MIX CHALLENGE - MC072 December 2020 - Winners announced

[JohnK]

Hi All,

Great song to mix. I'm not used to mix real instruments so fumbled in the dark the entire time pretty much

The Mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1uwx5xyk0s2b2 ... K.wav?dl=0

Drums:
Didn't do too much, basic EQ and gain stage into the SSL Comp. Tried to modify the attack on the kick but came back to the original.
Had a snare sample but rules was to not use it so removed it. Added a bunch of 200 and instead. Didn't use the Toms OH's
DeEssing for the ride and HH.

Bass:
Tried various things but in the end I removed all plugins and just used the MV2.

Guitars:
Basic EQ, added tape and automation for the solo's.

Piano/Organ:
Standard UAD Fairchild 670 for piano. Sounds always good. Removed some mids with MB Comp.

Vocals Lead:
DeEss and used the new waves Abbey Road RS124. Jeez, that sounds good. It brings the mids but don't get harsh.
Basic Reverb.

Vocals BGVs:
DeEss and removed some rumble. Basic Reverb.

Mixbus:
SSL Comp and the Leapwing stuff, those are amazing.

[Clueless]

Hi All,

Great song to mix. I'm not used to mix real instruments so fumbled in the dark the entire time pretty much

The Mix: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1uwx5xyk0s2b2 ... K.wav?dl=0

Drums:

Added a sample for the snare to get a bit more bottom.

i’m pretty sure samples are not allowed

[m_tree]

Hi there, thanks to the band for this great song. It was fun

Here's my mix:

>> MC072__Vanagloria__Grita__m_tree.wav <<

Of course I focused on the lead vocals, to sit properly in the mix as the lead-element and to embody them as the 'central theme'.
At once I don't wanted to overprocess them but make the processing on the lead vocals mainly in favor of themselves, less to embed them in the mix.
Instead I did some mix-decisions on the midrange-instruments (except drums, bass and percussion) in favor of the lead vocals, to embed the lead vocals in the mix.
By the way, in my opinion this vocal-recording isn't so weak. It's very dynamic, yeah. To handle the dynamics I used three different compression steps (every one gentle) and volume-automation.
I like volume-balanced mixes and tried to emphasize the lead vocals without mixing them much louder than the instruments. So, except the intro, the lead vocals are just a little bit 'on top' in my mix.

I mixed the guitars of the intro apart from the other guitars.
Over the length of the 2nd guitar-solo I made a fade-out of the whole mix. Please consider this as a suggestion only! I can remove it in a 2nd edit, of course.

I used all the tracks except of some drum-tracks: Kick Coles, Hi-Hat and Tom 2+3. There's exactly one Tom-hit in the whole song (on Tom 1).
And I took the 2nd lead vocal option in the refrains as a double, just blended in quiet to fatten the vocal.

As always I used a lot of (volume-)automation, even for the de-essing.
I'm mixing very 'oldschool' in general and used only classic compressors (single band) and EQs (minimum phase) in this mix. No MBC, dynamic EQ, transient designer, stereo imager and so on ...
For my current taste I used a lot of parallel compression in this mix: kick, brush snare, solo guitar (with additional distortion), intro acoustic-guitars and the lead vocals (with additional distortion).
In favor of the lead vocals I EQed the midrange-instruments partially heavy (with cuts only), but the lead vocals themselves only have a highpass at 80Hz and a slight presence-boost. The bass is, with a slight low-end boost (with a passive EQ) and otherwise just compression, rarely processed in my mix.

I primarily mixed without any masterbus effects. At the end I added a gentle compression with 1.4:1 and max. 2dB gain-reduction (fixed attack and release, no sidechain-EQ), a transparent sounding mastertape-emulation and volume-automation.

Cheers!

[Arturo.Sallas]

Hello guys.
Here´s my mix

In general I like to keep things simple by discarding all the tracks that are not contributing to the mix, in this case, the Accoustic Guitar Line, the Organ 2, and one take of the snare drum brushes I felt were not only necessary but they were getting in the way of the things that were actually sounding good.

In the Bass I added a slight overdrive with the mix around 60% just to give it a little bit more aggersiveness, it was too mild to my taste, the same with the organ. I felt here the biggest challenge was to get the automation right, there´s so many instruments doing similar things that in order to make the song interesting and not overload it I needed to give each instrument it´s moment. The vocals are really good, didn´t use any additional pitch correction or anything, just a RVB, and two doublers with different parameters obviously and automated to turn ON and OFF in certain moments, just to accentuate some phrases. Overall I felt my mix ended up very organic, but punchy, let me know what you guys think.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YKanqb ... sp=sharing

Cheers!

[Mister Fox]

Hi everyone,

I just sent out a Newsletter and addresses this, but just in case you've turned that feature off.


No matter if you're a regular or new to the forum (welcome), please get (re-)acquainted with the official Rules and Guidelines of the Mix Challenge. You can find them in the "Rule Books" section here: viewforum.php?f=20


For clarification - specifically for the Mix Challenge:

• Submitting a WAV or AIFF doesn't matter, modern day audio hosts can load both as long as it's an uncompressed audio format in the specified sampling rate, bitrate and doesn't exceed the maximum allowed loudness. For consistency sake, entering the Mix Challenge with a mix exported in WAV is the preferred method (this will not result in a disqualification... yet)
• name your files properly, else your entry can't be attributed with your forum username
• do not post a MP3, an AAC or a FLAC file
• do not upload to SoundCloud (especially not without giving proper credits - this is not your production!)
• no "drum sample triggering / replacement"
• your edit must be documented by the end of the deadline

The game is a learning factor, please pay attention to detail as your entry is final. Only you have full control over your entry.



A friendly reminder:
Including today, 12 days left to submit your mix

[tomigoi]

Hi all

Thank you for the opportunity. Attached is my mix for Grita.
Notable edit notes:
- The brush snare I put way in the background, and only used one out of the two.
- The same goes with the distortion guitar track.
- Piano and organ are more up front.
- Main vocal was left mostly dry, with a so ever lightly touch of reverb.
- BGVs are applied with delays.

Grita Mix

Cheers to all mixers

Best regards,

Hi there @tomigoi ! I believe your file needs to be a wav but is currently an aif.

Thank you for the correction Mark. It is fixed.

Good mixing guys.

[m_tree]

Thank you for the correction Mark. It is fixed.

Good mixing guys.

Hi, your mix still will be disqualified, because:

- with -12 LUFS integrated it's way too loud (-16 LUFS int. max., -23 LUFS int. min.)
- wrong sampling rate (should be 48kHz)
- wrong bit depth (should be 24bit)

Refers to this file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-wMKe1 ... Y6IMS/view

[Mister Fox]

Thank you for the correction Mark. It is fixed.

Good mixing guys.

Hi, your mix still will be disqualified, because:

- with -12 LUFS integrated it's way too loud (-16 LUFS int. max., -23 LUFS int. min.)
- wrong sampling rate (should be 48kHz)
- wrong bit depth (should be 24bit)

Refers to this file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-wMKe1 ... Y6IMS/view

Correction: the Loudness range is -24 LUFS ILk absolute minimum to -16 LUFS ILk absolute max.

Other than that, the original entry would have been disqualified as well, because it reached +0,35 dBTP and -11 LUFS ILk. On top of that, we now have a re-submission that is only slightly more quiet, and in the wrong bitrate / sampling rate.


Please read my post again:
viewtopic.php?p=9419#p9419

[Photonic]

Hi all,

What a nice song to mix. Great music and well recorded. Not really anyything to repair before mixing. So I could right on concentrate to the sound.
My focus was to make the vocal a bit mor dry and upfront. And I reduced the recorded reverb on the slide guitar a bit for the same reason.
Anything else is nothing special, see details.

WAV: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jet4dh4ep9jzz ... c.wav?dl=0

Mixed in Reaper v5.99

Drum-Bus: Presswerk (Drum-Bus mode), ThrillseekerXTC to add some mid and high harmonics
all single drum tracks only got ReaEQ.
I added a reverb for a room simulation for the drums: ReaEQ and Acon Digital Verberate 2
Brush: ReaEq and S.LA.X for compression
Bass: Bass Professor II
Organ: ReaEQ and S.LA.X
Piano: ReaEQ and ThrillseekerXTC to add some harmonics
Guitars Acoustic: ReaEQ, S.LA.X, ThrillseekerXTC, Dragonfly Platereverb
Slide Guitar: Acon Digital Deverberate to reduce the long reverb on the recording, ReaEQ
All other gauitars: ReaEQ and S.LA.X
Solo Guitar: ReaEQ, S.LA.X, NastyDLA for delay
Lead-Bus: ThrillseekerXTC
Lead and Lead 2: ReaEQ, TDR Nova for De-essing, Presswerk in vocal mode, DragonFly Room,
Vox Arreglo: ReaEQ and Presswerk
BackVox Bus: ReaEQ and Presswerk
all single backing tracks: ReaEQ and Transpire to reduce transients

Reverb: Acon Digital Verberate 2
Mix-Bus: MQ57, Presswerk in Buscompressor mode, Span, Youlean Loudnessmeter 2

[dadomachado]

Hi All,

I hope everyone is healthy and safe out there. This one was a great song to mix. Follows what I've done here:

First I created busses for the main groups of tracks (drums, percussions, bass, EG, AG, keys, lead vox and BG vox). Worked a bit on the static mix before doing any processing. Added BX SSL 400 E to all tracks to give it a vibe.

Drums - A little EQ on the buss to make it a little brighter and get rid of the mudness. Individual EQ on Kick and Snare (Hoser). Added a few db of compression on the drums buss (acme opticom XLA-3). Room reverb (AR Chambers) on the snare, toms and OH.

Percursion - EQ and light compression on the buss. Sent some tracks to the room reverb as well.

Bass - Some EQ on the low end to make it work nicely with the Kick. Duplicated the track and added some paralel distorion to blend in (decapitator). Sent it to a bass spread (Dim-D) and added some compression on the bass buss (FET-76)

Eletric Guitars - Some EQ on the individual tracks. Low cut on the buss and a little compression (CLA-2A) to glue it up.

Acoustic Guitars - Some EQ on the individual tracks to make it brighter and a Low Cut to get rid of unnecessary mud. Sent them to a little spread (Fuse Labs Chorus-65)

Keys - Not a lot done here. Just a little EQ on individual tracks

Lead Vox - Quite a bit o processing. I used Scheps Omni Channel for EQ, Deessing and compression. Chained up with some more ligth compression (Vcomp and Arturia's tube-sta). Sent it to a slap, plates and room reverbs and some delay. Sent some of the delays into the reverbs as well.

BG Vox - Used Scheps Omni channel for EQ, Deesing and compression. Sent them all into the room reverb. Did some EQ on the buss and used Fresh Air for some high ferquencies.

I've created one music and one vocals buss. Did a side chain to compress a little of the music track when the vocals kicks in.

On the master buss I did a little EQ and added Kramer Tape.

Follows the link to my mix below:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hvHRFq ... sp=sharing

I look forward to any comments from this great commiunity and cheers from Brazil !

dadomachado