MIX CHALLENGE - MC089 December 2022 - Winners announced

[Rawkinron]

I have to step in on this one.

Sorry I don’t think I’m following your question. The two versions are just a clean take so you can add your own guitar tone.

Maybe I was unclear. Guitar 1, 1 Dub and 2 are all identical. Also Guitar 1 DI, 1 DUB DI and 2 DI are identical. If you take Guitar 1 and 2 and pan them left and right you're basically just hearing the same guitar louder, with no stereo width. What I asked about was if this was intentional or by mistake.

I have been checking the material over and over for the last several hours now, going through the various iterations I got during the weeks leading up to MC089. Unfortunately, I can not(!) give you the comfort of "perfectly double tracked" main guitar takes this month. Sometimes it is not "just add some EQ, compression and reverb", then call it a day. You have to work with what has been given to you.

There are a couple of workarounds that you could try. It can be simple things like modulation, slightly different transients, maybe introduce some (dynamic) saturation, different amp setups, etc. (hint!)


There are many possibilities to still "salvage" the material and create an outstanding mix. You just have to be creative!
And this is what this month is about. Build upon what has been given to you, invest the time, push your skills, elevate the material.

To be clear, this is not a complaint. I just wanted to be sure this wasn't a mistake at rendering the files or anything similar. And also I felt that I should bring this up as early as possible so people didn't start turning in mixes before this was settled. Also, I would've asked this from a provider in a professional situation too since just having three files for guitar seems to suggest it's "actual" dubs or at least intended to be. I have the utmost respect and gratitude for you, Mister Fox, for the work you put into this. You're doing a fantastic job.

An anecdote. Around 8 years ago I worked together with a hip hop label /collective. First I helped with technology issues and studio building. But then they felt they were too new to make good mixes. So they sent me the files. I think I got around 70 tracks. First I realised they sent me only stereo files with rendered after panning. So I asked them to just remove panning and then render the files. Then I realised a lot of the files were dual mono and also rendered after fader. So I decided I was going to go to the studio and render them myself. There I saw how they worked. If the bass wasn't phat enough they duplicated the tracks. If they needed more backing vocals they duplicated them. I think they had 4 of the same bass track which is why I got some bass tracks with very low levels, when rendered after fader.

When I started mixing I had 27 tracks coming from around 70. This is why I always ask if I think there's a problem. It has nothing to do with complaining or saying something sucks. These things happen. I have also sent away wrong files for mixing.

Anyway, now I know what I have to work with and I'm no stranger to solving things with creative measures. Thanks for clearing it up!

Hey as I'm reading your comment I would agree that at the time these songs were recorded as a mixing engineer I was nowhere near where I am now a days haha and would probably not of recorded things the same way. At the time the guitars were recorded I had just purchased a daw (3 years ago) and was green to the whole production aspect of things. At the time I recorded a lot of the guitars on this album they were just ideas that I had recorded in the evenings and one day hoped to turn them into a song when I found a singer. Given the time I had( because of my coach and setting myself a deadline for the album release) I wanted to make sure my priority was to hit my deadline for the release rather then redo all of the guitars for the album. Doubling a track was a way I was making things louder at the time but now realize it's not the way to do things if your tracks are properly gain staged, there's really no need for it. Sorry if I caused any confusion to you or the rest of the Mix Challenge members, it was not my intentions.

On a side note, now a days while I'm tracking the only time I will track guitars in stereo is if I'm doing acoustic guitar, electric always has a left guitar and right guitar with other octaves and leads thrown on the stage to add to the overall sound. On my mater I will use mid/side processing. This is how I like to hear my guitars (it's cool if you do it different because that's the whole ting I love about hearing others mixes. We all have our own perception of how something should sound), I have had many mastering engineers with high honors love my guitar tones (my coach was trained one on one by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and was an active Juno award winning mastering engineer. His last Juno was in 2021), even on this whole album it was the biggest compliment I got.

[Eight8]

Hello!

Here is my mix:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s4d22j55dmrm5 ... 8.wav?dl=0

I decided to go for a “top-down” approach on this one. First, balance everything and organized all the vocals to achieve fewer tracks and then I added some stuff on the mix bus and added a “rear bus”. I have not done any automation, only some clip-gaining. It’s one of the fastest mixes I’ve ever done.

I also wanted a punchy sound and used PA SSL4000E (in the box) on most of the tracks to get that overall sound.

Rear bus: UAD 1176 (bearly audible but adds some punch)

Mix bus: SSL Bus Comp, Black Box, bx_digital, Acustica Clipper

Bass: I went with the DI and used Graphite from Acustica Audio and Little Labs from UAD. Added some 60hz

Kick: Added a little 200hz and Lowcut at 70hz

Snare: Added a little 3k and 11k

Guitars: I used the original guitars and used a lot of EQ to make them sit together. Side-chained all guitars to lead vox. Pultec on guitar bus for more warmth and Wavesfactory Trackspacer (10%) to clean up the center. “Guitar 1” and “Guitar 2” is the same recording but I panned them left and right and switched the phase on one of them to make them sound correct and wide.

Lead Vox: Slate VMR with F-GA and FG-Stress to control the dynamics and some EQ.

Choir/Dubs: Compression and EQ on the choir summing bus.

CREATIVE WORK:

UAD Dimension D chorus: Octave guitar

Microshift on guitars and bass

Waves Doubler on lead vox

Created a new fx track of the drum stereo room for the intro and outro and added some filtering and auto-panning (Soundtoys Pan man)

SPACES:

DMX Reverb Nolin FX: Snare, Tom, Fills

Vallhalla Vintage Verb on Choir and toms

Vallhalla Super Massive on lead vox

Echoboy 1/8th: All Vox

That's all. I enjoyed working on this one. Good challenge

[Mastemoth]

I have to step in on this one.

Sorry I don’t think I’m following your question. The two versions are just a clean take so you can add your own guitar tone.

Maybe I was unclear. Guitar 1, 1 Dub and 2 are all identical. Also Guitar 1 DI, 1 DUB DI and 2 DI are identical. If you take Guitar 1 and 2 and pan them left and right you're basically just hearing the same guitar louder, with no stereo width. What I asked about was if this was intentional or by mistake.

I have been checking the material over and over for the last several hours now, going through the various iterations I got during the weeks leading up to MC089. Unfortunately, I can not(!) give you the comfort of "perfectly double tracked" main guitar takes this month. Sometimes it is not "just add some EQ, compression and reverb", then call it a day. You have to work with what has been given to you.

There are a couple of workarounds that you could try. It can be simple things like modulation, slightly different transients, maybe introduce some (dynamic) saturation, different amp setups, etc. (hint!)


There are many possibilities to still "salvage" the material and create an outstanding mix. You just have to be creative!
And this is what this month is about. Build upon what has been given to you, invest the time, push your skills, elevate the material.

To be clear, this is not a complaint. I just wanted to be sure this wasn't a mistake at rendering the files or anything similar. And also I felt that I should bring this up as early as possible so people didn't start turning in mixes before this was settled. Also, I would've asked this from a provider in a professional situation too since just having three files for guitar seems to suggest it's "actual" dubs or at least intended to be. I have the utmost respect and gratitude for you, Mister Fox, for the work you put into this. You're doing a fantastic job.

An anecdote. Around 8 years ago I worked together with a hip hop label /collective. First I helped with technology issues and studio building. But then they felt they were too new to make good mixes. So they sent me the files. I think I got around 70 tracks. First I realised they sent me only stereo files with rendered after panning. So I asked them to just remove panning and then render the files. Then I realised a lot of the files were dual mono and also rendered after fader. So I decided I was going to go to the studio and render them myself. There I saw how they worked. If the bass wasn't phat enough they duplicated the tracks. If they needed more backing vocals they duplicated them. I think they had 4 of the same bass track which is why I got some bass tracks with very low levels, when rendered after fader.

When I started mixing I had 27 tracks coming from around 70. This is why I always ask if I think there's a problem. It has nothing to do with complaining or saying something sucks. These things happen. I have also sent away wrong files for mixing.

Anyway, now I know what I have to work with and I'm no stranger to solving things with creative measures. Thanks for clearing it up!

Hey as I'm reading your comment I would agree that at the time these songs were recorded as a mixing engineer I was nowhere near where I am now a days haha and would probably not of recorded things the same way. At the time the guitars were recorded I had just purchased a daw (3 years ago) and was green to the whole production aspect of things. At the time I recorded a lot of the guitars on this album they were just ideas that I had recorded in the evenings and one day hoped to turn them into a song when I found a singer. Given the time I had( because of my coach and setting myself a deadline for the album release) I wanted to make sure my priority was to hit my deadline for the release rather then redo all of the guitars for the album. Doubling a track was a way I was making things louder at the time but now realize it's not the way to do things if your tracks are properly gain staged, there's really no need for it. Sorry if I caused any confusion to you or the rest of the Mix Challenge members, it was not my intentions.

On a side note, now a days while I'm tracking the only time I will track guitars in stereo is if I'm doing acoustic guitar, electric always has a left guitar and right guitar with other octaves and leads thrown on the stage to add to the overall sound. On my mater I will use mid/side processing. This is how I like to hear my guitars (it's cool if you do it different because that's the whole ting I love about hearing others mixes. We all have our own perception of how something should sound), I have had many mastering engineers with high honors love my guitar tones (my coach was trained one on one by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and was an active Juno award winning mastering engineer. His last Juno was in 2021), even on this whole album it was the biggest compliment I got.

Hi Rawkinron,

I'm happy to read your reply. I was afraid that my comment was going to be seen as a complaint or me coming off a high horse. That was absolutely not my intention. I've gotten VERY WEIRD files to mix at some points in my audio career and the best way to deal with it is to just ask about it. Preferably face to face or on the phone so it doesn't sound accusing or is taken the wrong way. If I discover some oddities with the files I will always deal with it before I start.

Also I feel a little bit stupid because I really like your song but I didn't say that. I only spoke about the files. I hope I can find some time next week to contribute with a mix. I liked your guitar tones but since this is more as a practice than a competition for me I will change them lol. I don't think I would've done that if I was paid for the mix.

Anyways, thanks for the reply and keep up the good work.

[Rawkinron]

Thanks, All the best!

[mahzinho]

Here my version:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CMMWb6 ... share_link
I decided to start with proper gain staging, aligning tracks by groups like vox, drums, gtrs and bass;
Give some instruments layers of compression using the Alesis 3630, for snare and drum + all instruments together + another one for vox only;
Applied some saturation to some elements like the recorded snare and drum and used EQ about what I belief was needing to have that, fill
and tom without touches, only fader thing. Some elements like kick and snare I bet about Dyn-EQ and for guitars in general Distructor as my plug-in of choice for distortion, for bass too. I also applied side chain between the tracks I grouped. Around 649 Hz I gave some space to vocals sit more, so decided to reduce for drums and guitars. Another practice I like is to use about the master bus the Hornet TotalEQ for lead with some side and mid operations and used ARC 3 by IK Multimedia for checking + used headphones too along with the monitors I use.

[MartialFromentin]

Hello!
This song is really good!

Here is my mix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kHeuLn ... share_link

All tracks: gain staging, frequencies cleaning, panning.

Kick: compression.
Drums bus: saturation, compression, transient shaper/soft clipper, Eq. Reverb on snare and toms.

Bass: hard FET compression and saturation (Distressor), Eq.

Rythm guitars (guit. 1 and octaver): transient shaper to add some punch, Haas delay for width.
All guitars: soft vari-Mu stereo bus compressor for glue, Eq (strong medium attenuation to get a more "metal guitar tone"). Reverb on lead guitars.

All vocals: gain automation, gain rider, de-esser, serial Eqs and compressors, limiter, saturation. The VOX chorus dub tracks have been sent to the BG vocals bus.

Main vocals: Delay and reverb automations.
Scream vocals: strong distorsion to get an agressive sound and MIA Muscle plugin for punch.
BG vocals: vocal doubler for the VOX chorus dub tracks, panning for the others. Strong chorus effect. Reverb.

Mix bus: SSL bus compressor for glue, Pultec Eq, tape saturation.

[Johnny11771]

Here is my mix I hope you enjoy it spent a bit of time on it!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19Kn4XI ... sp=sharing

[Mister Fox]

A friendly reminder:
Including today, 7 days left to submit your mix.


Please keep the Rules and Guidelines in mind regarding file submission and documenting your mix.

[unclesnuggles]

Hi there !
here is my mix
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mUOLsq ... sp=sharing

I had a lot of fun mixing this title, the song is good, I liked it a lot more! well done !

After the routine corrections at the start of the mix (gain, corrective eq...), I didn't use the Di guitars.
I don't have a lot of processing on my individual tracks. I mainly used British Class A to give character to the song.
I also used Klanghelm's IVG2 plug-in for saturation on some tracks. On the vox tracks there is a lot of automation and sends in different group tracks. Lots of parallel processing as well (saturation, comp) throughout the song.

[zeminor]

Hi everyone.

My mix link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u68E05 ... sp=sharing


First Process is for all track, gain staging, volume balance, some surgical eq. I used compression and eq for kick and snare and then send to an auxiliary reverb track for snare track. Used compression, eq and pannig for tom and fill tracks. Suitible paning in propotion to Room and OH tracks done. OH tracks equalized with de esser and eq just for cymbels. All drum tracks I send to buss channel and used some eq and buss compressor, saturation on drum buss channel. I used paralell compressor on other auxliary channel for drum tracks.

Used volume balanced, compressor and pultec eq for bass tracks. I used saturation on other auxliary channel for bass tracks.

Used volume balanced, compressor and eq, pannig, some fx for guitar tracks. I used saturation on other auxliary channel for bass tracks.

All vocal tracks were some process sutible paning and saturation, eq, compressor, dirty amp. I send to buss channel and used some surgical and tonal eq and buss compressor, saturation on drum buss channel.

I tried to set the level on the main channel to about -6 dbFS in case it was mastering process.