you're maxing out the level really, so there's no dynamics in your track, you can find that everything just feels like it it just you basically there's no light and shade in in the mix and there's no space, yeah, flat. Um you know, and you may, I mean, I think you don't realise it, but if you're sort of with compression basically bringing up the low-level signals and reducing the high high-level signals, and so you're getting a much more even level, that can be good. But equally, you're kind of affecting the frequency to a degree because you're beginning to sort of you know, even say some of your quieter sounds are sort of bass sounds, for instance. If you haven't filtered out some of the frequencies that you don't want in there, you'll be pushing them up a little bit, and if you're you'll be bringing down the high frequencies because they're quite bright in the sound. So you you can actually affect the frequency um, you know, uh sort of makeup of sounds slightly by over-compressing them, and then you end up with everything being very sort of I don't know, sort of lacking in brightness, lacking and sort of becoming very sort of middly, I find.

Marc Matthews: 19:45

Yeah, yeah. It's on my list of notes here, actually, exactly what you mentioned there about um compression and and flattens, flattening, um, and just we need those, you need transience, you want interesting. Yeah, you need transience, you know, you need those dynamics. Yeah, yeah. Because you can have night and day whereby you can add and remove parts, uh, which we do, but you also need you need those dynamics as well to make just to make it interesting to the listener and keep the keep them engaged. Otherwise, nothing worse than just a really flat song. No, exactly.

Tim Benson: 20:16

I think it's particularly on things that are like I'm always cautious on something, say, like I don't know, electric guitar, like strumming sort of like patterns, like um or acoustic guitar or um or you know, pads or anything that's constant, a constant sound, be careful that you don't over compress that sound because if it's fairly constant in level anyway, yeah, yeah, what are you doing? Yeah, what are you actually doing? Whereas something I mean, like a kick or a snare or something that's a sort of short sound, maybe you you can really fatten it with a bit of compression, control it, and maybe you know you need it on your bass sound to keep your bass from sort of jumping up and down in the mix. There are certain things that it really um and vocals, you've got to get that consistency often in a sort of pop track, haven't you, where the vocals sit in the track. So there are things that really benefit from. Quite a bit of compression in your mix, but if you put quite a bit of compression on everything, you but particularly if you don't let the transients through, so you have a very fast attack and a slow release. Again, changing your attack and release times can really change the dynamics on things. So you can have compression, but with slower attack and faster release, and then you will still get some of the dynamic coming through. In fact, you can enhance the dynamic. So yeah, so I think right use of compressions should be in there somewhere. Definitely agree with that.

Marc Matthews: 21:49

And it's interesting you mentioned the pads there. I I find myself I don't really compress pads, I think I control more of that with regards to the velocity. So I go in and control it that way. I think that comes from when I've had audio as well before because using things like clip gain. So I do more of that now before hitting a compressor. Um but I think I don't know about you, but when it comes to pads, if I do do it, it's more for a sort of sound. So the sound of the compressor, maybe sticking, I don't know, an L hypothetically an LA2A on there for example.

Tim Benson: 22:26

I use an LA2A quite a lot on on pads, but with only a very minimal amount of light gain reduction, it's mainly for the sound on the that it adds a little bit of harmonic content to them, which can be really nice. So it's almost the saturation and other other things that those modelling compressors add is can be quite nice. Yeah.

Marc Matthews: 22:50

Yeah. Just before we wrap things up here, circling back to what we were discussing earlier about the top end with regards to adding clarity. Um, do you ever find yourself removing? So if you want, say if you want to balance something out rather than adding, say if you've got a top end that's slightly lacking, rather than thinking, okay, well, I need to go and find or I need to, I've identified the problem. I'm now going to use some tools at my disposal to boost, let's say, um, I'm gonna add some saturation to some instruments in the in the higher frequency range, or would you carve more out of the the sort of yin and yang, would you carve more out of the lower frequency or the low mids to make them less prominent to boost the highs?

Tim Benson: 23:30

Well, I think that works. I mean, I think that definitely works when because it depends how your mix bus is set up. But if you if you are the kind of person that mix into, and I do actually, I never used to, but I do these days mix quite all my tracks really. I tend to mix into compression with a little bit of EQ. Um, so I tend to mi have a few things on my my master bus that sort of I'm mixing into, and if you're doing that, you've got to be very careful because you're eating up dynamic range by it in in your tracks, say with like a busy sort of lower mids or something, that will affect the brightness of the track, and if you take those down in level, you will start to not only notice that the frequency sort of opens up within the track, you can sort of notice and hear the highs better, but of course, you'll be reducing the volume that you're pushing into your your master bus. So if it was compressing, it will be compressing a little bit less. So you've got to be cautious because if you have lots of you know, lower mid banging in there and bass, bass is a real classic for it, isn't it? If you've got a lot of bass energy and it's pushing into your mix compressor, it will be acting quite a lot and like reducing the volume a lot, like and and and that can make your mix sound dull, basically. Um if you know what I mean. Sometimes reducing the bass is a good way to brighten it up.

Marc Matthews: 25:06

So yeah, yeah, it's like the yin and yang, isn't it? It's almost thinking, okay, I'm not immediately going to try and just boost something up here. I'm actually gonna try and take something away instead.

Tim Benson: 25:17

Um little bit less bass end suddenly makes the track feel more alive and you know, and lighter and brighter in a funny way. Yeah.

Marc Matthews: 25:26

Yeah, it's it's a it's a tenuous link, but it reminds it's it's a similar, it reminds me of the process I'm going through now. So I'm working on a track that I shared with you, and I'd say I decided to take a different approach to the arrangement side of things, which was kick drum, tops, add a vocal, and I'm then building everything apart from the melody. And is I've never done it that way. Usually I would do like kick, get some tops in there, get some get some sound effects in there, some some uplifters and stuff, and then if I've got a vocal great, if I haven't, I'll then start figuring out okay, well, what melody am I going to use here? But I've done it the other way, I'm just filling out all the other sounds first, and I'm finding it's quite an interesting way of doing it because I've now identified that I only need maybe one or two, I need like a maybe a lead that fluctuates and changes throughout, and maybe a pad here and there. Whereas previously, if I'd gone the other way, this is me anecdotally talking now, I would have just like you said, by the time I get to I often do this, by the time I get to the um the outro, the last chorus, because my tracks kind of build to this almost like a crescendo, I've got so I've got quite a lot going on there, and I end up taking stuff away. But doing it this other way where I've done everything else, including just like percussion and everything else that fits around it, I'm finding I'm I'm needing less, which is quite an interesting way of doing it. As an audience listening, yeah. If if you've not ever done it that way, do everything else. If you're not using a vocal, then just use your lead instrument and build everything else around. Um, and then your percussion, uplifters, all that sort of stuff, and even the bass. And then I suppose it works well for like EDM and dance music. It might not work well for sort of uh a rock band, let's say, or something like that, but it works quite well for what I've done. It just what I find is it just sounds a lot more open, yeah. Open and clear, which is the topic opening clear.

Tim Benson: 27:22

Oh, I end up with today's episode. The kitchen sink in by the end if I'm not careful.

Marc Matthews: 27:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is it. Um, and I find that my ideas, yeah. I I know so I'm like, oh, I like that sound. I'll stick it in there, I'll stick it in there, and I get and then and then I listen at the end of my session, I'll listen. It gets to the end, I'm like, what the fuck is going on at the end here? I've got all this stuff going on. I need to need to get rid of some bits and pieces. Um, but yeah, it was it was a slightly tenuous link I was going off on that. I just thought it'd be interesting to raise how taking sometimes taking a different approach to this is particularly with arrangement as well, which goes right back to what you said at the beginning about how arrangement is important and what you do there.

Tim Benson: 28:03

I think you mentioned as well like panning, which it's it's those simple things like panning and volume as well. It's like mastering something this week, and uh actually the guy's gonna go back and look at his mix and and just what it it probably is sort of a frequency thing where where he's got a synth and a violin and they kind of start clashing and they get really quite bright um and sharp in the mix, so he he's kind of sort of gonna work on reducing that a little bit, and uh that will probably help. But I did say to him, sort of uh sometimes it's just like even looking at that, it might just be volume, it might just be that when you add those two parts together in that section, it's just getting a bit too loud, and if you just you don't need to do a lot with the frequency, you just need to dip one or other of them a little bit or both of them in the track, um, because there's a lead synth and a violin and they're too too loud together, adding together. But if they reduced a little bit, you might find that it it worked well in the final track. But yeah, as it is, it's just becoming a bit harsh. Um, you know, but yeah, it's it's funny that, and again, if you pan them slightly left and right, so that they're not in the same space, you can have things that are both sitting in the same frequency range and they sit there okay when they're panned a bit further apart, but it right in the centre of the mix together, they're kind of too much, so you know, yeah.

Marc Matthews: 29:35

Yeah, agreed, mate, agreed. And um, one thing I would end add to the end of that is do all those steps first before you reach for a silver bullet AI plugin that will add clarity to your mix. I would say don't rely on that sticking a plug-in on it and then it fixing it for you. Get it right at source. Oh, yes, definitely. It's the old adage, and it's a indeed pretty much with every step of the music process, really, and in general. Um, so there we go, folks. Clearer mixes don't come from better plugins, as I mentioned at the end there, they come from clearer decisions and what matters. So, my challenge to you what's the part in your mix that might be doing too much? Try muting one track before your next EQ move. Send us a message in the episode notes. In the show notes, there's a send me a message link and let us know. Alternatively, ask us a question that you might want featured on a later episode. And if you've enjoyed this one, go check out episode 175 also with uh with Tim as well. What's the secret to mixing without muddiness? Looks like we're circling back on a similar conversation, and it would also be interesting to listen back to that one and see if we've totally changed our perspective. Um, I'd like to think no, but then again, you never know. Um, before we uh sign off, as we always do, any any news, anything coming up? Yes, generally music-wise.

Tim Benson: 31:02

Well, I don't know when this comes out, but I shall have a new uh I shall have a new track out probably but at the end of January. I've just been working on a new release for my R9 project. Um, so um yeah, it's called Phosphorescent, and it's an instrumental sort of synth wave kind of vibe. Um, so that'll be coming out. Um trying to think what else I've been working on. I've been doing some various projects with local folk here in different musical genres, and then I'm I'm sort of also trying to get round to doing some of my own song-based things. There's a different sort of I'll probably release them under my own name or whatever, or different artist name. But um yeah, yeah, but uh more I know stuff coming as well. Trying to sort of trying to figure out some slightly new directions for this year, but like not straying too far from what I've been doing.

Marc Matthews: 31:57

Lovely stuff, mate. This is going to come out in the third so of Feb, third of Feb. So it would have been out by then. So I'll put a link in the episode description as I always do. So looking forward to that one. So cheers, Tim. Uh it's always a pleasure. We'll do it again in uh next month at some point. And um, folks, if this has helped, uh do also click the link in the episode description and jump on my mailing list. Now it sounds spammy, I promise you it's not. I send you once a week, I'll send you an email with some tips and tricks on music production and mixing. And there's no automated email chain or anything like that. So uh, if you want more tips and tricks in your inbox, do sign up for that. You can click the link in the show notes. And until next time, big thank you, Tim. Folks, keep creating, keep mixing, and I will see you in the next episode.