MIX CHALLENGE - MC047 September 2018 - Winners announced

[Franz]

again hi to all

I had the same feeling and want that "Bullshit Bastard" to know a shorter version of the title.
Out of competition and editing, just for fun, here is my version. My comment for the shortened version
of "Bullsit Bastard" is that its transitions are musically very brutal and not really in the rhythm of the title
I hope that Fabreju will not mind for this freak but it seemed interesting to me to show
another opportunity to present the title!

for fun, shorter mix : https://www.dropbox.com/s/d6tvd667tquwn ... v.wav?dl=0

cheers

Franz

[Bullshit Bastard]

Haha. That's why I wrote "generated". That's what it is. Editing the cuts to add fades and blend things in a clean and pleasant way would have meant to re-add some automation data manually, lost during generating the shortened project. Ok. I could have spent that 20 minutes of extra effort just to show that this is possible. If I am asked to, I'd do it, of course. If no-one likes the mix, waste of time. Really no big deal editing this. By the way, the cuts are at the correct measures. It just does not sound that way. I did not mean this to be part of the challenge. The shortened version is a big improvement to the song, IMHO.

After I wrote the above, I listened to your mix. It is yet a different version and I am going to update my generated version to show what I was heading after. I intentionally removed the pauses you left in. Maybe I like your version more afterwards. Let's see. Will be fun.

Update: 46 minutes later - here is an updated version. You may be right that it's not a good idea to make the bridge part become straight rather than laid back. It's my intention. Make it straight - cut off half a measure at the beginning of the bridge and keep that half of a measure pause at the end of the bridge making the chorus fit the original measure. Maybe a bad idea, of course. I like it. Bass drum and bass are straight ahead (if this is the correct english term for the opposite of laid back) as well. Whatsoever - here it goes:

MP3
WAV - 44,1kHz - 16Bit int (CD-Audio)
WAV - 88,2kHz - 32Bit float

[maxovrdrive]

Greetings! Here's my mix:
https://soundcloud.com/maxovrdrive/mc04 ... ez/s-fYopq

VOX
eq
compression
de-ess

PARALLEL (blended to taste)
topend (take on DP's Mariah Top End)
tube
NY compression
saturation
room
plate
ddl

GTR
1-2
eq
compression
1-2 grp
amp
multi-band
room

3-4
no processing
3-4 DI
amp
eq
aux
eq

5-6
no processing
aux
eq

BASS
eq
compression

KICK aux + parallel comp
comp
eq
transient plugin

SNR aux + parallel comp
eq
comp

TOMS aux
eq
comp
transient plugin

CYMBALS aux
eq

[Franz]

Aha,

Say to "Bullshit Bastard": your last shortened version is just perfect: congratulations!
She respesctes the identity of the song in every way and we will not do better.
Even out of competition, this idea was interesting to develop. We close the parenthesis

Cheers

Franz

[noogard]

Hey there.
Thanks again for this opportunity to work with good material. Nice recorded everything. Pleasure to work with such tracking. But if there is some room for critics, I'd like to say that arrangement of pre-choruses in drums, and the whole arrangement of chorus parts is a bit poor. No backing vocals, no something bright as lead guitar, or synth or smth... but thats just the matter of tastes I guess. So what about mix:

• No samples used for drums, just tried not to spoil them, so only classics: gate, 76, room verb, drum bus with a bit of distortion. A bit more room mics in verses, a bit less in loud parts.

• Bass is great. A bit muddy at the first sight but nice in mix. So a bit of compression and eq to reduce a bit muddiness and to help bass drum

• Guitars... ho ho ho... I used everything. Literally. All original guitars + reamplified every DI guitars to reduce this shhhhhmetal sound. No additional compression added. For clean guitars I used Mercurial chorus and in the break down Fault from Plugin Alliance. It is great for such things.

• Vocal... one knob brighter, C6 and a lot of automatizations, slap all the way, a bit longer delay for loud parts and breakdown as well as reverb unit. For breakdown I used Fault again + reversed reverb. Aaaand one more cheat. Since there was no backing tracks provided, I did them myself. So I just swaped choruses and very last two parts, to have a different takes, but very strong pre made vocal tune did bad for this idea because I got strong phase problems, but everything can be fixed, so a bit of automatization for phase inverting )
  Very very weak NLS buss for glue everything.

Here is what I got:
WAV
MP3

Thank you for the attention, Leo

[leslingle]

This was a great recording! What a pleasure to mix. My approach was 80% balancing out tracks and 20% tweak and enhance. I used a combination of Waves, Slate, and Brainworx plugins to create the mix. I did some interesting effects on guitars and vocal in the bridge using a Leslie cabinet on guitars and the Kings mic's from Waves on the vocal. Brainworx makes great plugins for M/S processing which I used on the drums. Thank you for providing a very high quality recording to work with.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hgee2wqo6cvuq ... x.wav?dl=0

[Drumwizard]

Hi everybody!
Another great song! First of all I want to thank Mister Fox for some cool bands from Germany, whose music I really liked, I mean Wir sind Helden and Silbermond (Yes, I'm a good boy reading info text ).
Mixed in Digital Performer 8.07. Almost all tracks have UltraChannel strip. Snare trigger for A.Wallace reverb trick (sended to Room and Plate). MW FET-76 for Room M/S, Drum Bus, Bass Bus, Vocal and Vocal Parallel track. Actually main vocal has 5 parallel auxes: one for FET-76 and waves L1, another for Flanger, two for short and long delay and last with Echo, RXT, REQ and LittleMicroShift for song choruses. Bass Di and Amp compressed and eqed with UltraChannel. Bass Amp hi passed (262 Hz). Gtr Amp 1: Melda Meq + Dyna-Squash. Gtr Amp 2: Meq + Dynamic Eq, panned to the R >63 and sended to Room Verb with pan L <21. Gtr Di 1 added to the Bridge, re-amped with DP plugins. Amp 3 & 4: Meq + Dynamic Eq. There is nothing on Amp 5 & 6. Send Aux tracks: DP's Plate + REQ (Plate), R2 (Room) ProVerb (Room parallel). For the sake of experiment I made a group channel for Bass and Kick tracks with MSaturator in the insert slot.

Mp3 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Exbkq ... otwGAx7bCm
Wav https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SRjdg ... ktJBceFuY8

[Jerze]

Hello everyone,
Thanks to Fajebru for giving use another song to mix and also to the site for having these contests
and also Mister Fox for keeping use in line. Anyways

I had a hard time trying to keep it within the contest parameters so hopefully I'm ok.T his was mixed in Reaper somehow I ended up using 140 plugins "note to self use less plugins"

Plugins

Waves, Stock plugins, TDR, Fab, Nick Crow Lab amp ,NC amp cab ,TSE ,T Racks, Boz and Stillwell Audio

Drums-Added some sub, compression and EQ on everything just to get the kit to fit together also added NY compression

Bass-used amplitube on DI also added some distortion in chorus sections a little compression automation

GT-Used most everything did some delaying to add a little movement and a little verb used a amp sim to re-amp and blend with the ones provided then blend them together.

Vocal-Used same Fx chain from last song with some slight tweaks.

Thanks for your time if you listened to my mix and if you have any questions or pointers let me know.


Wave- https://soundcloud.com/jerze-1/mc047-ra ... jerze-wave

MP3-https://soundcloud.com/jerze-1/mc047-ra ... -jerze-mp3

[EchoOread]

Hello everyone! Special thanks to the artist(s) for providing such awesome song for us (me) to mix.

I have no idea how I got here, as far as mixing technique is concerned, I just cut and boost like a mad man until I hear what I like. I dont use a lot of plug ins. Rarely I reach for chorus or a flanger as I struggle enough learning the EQ and the compressor already. So yeah, my strip looks...bareboned, only an EQ and maybe a couple of compressors. I use a bit of delay. I like it better than the reverb. Perhaps because I struggle to get the sound I want with the reverb. I have better control with the delay. I used it in this song; I thought the original mix was a little dry to my taste, so I added a bit of delay to smooth the vocal out a little. I pumped it quite hard on the break where there are just the voice and the guitars. I wanted to add a little of mystery, and using the delay to achieve that is the only way I know how . It is quite a challenge to me when the music explodes into the power guitar part. Man, I am afraid that I will make it wimpy. No need for that, right? (and if I am wrong, I'd rather "err on the side of caution" by being a little loud than a little wimpy anyway. So I push and push but my son aka "assistant" told me it's too loud and suggested a couple dBs down. I did. Man I hope I dont regret listening to him ). So I tried and I tried and I tried, honest to god, to make that guitar sound good but it gives me so much trouble in the low end if I want it powerful, in turn drowning the vocal, so what I got is a compromise. But I am quite happy with it. Hope you like it. Thanks

mp3 https://drive.google.com/open?id=1T070o ... 5kg-JwyJtb
Wave https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EeDhi ... 5i0JBndTzY

[konop_tnt]

Hi all! This is my first mixing challenge and it is nice to mix such a nice song.
Before I start:
MP3
WAV

My idea was to to support structure of a song:softer on verses and harder on choruses. Bridge should be intimate with hard hit during last chorus/outro. This is how I perceive track. For this grungy feeling I left original sound of distorted guitars. But core of a song is a vocal drums and bass. Ghost notes on snare during verses are tamed inentionally.

From technical point of view mix was done with simple approach: Cubase, ITB, EQ, gates, compression (mainly Console1 few waves and Cubase EQ), few reverbs, 2 delays, some widening, bus compressor, some simple automation. Some fun with extra delay between 2nd chorus and Bridge, just to connect two parts. I've edited few snare hits because they were weaker. Vocal treated separatly for verses, choruses, and bridge.

Peak: -1.1 dbFS
RMS max: -15dBFS
Hope you enjoy it. It would be cool to polish this mix with musicians.