Recently, I found myself video chatting with a group of audio bloggers and podcasters about the glorious safety that is the Kingdom of Canada, compared to our crime-riddled shantytowns down here in Trumpistan.

"Canada is so safe. We always forget to lock our doors and it's fine!"

This is a story I've heard often, and it's not exclusively limited to Canada, although they always seem to like bringing it up ;)

It's true in Iceland too, here's the story:

One time I went out drinking after engineering a live show in my hometown. So I threw my bag in the car and locked up the venue and met up with the bands at the bar.

The morning after, as I was getting ready to walk to get my car, I couldn't find my keys anywhere. This hunt for the car keys was taking too long and making me late, so I grabbed the spare set instead. 20 minutes later, as I was nearing my car I noticed the car key sticking out of the door. I had locked the car, but left the key sticking out fo the door the whole night!

So that's how safe Iceland can be. Grand Theft Auto is more of a video game hobby than a likely crime.

Anyhoo, back to my video chat.

Everybody on the call was telling some story or other about how they didn’t lock their doors and it was always fine in the end.

So after everybody had patted themselves on the back for being so safe and lucky, I asked a simple question:

Have any of you been burglarized?

Dead silence. The discomfort of such an invasion into your privacy was palpable to such an extent that it made your skin crawl. Your temples sweat. Everybody seemed familiar with the idea of a burglary, but not the experience.

So I said,

“Well I have. And I lock my fucking doors.”

You may have a 90% chance of never being burglarized, and I’ve certainly gambled a lot of money with worse odds than that. But I’ll take 100% safety when it comes to the small gesture of locking my doors.

It’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to your belongings.

You could say the same thing about your mixes. You don't need fancy processing. Just simple EQ, compression and effects techniques to make the mix "good enough."

But if you're looking to make 100% sure that you're making your mixes the best they can be, some parallel processing will come in handy.

You don’t have to do it. You can get 90% of the way there with traditional mixing techniques for sure. But if you want to add that extra 10% to your mixes it’s better to be safe than sorry. Adding parallel processing to your drums, to your bass, or to your vocals will simply make your mix stand out more.

That's why this week I'm offering the short and sweet Parallel Processing Masterclass to anybody who's looking to add that final 10% to their mixes.

After taking the Parallel Processing Masterclass, you'll know how to:

• Add the extra power you need to transform your drum sound to make it stand out, without getting in the way of the rest of your instruments.
• Make an explosive snare with parallel saturation
• Add parallel smash to your drum loops
• Add presence to your bass guitar so that it cuts through the song without muddying up your mix
• Add parallel saturation and amp simulation to enhance your bass guitar tracks
• Add stereo width and depth to your guitars for added dimension and interest with both mono reverbs and stereo delays
• Add parallel processing during the recording phase so that the singer gives you a great performance
• Add professional presence with artificial double tracking, parallel depth, and excitement to add extra high-end professional sheen to your vocals

It's only available until Friday, so if you want to grab the standalone masterclass before I seal it as a permanent bonus exclusive to Mixing With 5 Plug-ins members, go grab it here.