Hey. I’m from Denmark and I’ve seen him play as a guitarist for many of our big, legacy artist on big stages in tv shows etc since the 90s. I am also a bit curious as to how this band is build, whether it’s just him doing all the parts or what’s the deal. As far as I know he’s working on a live tour of it. You should check out Arc de Soleil too. It’s a bit similar but more a middle eastern flavor as opposed to the surf vibe and then recently he started to sing a little. probably inspired by Khruangbin sparse use of vocals

Oh. That’s really cool! Love the music he’s doing. I’ll think of some question and get back to soon.

Hey. Here is my input. A lot of the same stuff as Martin as far as I can tell. I think ultimately you will have a natural flow of the conversation, but here are some things, that I ‘m curious about from my own perspective. Getting streams 1. As far as I can tell he only has two tracks on official Spotify playlist. Was he featured more when he started putting out music and was that crucial to help building a large fanbase? 2. Where are the listeners coming from now? Is it from the Spotify radio plays or is it more listeners that has found him through Instagram and TikTok? 3. What is his advice to someone putting out instrumental music looking to attract even more listeners? 4. He has deal with Musicbed for licensing his music for films, commercials etc. and then he also has his own Northwind Music Library How are those to licensing options going? 5. Does he compose directly for films, commercials etc? How did that start? 6. And then something about the Patreon/Substack initiatives Mixing and recording 1. How does he record his guitar. Which interface, what daw, amp simulator, pedals and so on 2. I really like how he’s guitar actually seems to be quite dry with a lot less reverb than lot of us would be tempted to add. How does he go about crafting his sonic, ambient universe and especially advice on how to balance the use of reverb.

@Jacopo Ramonda Thanks a lot! Glad to hear you're cranking my song. AT first there is both some big reverb sounds made on guitar using a Chase Bliss Mood MKII to create a huge pad-like sound along with some sweets where I turn the guitar volume up. But there is also a synth pad coming in at 0:15. That's a preset from the Alchemy synth in Logic. From 1:53 there's a lot of stuff coming in, but the rhythmic effect is an arpeggio done in Logic. Basically you play the chords (midi) and then add the Arpeggiator that can be set in various ways. Here it's doing 1/32 going down and then I also have a tremolo that makes the sound go from side to side. over 3 bars.

@Jacopo Ramonda Yeah, I don’t have a midi guitar either. I’m just playing some chords on a keyboard or just drawing the notes of the chords in Logic

@Martin Eibisch Hey Martin. Thanks for your lengthy reply. It seems like there really is something psychological about judging our own tracks a bit harder than others. And thanks for the nice words about my sound. I'm overall quite happy just always trying to develop it further and especially getting the mixing and mastering right. Earlier on - for my first 5-7 tracks I had hired a guy to mix and master it, and part of the process was nice than in I only had to finish it up to a certain amount, and he'd take care of the rest, but I definitely prefer doing the whole thing now. It saves some money of course, but it's more about really learning and controlling everything. It's great to hear that you've tried a lot of different stuff and still like the mastering assistant. I also have tracks where I put a lot of stuff before it on the master bus. Sometimes also Slate Fresh Air (not pictured that adds some nice stuff around 3-5 k and 8-10 k. Like your chain it seems to be mostly about adding some saturation to get that analog warmth. I also think the Logic vintage EQ's can do that and a lot of people are mentioning the tape delay (set to 0 delay, only for tape sound). Lately I've been downloading a lot of reference tracks and I've spent a lot of time just looking at the EQ curves of my own tracks and those tracks (including As the Seasons Turn and a few of gems from @Sebastian Jautschus as well From Somewehere Quiet, Adam Dodson and so on). I have a Logic file with about 15 tracks and just an EQ on the master. I recently bought the Fabfilter Pro Q4 and I'll just play various tracks and look at the curve and try to see where my own tracks are a bit different. Regarding the warmth I can actually see that I might have a little less low end than some other tracks, and I'll to leave in a bit more on the guitar tracks for my next songs. Talking abut going down the rabbit hole. The screenshots are from after analyzing the first 30-40 seconds (and freezing the highest value) in Things We Leave Behind and your As the Seasons Turn and your track actually have about 3 more db up to around 350 k, so I think I could probably start cutting less of the low frequencies on some of the various guitar tracks and see how that will end up.

@Martin Eibisch The visual method is just what happens to work best for me in developing my ears and senses. I'm sure some people can easier hear and feel what's right in those regards. And regarding the warmth and the various ways it seems like we are using the same kinds of tools and when ever I've searched upon it in forums and YouTube that way of using subtle saturation in some form really do seem to be the way to go. And sometimes it's Logic's Chromaglow, a tae emulator, a dedicated saturation plugin, the tape delay-trick, something like a Pultec Eq and so on. And new plugins to do this are dropping all the time. I really want to learn one or two of these tools and then just stick to them to get the result, rather than throwing the latest flashy plugin or YouTube-trick towards the master chain. It's sometimes a little bit random what I use to get that warm saturated and compressed sound TBH. But that's part of the process for me at least. Always learning and trying new things.

Hey Martin. I was a bit hesitant regarding that service since it's outside of EU and would mean import fees elsewhere, but from what I've heard it isn't really a problem. Any experience with that? And what about masters and the good old discussion about mastering separately for vinyl? Were you able to use your original masters?

@Martin Eibisch That is great to hear and certainly very inspiring for my next album - and maybe even my first one that came out about a year ago.