u/murrayhitchock

I'm kind of a beginner as far as trying to make my stuff sound really good, mix-wise, even though I've been making music for a while.

Every now and again I'll come across some advice on various forums concerning the stereo width of the kick, bass, snare, and other elements in the mix. Some people suggest making the kick and/or bass mono, and letting other elements remain at 100% width, such as pads, leads, and other embellishments.

I have different plugins that allow you to set the stereo width of a track at 0%, but is this truly "mono"? It usually sounds goofy when I do it. The kick and the bass always seem to lose a dimension, and they sound thin.

In the context of ambient / lofi / downtempo stuff, what advice do you have concerning the stereo widths of different elements in a mix? Is it reasonable to just let every element remain at a default 100% width? How do you handle these things in your mixes?

Team lead messages me in team chat, saying she can't access the new UI designs.

I tell her I'll try accessing them.

Access denied, don't have permission.

I message them back: "Guess the feature is cancelled!"

Immediately get 6 laughing emoji reactions. They can't get enough, folks. And we're just getting started.

A wonderful man who's had 89 wonderful years. His love for Elvis and the Auburn Tigers is only eclipsed by his love for his wife, children, grandchildren, and Jesus Christ. A coal miner who put more honest work in during a week than I will probably do in a lifetime. A simple, kind, and patient man who sacrificed himself over and over again for his friends and family.

"I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die. And whoever lives by believing in me will never die."

When I was little, I couldn't say my "R's". So when I'd say "water", I'd say "wadda", and so on.

I grew up in a very rural, culturally homogenous part of the country. It was like 90% white, very conservative, very evangelical. The speech teacher / therapist was a black lady named Mrs. Thomas. She was so patient and so kind to all of the kids who couldn't say stuff right and she worked diligently to help us correct it.

I came home one day when I was 7 and said "Carrrrrr" to my mom and she baked a cake that night for us to celebrate.

I recently found out she passed away, but not before leaving a life long legacy of mentorship to all the little kids who could've been left behind because of their speech impediments, many of which were worse than mine.

As I lay in bed sick today with the flu, I'm reminded of a passage from the Book of Acts where Phillip the Apostle comes across an Ethiopian eunuch who was reading the works of the prophet Isaiah and trying to understand it.

Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.

“How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

Jesus told us that we will know people by their fruit. I don't know if any fruit is more representative of the blossoming of Christ in the human soul than what Mrs. Thomas did for all of us over the years.

Gotta get this off my chest. There’s something significant I’m feeling, but I can’t quite place it, and I’m not sure I have the words for it.

About 15 years ago, a close friend of mine and I were robbed at gunpoint by three troubled youths in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. My friend hesitated at first, didn’t want to comply, but with two guns pointed at my head, I told him as calmly as I could to give them everything he had. I did the same. Thankfully, they didn’t push it any further and told us to gtfo.

On the drive back to our apartment, we saw police cars and an ambulance near the library. We stopped and told the cops what had just happened. Turns out those same guys had already shot someone else, and that person was being loaded into the ambulance.

The very next day, Alabama got hit with a generational tornado outbreak that killed over 300 people. I’ll never forget those two days, April 26–27, 2011.

Around 2015, we drifted apart. Nothing dramatic, just life. During that time, he got married, had a daughter, and now has another kid on the way, along with a stepson he treats as his own. I got married in 2017. In 2021, my wife’s younger sister passed away unexpectedly. We also went through three miscarriages over a couple of years, including an ectopic pregnancy.

Yesterday, I finally went over to his place. It happened to be the 15th anniversary of us getting robbed, which neither of us realized until after I left.

I met his daughter for the first time. I was blowing bubbles with some gum and it made her cry, but she still gave me a high five. She tripped and hit her head on the table and cried again. Just being a toddler lol. She wanted one thing, then another, then changed her mind, asked for an Oreo, cried, laughed, cried again. All over the place. But she was absolutely precious. Looked just like him.

At one point, his stepson came out and asked for a ride somewhere. My friend asked his wife if she could take him instead so he could hang out with me for a bit. She said no, she’s pregnant and didn’t feel up to it. She seemed pretty worn down and didn’t say much to either of us. Later, he asked if she could watch their daughter while he showed me his drone. She said she didn’t feel good, and he dropped it.

He ended up setting up the drone anyway and showed me how it worked through his phone. It’s not really my thing, but it was cool. He told me he doesn’t have time for anything except work and the kids, so every night he steps out onto the porch for 15 or 20 minutes to fly it before bed. That’s his only time to himself.

He seemed happy, but also exhausted and stressed. I told him it might get easier as his daughter gets older. He looked at me with this really tired expression and said, “Well I've got another on the way."

Life is so beautiful it can be genuinely terrifying sometimes.