Click here to head to Mitchell’s latest single “Dim the Lights” http://bit.ly/2K40dB2
Transcript of Podcast
0.00 – 0.23
Wayne: G’day and welcome to Wayne’s Wonder World. This podcast will be mainly about musicians entertainers and actors. But from time to time I will also have other guests that I find interesting. Hope you enjoy the podcast please head to Wayneswonderwold.com and please feel free to follow me on my Facebook page Wayne’s Wonder World.
0.23 – 0.38
Wayne: on today’s show of Wayne’s Wonder World we have a young guest from Perth and his name is Mitchell Martin. Mitchell Martin welcome to Wayne’s Wonder World.
Mitchell: Thanks so much for having me.
Wayne: No worries thanks for being on the show. So Mitchell who are you?
0.38 – 1.07
Mitchell: So basically I am a 22 year old musician. Originally from Bunbury but now based in Perth Western Australia. I am studying music full town at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts aka Edith Cowan University. I am also doing music as my full time job so I don’t have any other job I just do music full time and earn a living out of writing, recording and performing my original music and a couple of songs as well.
1.07 – 2.09
Wayne: At what age did music first interest you?
Mitchell: Well I actually got into music fairly late. At my primary school we didn’t really have much of a music program and I was into a lot of different sports at the time. But pretty much when I got into high school I started guitar lessons and that was my first introduction into music. I really just wanted to be a guitarist I was playing all the time. I got into a bunch of different bands then when I was 14 I decided to start singing in this band cos we didn’t have a singer. I was pretty awful at singing to begin with. Pretty much over time just got better and better at singing. Started getting lessons because I was hurting my voice when I was younger especially when my voice was breaking. Went on to different bands then eventually to where I was performing solo a lot of the time. Yeah that was pretty much how I sort of got into music.
2.09 – 7.05
Wayne: You were one of only a few artist in Perth who uses looping for you performance. Can you describe what this is and do you think it gives you that little something special?
Mitchell: Yeah so looping basically it’s a guitar effect pedal. What I do is I put my guitar, keyboard, vocal mic and I use a pedal that loops my electric guitar or acoustic guitar. What is does is basically you record yourself playing and then you hit the record button again and what you just played loops over and over and you add different layers of different instruments. You have 3 different tracks that you can start and stop independently or start and stop all at once. Basically this helps you make a really nice big backing track to play along to but you can play it live rather just playing to a track that is prerecorded so it shows people how you would actually make that if you were in a studio at home or with a band except you are doing all the instrument. Definitely makes me a bit different in Perth with other solo acts because general most people will perform with just a guitar or just a keyboard. Where I get to show that I can do a bit of everything.
Wayne: Is it a bit nerve racking making sure you do record that sequence for the looping process?
Mitchell: Yeah absolutely it’s very easy to mess it up. When you have messed it up its hard to fix it on the fly. It’s just a matter or practice more than anything. When I first started looping I was like 15 I got my first looping pedal after I saw Ed Sheeran using it. I was pretty awful at it. I tried to use it live at a couple of gigs and it turned out pretty badly because I would nervous and record too quickly or too slowly. That was probably the biggest thing the tempo. Because it is all based on your internal clock all of its free time so it’s based on your timing. It was just a matter of doing it a lot and as my timing got better and got better as a musician it got easier. I started when I was 15 and then I left it because I just couldn’t pull it off live and I could do it at home and even at home it was pretty rough. But yeah I sort of came back to it when I was about 17 so I was in year 12 nearly leaving school and that was when I sort of got back into it. Then I was gigging really hard when I left high school. I was doing about 2 to 3 gigs a week. Like cover gigs lot of like background stuff. Especially down south because there was so many wine houses so many places to play cover gigs. I was pretty much doing that as my full time job and I took my loop station along to all those gigs. And just slowly got better and better at it basically and they kept getting bigger as well. I kept adding different things to it. Because originally it was just me, my guitar and the loop station pedal. I upgraded to the bigger version of it and then I brought different instrumentals into it. Now it’s pretty massive and I’m trying to not get any bigger with it. Just leave it where it is and just refine everything I got. Now with acoustic guitar, electric guitar a keyboard which is like a synthesizer so I can play like drum beats through that, baselines, synth parts and things like that. All those production lines are through the keyboard. I can loop vocals as well. So I pretty much have all the bases covered with what I have at the moment. In the future I would love to get to the point where I could do some looping with Ableton which is a production software. Then basically people who use Ableton they play to a click track and what that does it just make it sound like super tight because everything is locked to the grid and they can have some live quantizing happening as well which is basically if any of your beat is a tiny bit off it can lock it directly to the grid. Also you can have any sound you want on the laptop whereas at the moment it’s pretty much anything in the synthesizer or that I can make with my guitar and things like that. So I have seen a lot of people doing it with Ableton and they can do any different base sound.
Wayne: You can really be like a one man band can’t you.
Mitchell: Absolutely as the technology gets better and cheaper it’s gonna get a lot more available to everyone. At the moment Ableton for me would just be over kill. It’s so expensive the whole program and everything. It would be quite counter intuitive because it’s less about pedals and instead playing to a click and then programing it to start looping independently.
7.05 – 9.06
Wayne: Oh Great. As you mentioned before you were from Bunbury and in 2017 you made the move to Perth to study at WAAPA (West Australian Academy of Performing Arts) so what are you doing there and what has it been like?
Mitchell: Yeah so the last 2 years I came up in 2017 and I did a diploma of music artist which is a performance course and I went on to do the advanced diploma of that. Not a degree an advanced diploma. And basically it was just heavily practice like we did a lot of theory and oral but pretty much everything else was just performing in bands doing a lot of song writing and composing. Playing with other people learning how to use some different production software’s and things like that. Pretty much just a whole lot of music 5 days a week. Pretty intense. The contact hours was immense. Balancing that with the amount of gigs I was doing was and is pretty hard. But now what I am doing is the music education degree. Doing the advanced diploma cut a year off the bachelors so it’s two and a half years. So I have two years remaining at WAAPA. It’s mainly on the Edith Cowan side rather than the WAAPA side because I have pretty much done all the music units out of the bachelor education. It’s pretty much education full time at the moment which is intense. It’s a lot more written work, like high school. Which is quite different for me cos I took 2 gap years then 2 year just music. So it’s my 5th year out of high school and let’s get back into actual school work and doing lots of assignments and essays and things like that. I always found school not too difficult so it’s been pretty smooth.
9.06 – 11.25
Wayne: You had the opportunity once to perform at Optus stadium here in Perth. Playing for more than 50,000 people. How did this opportunity come about and what was the experience like?
Mitchell: So basically hit 92.9 have a quarter time show and it’s called Hit Live. Basically a local artist gets to go and perform a hit or an old school song. I chose to do shape of you by Ed Sheeran cos it was a hit at the time. It was a huge song especially at the time, it was the biggest song of 2018. So I went there and performed with my loop station for the Fremantle Dockers at their quarter time it was their first game at Optus Stadium. I rocked up with my keyboard, loop pedal in ears and things like that. It was absolutely terrifying. It was so loud, the echo in there is just insane especially from where I was situated there was just so many different echoes you could play a cord and it would come back at you from so many deferent angles at the same time. So where I was sounded a bit like mush. But in the stands it sound really good. So what you do is you wear in ears and what in ear monitors are is they are wireless and connected to where the sound guy is and you can hear exactly what you’re playing and hear it coming back to you instantly. It made it so much easier to play in time. They are sound isolating so I could actually only hear what I was doing, it blocks out everything else. Except obviously what picked up through the microphone so I could still hear a lot of the audience. It’s not full isolated it doesn’t sound like you’re in a bedroom. It makes it possible to play in a stadium which is why when you see bigger artists they all have to have in ear monitors you can’t just go on stage with fold backs, at least most people can’t because it’s so loud and there is so many echoes and you just sound pretty terrible.
11.25 – 13.04
Wayne: Wow very interesting. I believe you placed second in the gozzy rock competition I’m guess that’s a competition in Gosnell’s.
Mitchell: Yeah so the city of Gosnell’s ran it.
Wayne: Yeah coming second I believe you won a few fair prizes and recording time. Do you think this has helped you get a step up with your career?
Mitchell: yeah absolutely. So placed second it was like a battle of the bands competition but anyone was open to enter. So I went in with my loop station set up and managed to come second which was really cool. So with that I won a thousand dollars, some recording time and I also got to perform at a big festival as well with that. So with the recording time I went and recorded some Demos which I then used at the start of this year because I was recording some new music so I took those demos in as sort of guide tracks for what I wanted because it wasn’t a huge recording time but it was time to get some solid demos recorded to be able to take into my studio when I was going to record them officially. It was just a big help really just because financially it’s really hard when you are studying full time and living away from home and trying to work when you can as a musician as well so I don’t always get paid the most amount of money and I do music full time I don’t have another job it’s just music.
13.04 – 16.31
Wayne: Great stuff, I think also you supported Killing Heidi and Justice Crew at the illuminate night festival. What was this like?
Mitchell: So that was actually the festival that I got to play at because of Gozzy Rock. So basically first, second and third got to go and be the local support for Killing Heidi like the main act and Justice Crew was their national support and us from Gozzy rock got to be their local support. It was pretty cool the festival was massive, the stage was huge and it was really cool getting to be a part of a huge stage production. Because it was for such big acts the quality was really really good compared to anything else I had really done before. They supplied me with in ear systems, everything was wireless, it was a really high tech set up. And it was such a big stage which was nice. I got to do that big solo with the loop pedal and it all went really well I got to meet Justice Crew I didn’t get to meet Killing Heidi because they were on at the very end so they just sat in the green room. But I got to meet Justice Crew backstage. I got to hang out with other acts from Gozzy rock which was really cool, city of Gosnell’s offered me other gigs in the future. I got to perform live in the Amputheatre this year. I got to support Elli Schoen and Kyle Lionhart from Byron and that was another big gig and that all sort of came about by placing second in Gozzy rock and getting to do well at that festival led to more things now. Which has been really helpful, it’s so great getting to play before these bigger acts because it really helps build yourself as a local artist.
Wayne: It sounds like these opportunities which you have found yourself in Mitchell you know you have either won a prize or met people. It sounds like these opportunities have led to bigger things from this encounter.
Mitchell: yeah exactly and I think that is the biggest thing. The battle of the bands both sort of competitions are quite daunting because they involve quite a few heats where you are not getting paid anything. So like “this Saturday I am not getting paid anything because I’m doing a heat” and then you just gotta hope you do well enough to place to win some financially help. But you gotta do it because it can lead to such bigger things like making connections with other acts. When it is a legit competition like that I think it is worth it.
Wayne: It’s very interesting I think you gotta work out the value of the outcome of that show or competition verse what you could be missing out on. But it sounds like that’s a calculated risk you make to determine what’s in your best interest.
Mitchell: Yeah exactly. If you went in there and didn’t place it would be a bit disappointing. But at the same time you gotta be in it to have that chance so it’s always good to give every opportunity a go if you think you got what it takes to place. Yeah give it a go and see how it goes.
16.31 – 19.30
Wayne: Yeah so I think we touched on this slightly before but my next question was do you record and mix your own music?
Mitchell: Yeah so I recorded my own demos at home so I have a very low budget level home studio. Basically I have got like Pro Tools which is a digital audio work station. It is the one that my producer who I record my official music with down in Bunbury uses. Basically what I do is I record with a mini keyboard all the drum parts, baselines and all the keys then I record my electric guitar, basses, and acoustic guitars into the audio software. Then I record all the vocals and backing vocals. So I mix that down and make my own little demo I then take that into the studio and we put my actual work I’ve done onto his software. So al the individual tracks show up on his software and we sort of strip it away and record the high quality stuff in its place. So I’m like “This is what I have in mind, let’s actually make it good.” So having mini drums compared to like a great session drummer playing on a really good kit, really good equipment. The quality is so different. But it just gives such a good idea of what we’re gonna do in the studio and it makes it so much more time efficient in the studio. Because if you go in with acoustic guitar and just sing the song and you are like “This is what I want but with a full band.” You sort of have to write all the parts in the studio. Or if you’re relying a band to write your parts it makes it harder because you are relying on other people to write your parts for you. It helps me when I go with my band as well because I have sort of written all the parts. So this is what I want and they can sort of put their own flavor onto it. Because I am not like an incredible bassist so I will give it to my bassist and they add in a lot more moving notes and make it sound a lot better than what I would have. Same with the drums I am not a drummer and also I’m recording with mini drums so the fills sound pretty bassy so they make it sound way better sounding. Same with everything the only instruments I say I officially play is guitar and vocals. So like the lead guitarist I can give him a lot of ideas of what I sort of want and you still gotta give them their own freedom to come up with their own parts they want to play. But it’s good because you get to have a strong idea of what you want.
19.30 – 22.02
Wayne: So I was just gonna say sounds like it’s more than just going into a room and recording it sounds like it’s very complex and technical than what I thought it would be with all the stuff you mentioned. It sounds like a lot of planning goes into the singles and albums you release.
Mitchell: Absolutely. It’s a huge thing going into the studio you don’t realize how long a song can take. It works out to be $800 so 10 hours per song. So per song it’s so expensive firstly. And that is because you just want every single instrument to be as perfect as you possibly can. People don’t realize how many takes you do of everything to get that vocal or that perfect guitar solo. Like with vocals it’s not as much depending on what the genre is, like my music is pretty organic so it’s not overly processed, but what you could do is you could record fifty vocal takes and then chop specific word lines and chop together all those takes so there is one vocal and it’s all these chopped up parts. So you do the same line fifty times and they picked the best word from each one. So that line has been made up of fifty takes to get the best line you could possibly do. They basically do that for the whole song. I don’t do fifty takes it’s like five or six. If you do that you chop it all together and then there is all the processing and everything that can go on top of it to make it perfect. That’s why people find it so hard to sound like that live because it’s the best of how many you can do as opposed to one live. It’s the same with any industry you don’t just do one guitar take. You use one take but you do like five and do the best one that felt like the best possible playing you could have done at that time. It is such a big process. When I record something I end up spending a week in the studio and you are in there for a long time.
22.02 – 24.08
Wayne: Geez very interesting where do the ideas for you songs come from.
Mitchell: A lot of songs are quite personal but lately I have been trying to draw inspiration from other things like reading a book or watching a movie. I like to think of myself from the perspective of one of the character or something like that. I have found that is quite an interesting way to write. I have been doing a lot of toplining. I have been doing a lot of EDM music lately a lot of it hasn’t been released but what they will do is a producer will send me a backing track and I write the melody and the lyrics and I send that back to them and they mix it into the track. With those sort of things when you are writing so many songs you tired of just writing about yourself or people you know. You start to want to write in different ways and you want to figure out other ideas to write and I think that is an interesting way to write about things. Sometimes just picked a topic and writing about a specific topic can be a really interesting way as well. But yeah you just gotta try and write from the heart and what you wanna write. If you try to write a song specifically for what people want to hear it will never be a very good song in my opinion because you are not writing something organic.
Wayne: Funny you say that. Like the motives behind your songs are from the heart it sounds like.
Mitchell: Yeah I think it’s really important not to just write a song you think people want to hear. It has to be something relevant to you so you can actually relate to it yourself. Then they will be able to hear that in the recording and I think they will be able to relate to it more than if you just want to write a song because this person has written a song like this. You record it and it just doesn’t have the same feeling. People won’t be able to connect with it even though it is about the same thing.
24.08 – 24.58
Wayne: I see what you mean so if writing a song to be a commercial hit that may not be the case it has to come from the heart to really connect with the audience it sounds like.
Mitchell: I think so. I think it is always good to write a song that will be catchy and I think that is different to lyrical content. I always try to write my songs in a commercial format. Like verse chorus the way I set it all out. And making sure the melody is nice and catchy and easy to sing along to and things like that. I think you shouldn’t sacrifice your lyrical content and what you are wanting to say just so it will be commercial or not even commercial just so it will fit into a certain scene you are involved with.
24.58 – 26.30
Wayne: Yeah okay. As a professional artist who inspires you?
Mitchell: Ed Sheeran was probably my first inspiration. I hadn’t really started singing very much until he started bursting out into the scene in 2011 when I was 14. Especially with looping I saw him do that and I was like wow I bought myself a loop station and tried it out. But other than that I really like Shawn Mendes. A new artist I have really gotten into is Dean Lewis he is an Australian artist I really love his stuff. There is another Australian artist actually at the moment I am really enjoying called Ruel he is really young. He is only like 16 or something like that. I enjoy the vibe in his songs they are really well crafted. There is another guy called Jack Garrett who is really cool because he has a lot of electronic influences in his songs but he still has that folky singer song writer elements. Like folk electronic which has been a really cool mixture. So there is a fair few different artist that inspire me. I also really like The Script and the The Fray those sort of older band acts and that’s sort of what I have been looking at. Like the Killers or Panic at the Disco I have been looking at something like that lately because I have been working with a band at the moment. So fair few different artists that I have been drawing inspiration from.
26.30 – 29.14
Wayne: I think as you said you are 22 at the moment is that correct?
Mitchell: Yes 22.
Wayne: Right so where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time.
Mitchell: Being 27. It’s always such a question. Ideally I would love to be travelling the world playing my music to people. Having lots of people listening to my music. Making a living off recording and playing my music and things like that. Definitely for the next two years I will getting this degree out of the way. I want to get this bachelor degree of education sorted because I think definitely if not straight away I really want to teach music. I did some guitar teaching after I left high school. I was teaching at Bunbury Catholic College. Doing that I really enjoyed teaching I was teaching guitar just private lessons I was teaching some duo and trio lessons. I was also teaching guitar ensembles. I really enjoyed that, like passing on what I had learned. But after the two years I felt like I wanted to learn more so I had more to teach. That is why I wanted to get this bachelor of education and get better at the instruments I play. To be able to help these students more and help pass on what I have learned and I think I am gonna have a lot of industry knowledge which is really cool. I think a lot of people who go onto music education haven’t had a lot of time to perform and get to do as many gigs and stuff. Whereas they are really educated on their instrument. I think it is gonna be quite cool because especially when I was studying music in high school and things like that they weren’t able to really tell me how to get your music onto Spotify or Itunes. Just different things I have been a part of for a long time now I can pass on.
Wayne: So more the business side of things I guess you could say.
Mitchell: Yeah absolutely so much of my job is admin now. Just sending emails, contacting, invoicing just so much of my time is just spent on a laptop just doing the business side rather than just playing. To the point where it would be really cool to get a manager to help me out a little bit. At the moment I am doing everything independently. It just sort of depends how everything goes over the next few years. But hopefully some bigger things will be happening.
29.14 – 30.48
Wayne: Sounds like it will Mitchell. I see on your Youtube channel you have had more than 673,000 views are you impressed by this?
Mitchell: Yeah absolutely. It’s been a journey on Youtube I started when I started singing and dabbling with the loop pedal like six years ago. I was about 15. Just sort of slowing putting up videos. Since then I have put up about a hundred covers as well as some original music up there. It has been a slow build but it has been a good time as well. It’s really good to look back and see my progression. I always thought I was pretty good but looking back at 15 16 it was pretty rubbish. It is quite good to see how much I have improved and good to be able to look back at something and think “If I sang that now and played that now if would be so much better than where I was at that point.” It’s really cool to be able to reflect on that. I have hit over more than 5 thousand subscribers. So every time I put up a video 5 thousand people should hopefully get notified about it and then go and watch it. In the ideal world that would be what would happen. Probably less than that would go and watch it. But it is really helping my views so every video I put up now is at least getting over a thousand views which is really good. And yeah just trying to constantly build it.
30.48 – 32.56
Wayne: Good stuff and what I think people may not be aware of is that with all this social media and Spotify and iTunes, YouTube. There is not a great deal of money if any there it’s more an avenue to I guess advertise yourself in the hope that people go to your shows.
Mitchell: Yeah absolutely. From Youtube I made my first hundred dollars not very long ago. It was like a hundred USD it’s still like 600,000 views. There is not a huge amount of money in it. Especially when you post covers because you don’t get the full amount of money from the video. Some of the royalties go to the actually artists and the publishers and the song writers of the songs. Obviously if I just put up my original music all the time and I was getting hundreds of thousands of views all the time per video it would start getting some revenue but yeah pretty much streaming has killed the business a little bit to be honest. I was a part of an EDM song recently and that is gonna be hitting a hundred thousand streams on Spotify and I haven’t made any money from that to be honest. It is probably gonna be the same like $70 and I am getting a percentage so it’s gonna be less. I’ve done it with a producer and he’s released it through an independent label. So I’m getting 30% the producer is getting 30% and the label is getting 40% so that is sort of where we are at in the music industry. Just trying to get streams. There is not much money. Whereas if you actually sold 100,000 copies back in the iTunes days for a dollar. It would still be $100,000 where now its $100. The difference is pretty huge with streaming. It’s definitely not about the money at this point it’s about lets put out content and build an audience.
32.56 – 35.52
Wayne: Great to hear. With the other guests who I have had on Wayne’s Wonder World I think most of them have either maintained the copyright I guess in terms of the publishing aspect of music or they have bought back these rights knowing that give it 5 or 10 years’ time that there may be some value in that. By the sounds of it sounds like you still own your own publishing right but when you go to release a record those are the right where you got to give some incentive to get it out there.
Mitchell: Yes, so at the moment yeah all of the publishing I still own except for when it’s the EDM collaborations it’s a little bit different because I am signing with independent labels and things like that. When it’s that I don’t mind giving away some of the royalties because I know by myself I wouldn’t be getting some of those streams it’s a group sort of work to get that with the label helping and the other producer helping and us working together we can get further.
Wayne: It’s like your bargaining chip I guess.
Mitchell: Yeah and hopefully it will build up my own Spotify and things like that so when I release my own music on my own it will hopefully get more. So we will see what happens there. But at the moment most of my music that I have recorded myself fully is I still own 100% bother the recording and the publishing side of things.
Wayne: Have you been able to get any of your music onto the radio?
Mitchell: I have been able to get onto community radio. So I have been played on a fair few community radio stations. I haven’t had any luck so far with Triple J, but I’m hoping at some point it would be really cool to get played on there. Commercial stations are pretty much programmed over east and they are mostly for people who are signed and at the moment I am pretty much independent. So I am only ever played on commercial stations on a local show when I go and do an interview with their local presenter. Like recently I did one with the Liams’ on Mix94.5 which was super cool such a good opportunity. He gave my new track “Dim the Lights”, which is coming out really soon, he gave that one a spin on his station. And I did one back when I released my album as well. Same thing he gave it a play but at the moment it’s only on those local shows that I am able to get played on. And it just comes down to what deal is made between lables and radio stations and things like that over east. I am not very sure about the whole logistical thing that goes on with it. You can’t just message a radio station and be like “Can you put me into your main rotation?” Because it just won’t happen you won’t hear back.
35.52 – 37.25
Wayne: Sounds like a very interesting industry how it all works.
Mitchell: It is a very interesting industry the music industry. It’s a very funny one.
Wayne: Now we are gonna have a listen to one of your songs Mitchell called “Into the Light” which has been viewed more than 29,000 times on Facebook.
*Song Plays*
37.25 – 38.56
Wayne: Where did you get the idea to make this music video?
Mitchell: So that is the first music video that I had made. Basically I just wanted to make a music video and I knew I wanted to do it for this song cos this song it was a single but it was also the title track to the album. The album is called “Into the Light” named after that song which is the last song on the album. So it was the last song I had written for the album so it felt like the right song to push. Yeah it had this really I wrote with this real sort of old bluesy soul sort of vibe in mind. So for the video I wanted to have it for this old school sort of music video. We did it all super low budget. The guys I do my music videos with they really help me out. We did that whole video in a few hours. Then they put it together for me. It is just me, my girlfriend standing next to my girlfriend’s dad’s old car. We are just playing in front of it and then we walked around. It is just right in front of the Swan River. Just a nice really simple music video. I wanted to have that old school vibe about it.
Wayne: Definitely connected with me having that sort of old school rock sort of feeling. I think you’re wearing like a leather jacket if I am not mistaken.
Mitchell: Yeah, that’s correct.
38.56 – 46.01
Wayne: Yeah great stuff. In 2018 you made a music video for the song called “Don’t Need You” it has been viewed more than 23,000 times on Youtube and I personally think that the song is brilliant and the song is really well made.
*Song Plays*
Wayne: Did it take a lot of planning to put this one together.
Mitchell: Yeah this one compared to the first one. So this was the second music video and this was the other single from the album. Basically this one took a lot of work putting into it. I really wanted this one compared to the other one to have a story line and make it more cinematic. Basically the whole idea was like I woke up late for work and I was in a ruch getting to work. So we did a whole bunch of shooting in my house. Then me leaving driving in my car. It was all super budget again I was just using like actual places I am living in and drive and things like that. We just drove into the CBD in Perth and showed me walking around in my attempt at a suit. As if I was working like a 9 to 5. One funny thing that happened was we walked into this business and we got into trouble for walking in with a camera because I walked in and then walked into where the elevator was. I was trying to make it as realistic as possible. But they weren’t very happy with that. The whole point of it was the show that I was running late for work. My boss which was actually my singing teacher he was getting mad at me for being late. I don’t need you like I don’t need this. Then I went home and went back to my studio recording music and doing what I wanna do. That’s the point. I guess don’t do a 9 to 5 like follow your dream.
Wayne: It was definitely a great narrative I think I think really connected with people and with me.
Mitchell: Compared to the first one we did it like over probably 3 days compared to like 3 hours. It was so much more work. It was super low budget so I didn’t have anyone doing like costumes or anything it was pretty much me using my house and then trying to figure out where we could go. My singing teacher let me use his… like we drove to the CBD and then we drove to my singing teachers place which is in like Yangebup and we just used his foyer of his singing lesson building he uses as the office. It was super low budget but it turned out really well. I was stoked with how it all looked at the end. I think at this point in time I think it is good for people. It is really just to promote the song and the song is what I have spent most of the money on. There are so many people that will go and spend thousands of dollars so much can go into a music video. And I think it is just not necessary at this point for me as an independent artist. I think it is better for me to just get some friends to record it. Obviously still pay them but go for a much lower budget sort of thing and try to keep it sort of simple. I did have a lot of fun doing that one but there was so much work that went into it. It turned out really well. I have actually just recorded my third music video with those guys now which is going to be coming out soonish. We have stripped that down to be a little bit more like the first one. We still did it over two days but less narrative and more let’s play the song as a band. Back to the song in some different locations.
Wayne: For what song is this for Mitchell?
Mitchell: This would be for “Dim the Lights” which will be the next single.
Wayne: That’s a single coming very shortly I believe.
Mitchell: That’s right it’s actually coming out Thursday the 30th of May which is very exciting.
Wayne: With this single is it taking you a while to put together?
Mitchell: I actually wrote this one fairly recently. Middle to end of 2018. I recorded it as part of an EP. SO in the last two years I had written about 12 songs that I thought were good and cut it down to my favorite 6. Went into the studio in January after I got a regional arts grant from Regional Arts WA. So they gave me $5,000 to go into the studio and record this EP which is good because it ended up being about $800 a song. I had a session drummer come in as well. Elliot Smith and he is so good probably one of the best drummers in WA. He came down to Bunbury for me and recorded the drums on my tracks. I recorded all the other parts for the songs on the EP. Yeah “Dim the Lights” was one of them I went in there thinking this was the single and after we recorded it I thought this was the first single I want to release. In particular because it is quite different to the other music I have released like it is more of a rock song than anything. My music is more pop or pop rock. This one is more rock pop. It is quite a heavy song but the vocal I just don’t have a rock star vocal so it’s always going to have that pop vocal in there because I am more of a pop singer. It’s going to be out on Thursday it’s going to be a single launch in the sewing room in Perth with some great support acts. I have Sydnee Carter, Roda Perez and yeah I am going to be doing a free entry single launch in the sewing room eight to midnight.
46.01 – 47.39
Wayne: Cool. Couple more questions before I let you go today. One interesting one is how do you measure your success?
Mitchell: How do I measure my success? That’s a pretty loaded question. I guess I find my music I know that is successful when people I know or people I don’t know they tell me that they have listened to it. When they tell me they have enjoyed it and it has related to them in this way. So they have actually gone and listened to it without me asking them and they have given me feedback on the song without me asking. That is always a really special moment. That tells me people are listening to my music and sort of appreciating what went into it. I am at a point now where thousands of people are messaging me say they love the song for this reason. It is special when it just happens organically when people out of nowhere are saying they love this song for this reason. That is a pretty big part for me with success. It is not all about numbers and things like that. It is cool to know that your songs have that sort of impact on people. But also measuring success it would be awesome to get more subscribers on Youtube and get bigger number and hit some bigger milestones and be able to tour. It’s always nice to see it on a personal level.
47.39 –
Wayne: I believe your social media was just your name which is Mitchell Martin people can find it quite easily.
Mitchell: Yeah exactly. So it all pretty easy to find and I am on pretty much everything. Should be easy to find.
Wayne: On Wayne’s Wonder World I always like to ask my guest is there something about you not many people may know about that you would like to share with us today? Maybe a hobbie or a hidden talent that you have. Playing the spoons or something I don’t know.
Mitchell: Definitely can’t play the spoons. I am colour blind which is kind of cool. I am pretty badly colour blind. It’s not that I can’t see colours people always get confused with colour blindness. I look at a colour I get like three different options for what it actually is. Could be yellow could be green. If I look at something that is sort of red, but it could be brown or green for me. I get three different options and I sort of have to pick which one sort of looks right. I am also pretty sure that my shades also look a little different to the ones that you are probably seeing as well. So you red is probably quite different to mine and things like that. So yeah it is quite bad but I get through there is nothing major but one thing I have found is my videos for YouTube there is a thing called colour grading where you are supposed to fix the colour to make it look great. I haven’t even tried to do it because it would be too difficult. I would essentially be flying blind because when I start changing colours it might look good to me but what looks good to me might be completely different for everybody else. At the moment I haven’t started dabbling in it. I think if I look up how to colour grade while colour blind surely someone has figured it out.
Wayne: I think you can get those colour glasses to correct it can’t you?
Mitchell: Yeah I heard about that but I haven’t looked into it. I have seen a couple videos but I think you are supposed to only use them when you are outside or things like that. I would really like to try them but they are pretty expensive as well so I don’t know if it’s necessary. I am getting through life pretty good in most ways. If I wanted to be an electrician it probably wouldn’t be the right career choice for me.
Wayne: Thanks for being on Wayne’s Wonder World Mitchell.
Mitchell: Thanks so much for having me Wayne.Wayne: Hope you enjoyed the podcast. Please head to www.wayneswonderworld.com and please f
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