MIX CHALLENGE - MC053 April 2019 - Winners announced

[OctopusOnFire]

All I can tell you is that you were one of the last few to miss out on the top 10. I suppose you can look at that as a good thing or or really try to analyse why. As I said above it was really tough. I'd say look at the feedback and whatever I've said. Probably means I just found any issues I mentioned just a little further off than the next. It was really close.

No worries, it's disappointing but part of the learning experience. You may think you have a pretty good mix, but it's worthless if it doesn't align with the personal vision of the client. Bit of a hit or miss in the context of the contest (many entries, little communication, hard to convey your vision in a single text file...), so it's all part of the game and I accept it.

[cmbsa]

Here's my mix for Round 2:

wav: https://www.dropbox.com/s/06op4i8b54121 ... 2.wav?dl=0

mp3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rvr6vbcnlf0bm ... 2.mp3?dl=0


Regarding your feedback, Morelia: I'm glad you liked the mix and had so little to complain about It was a pleasure to mix your song. I thought the tracks had everything already there (I used only processed guitars + the main drum tracks), so there was no need to re-amp, and I didn't wish for drum samples or else...

Mix Round 2:
- I modified the sound of the guitars a little. As this has influence on the mix overall, I had to be careful, since I liked the overall balance and didn't want to alter it too much. Listening to the other mixes of the Top 10 (congrats to all, btw, it's gonna be tough to decide on a winner!), I noticed that you like it when the guitars sound loud and full. So I sent the whole guitar-bus to a parallel effects track, emphasizing the low mids (around 200-300hz), and then going to a saturator. I obviously had to bring down the volume of guitars now, and also bring the bass up (+ EQ a little).
- I did lower the verse Vox a bit, but since the guitars and bass have slightly more energy now, I brought it back again and now I think it is where it was before
- De-essing: yeah, I can see there is minor issues there, still. But: since your main vocal track is really expressive, many ess-sounds don't get caught by a deesser. And I didn't want to go in manually at this stage. I did de-ess hard on backing tracks though, and even carved out that frequency with EQ.
- Guitar solo is now in the middle, and I like it better like this, too!

Now to my main approach (Round 1):

When I first heard the song, I immediately thought of 90s /2000s alternative rock music: RATM, Chili Peppers, QOTSA, Pearl Jam...
Not that I was reminded of them particularly, but I wanted to copy that sound: Make it as big & powerful as possible, but at the same time as dry & natural as possible. This resulted in only 1 Room each for guitars & drums, one Hall for the snare, + one Hall & one Delay for Vocals. I didn't plan this or restrict myself to this. But it felt right in the end.
Oh and there is also one Room on the entire mix (at 7%). I don't know if I can even hear it myself, but I like to think it glues together and takes some harshness away still.

I think the snare is a really good example: it is quite dry, not too much presence, but there is enough room and oomph that you can feel.

- I started by selecting Drum tracks and forming a sound I liked: Vitamin on the Kick (low freq resonance), lo-cut and parallel hard comp on OH, only a bit of HH, and snare-group: I doubled the main snare-track and pitched it down one octave, to have more body without having to eq too much. This I add back in to the snare group
All the drums go to a room-fx send. on drum-bus I only have a bit of EQ and a Kush UBK (saturator/comp/tape) with the "roomier drums" preset.
The source material is great, and I really think it sounds quite real

- Next, Bass: To get the most out of it, I "manually quantized" the bass. (see pic). Autmatic quantizing a played bass leaves artefacts, but more importantly, it will destroy the feel. So I made shure that only the notes that were too far off were corrected. Then I delayed the whole bass track by a few miliseconds. I like to do this so that the kick will always have a little more room to, well, kick. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You just have to listen to it. A lot.
The more that drums and bass have a great time feel, the less you have to rescue by compression etc.
Having said that, note that I still have quite a few Inserts on the bass track. (see pic)

- I (almost) only used the processed guitar tracks, they had a great sound and the panning is simple and good. The group has a low-cut, EQ for presence, limiter (very little), harmonic enhancer.
The guitar solo is automated by VCA, so it doesn't "disappear" when it goes into low register. I did use the DI signal of the guitar solo. Its heavily squashed, and it adds a little clear tone to support the melody.
The guitar intro is taken from the original demo. Yes, I'm aware this might count as cheating. But it was just so good. I could have taken 3 hours to get -nearly- there, and it would have bothered me still. Luckily the kick drum that comes in during the intro is quiet enough so it doesn't mess with my kick.

- Vocals:
At this point I had an instrumental track that I really enjoyed listening to. This is a good starting point to bring the vocals in. I'll listen to the Vocal takes, mostly against the music, and then it kinda plays itself. I went straight for the agressive main takes for verse and chorus. I knew I wanted one main, loud center vocal, and the rest only for support in the background.
I built one vocal chain from one of my presets, copied it to all vocal tracks and modified where needed. the low vocal in the verse I used only for low freq support, cutting off all above 230hz and compressed real hard.
I edited the clip volume to tame the very loud shouts. I used melodyne here and there to align the pitch of the main or backing tracks. But only to a certain degree.
There is a bit of Hall as FX-send. And a delay effect which is automated for the phrase-ends in the chorus.

Im general, I use EQ to get rid of unwanted frequencies on the separate tracks. I used RX de-noise on bass, to get rid of high static hiss noise which would come up during compression.
On the mix-bus, aside from the light room-fx, I also have the TDR VOS slickEQ (great free plugin!) set on their "freshmaker" preset.


Thanks again for the opportunity. Best of luck to the other contestants!
Carlos

overview:




bass edits:


bass inserts:


vca track:

[paperthin]

Hello to everyone! I'm ready to submit my mix for Round 2. Here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tpbftxf82dfqa ... 2.wav?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tigku63w9sz6k ... 2.mp3?dl=0

I made a few changes to some of the instruments and to the overall sound as well.
Taking into consideration Morelia's feedback (thanks, man), I gave my mix a critical listen and realised how overproduced in sounded. I guess it's a problem I have. Here are the changes:

Drums: I toned the compression down a bit to let the snare breathe. It doesn't sound like a machine gun anymore and has more of the woody character that I like.

Bass: I brought down the gain. On the first mix the bass sounded more like another guitar which is appropriate for metal, but here I wanted it to be more pillowy and clean. There's still some gain though, but less.

Guitars: This is where the changes are most apparent. The guitars have less gain now and it's especially obvious on palm mutes. Also I brought back some of the midrange which moved the mix more into the hard rock territory.

Vocals: I ditched the mellow takes and settled for the aggressive ones. Also the shouts no longer replace the main vocal but reinforce it, I think it makes for a nice transition into the chorus.

Mix bus: going for the hard rock feel I toned down the compression yet again to let the whole mix breathe. It's still a wall of sound to me but this time I feel like there's more nuance and depth to it. And it's not as scooped as before which will translate into a louder master later on. Pretty pleased with the result to be honest.

This is the first time I participated in a mix competition of any kind. I don't know if there are new mixers here all the time or more or less the same cast each month. So far I've seen some decent works here which I may comment on later. Frankly, I think feedback is what this is all about, I personally couldn't care less about the prizes. So if anybody feels like commenting on my mix or having theirs commented on, let's do it.
Best of luck to all the contestants!

[philk]

Hey everyone!

Thanks for picking me in the top 10! Here are my files for round 2.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qstskpbylqoh7 ... 2.mp3?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/57gw1fc2c77ae ... 2.wav?dl=0

Worked on your feedback regarding my first mix, checked every group of instruments and tweaked here and there, fixed the problem with the snare and the solo, redid the vocals to get it more gelling with the rest of the mix! I hope you like it.

Thanks for doing this! <3

Cheers, Phil

[Mister Fox]

Now to my main approach (Round 1):

...

- Next, Bass: To get the most out of it, I "manually quantized" the bass. (see pic). Autmatic quantizing a played bass leaves artefacts, but more importantly, it will destroy the feel. So I made shure that only the notes that were too far off were corrected. Then I delayed the whole bass track by a few miliseconds. I like to do this so that the kick will always have a little more room to, well, kick. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. You just have to listen to it. A lot.
The more that drums and bass have a great time feel, the less you have to rescue by compression etc.
Having said that, note that I still have quite a few Inserts on the bass track. (see pic)

Not to critisize your entry - that is up to the song provider.
But by "quantizing the bass", you effectively change the groove of the original recording and arrangement.

Background Vocals I can understand, to tighten them up. But bass to "sync up" with the drums? I know that quantizing was common in the late 90s pop-rock era (see Rick Beato's Youtube video "How Computers Ruined Rock Music "). That'd be an absolute no-no for me and remove all the imperfections of rock music.

So... interesting approach that I'd like to learn from.

The guitar intro is taken from the original demo. Yes, I'm aware this might count as cheating. But it was just so good. I could have taken 3 hours to get -nearly- there, and it would have bothered me still. Luckily the kick drum that comes in during the intro is quiet enough so it doesn't mess with my kick.

10-15 minutes for me maximum. And I used a Bogner Uberschall from Line6 Helix.

If you listened closely to the demo mix, the intro parts were boosted way too much into distortion (IMO) which resulted in a fuzz type effect. You can get a more cleaner, but just as powerful solution with just using a boost pedal and/or the right EQ before(!) hitting a hi-gain amp (again: I used a Bogner Uberschall, but you could have also used Peavy Revalver or TSE X50 v1 with a suitable 4x12 cabinet). If you know the guitar amp you're using, and it's breakup points (aka ideal hotspots).

Furthermore, the intro has been played for effect, so you could have gone with pretty much anything. In my case, I even used a Flanger on the main intro guitar.

"Demo Example":
viewtopic.php?p=4521#p4521


Points for creativity - but what would you have done if there was no demo mix given?

[stu b]

Thanks again for the feedback morelia. I stuck a dynamic eq on the gtr buss and drum buss to tame the upper mids and hopefully clear a little space for the vocs, and one on the bass to control the lows, thanks for the tips, I think they improved my mix. Re-balanced all the vocal tracks but have no idea if its an improvement though, heard this song way too many times to be objective any more!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a7cjna81jvaue ... v.wav?dl=0

[morelia]

heard this song way too many times to be objective any more!

I think I might know how you feel

[kirurg]

Hi everyone,

Thank you Morelia for fast feedback and picking the mix into top 10
and also thanks for relevant notes (especially when taking about Audioslave as
the reference).
Guitars got subtle eq changes in middle freq area (cut), bass got more harmonics.
Added (more) limiting to the vocals, also some subtle eq. So, for summary, not
too much changed but I hope this is the right direction you will like.

Round 2 files:
wav
https://www.dropbox.com/s/b37lolvoidve9 ... 2.wav?dl=0

mp3
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4im1mzavuf91c ... 2.mp3?dl=0

[stu b]

heard this song way too many times to be objective any more!

I think I might know how you feel

Ha! Didn't think of that. I would hereby like to retract my whinging!

[cmbsa]

Hello Mister Fox,

I understand it's a tricky subject... I shouldn't have called it "quantizing". Its basically nudging the notes here and there. If I get disqualified, there's nothing I can do about it. And I can accept that. But would you have noticed if I had not commented on it? I didn't want to change a performance. I wanted it to sound better in the mix.

Points for creativity - but what would you have done if there was no demo mix given?

I hope I would have come up with something good, too! Still, to me, it's about making the best version of what I hear.

Anyway, I'm grateful I got to mix this song, & happy to participate in round 2.